Twelve years have elapsed since I left Europe to explore the interior of the New Continent. From my earliest days I was excited by studying nature, and was sensitive to the wild beauty of a landscape bristling with mountains and covered in forests. I found that travelling out there compensated for a hard and often agitated life. But pleasure was not the only fruit of my decision to contribute to the progress of the physical sciences. For a long time I had prepared myself for the observations that were the main object of my journey to the torrid zone. I was equipped with instruments that were easy and convenient to use, made by the ablest artists, and I enjoyed the protection of a government that, far from blocking my way, constantly honored me with its confidence. I was supported by a brave and learned friend whose keenness and equanimity never let me down, despite the exhaustion and dangers we faced.

One of the four canoes that the Indians had used for their expedition was filled with a kind of reed (carice) used to make blowpipes. The reeds measured 15 to 17 feet without a sign of a knot for leaves and branches. They are quite straight, smooth and cylindrical known as 'reeds of Esmeralda' they are very sought after beyond the Orinoco. A hunter keeps the same blowpipe all his life; he boasts of its lightness, precision and shine as we might our firearms. What monocotyledonous plant do these magnificent reeds come from? I was unable to answer this question, as I was unable to say what plant was used in making the marima shirts. On the slopes of the Duida mountain we saw trunks of this tree reaching to feet high. The Indians cut off cylindrical pieces 2 feet in diameter and peel off the red fibrous bark, careful not to make longitudinal incisions. This bark becomes a kind of garment, like a sack, of a coarse material without seams. You put your head through a hole at the top and your arms through two holes cut in the sides. Indians wear these marima shirts when it rains; they look like cotton ponchos. In these climates the abundance and beneficence of nature are blamed for the Indians' laziness. Missionaries do not miss the opportunity of saying: 'In the Orinoco jungles clothes are found readymade on trees. In the fiesta women were excluded from dancing and other festivities; their sad role was reduced to serving men roast monkey, fermented drinks and palm-tree hearts, which tasted rather like our cauliflowers. Another more nutritious substance comes from the animal kingdom: fish flour (mandioca de pescado). Throughout the Upper Orinoco Indians roast fish, dry them in the sun and crush them into powder, along with the bones. When eaten it is mixed with water into a paste.

As we approached La Laguna the air cooled. This sensation delighted us as we found the air in Santa Cruz asphyxiating. As we tend to feel disagreeable sensations more strongly, we felt the change in temperature more as we returned from La Laguna to the port, as if we were approaching the mouth of a furnace.

We dared to cross the last half of the Atures raudal in our boat. We landed every now and then on rocks, which act as dykes, forming islands. Sometimes water crashes over them, sometimes it falls into them with a deafening noise. It was here that we saw one of the most extraordinary scenes. The river rolled its waters over our heads, like the sea crashing against reefs, but in the entrance to a cavern we could stay dry as the large sheet of water formed an arch over the rocks. We had the chance to view this bizarre sight for longer than we wished. Our canoe should have passed around a narrow island on the eastern bank and picked us up after a long detour. We waited for several hours as night and a furious Storm approached. Rain poured down. We began to fear that our fragile boat had smashed against some rocks and that the Indians, as indifferent as ever to the distress of others, had gone off to the mission. There were only three of us, soaked to the skin and worrying about our pirogue, as well as thinking about spending the night in the Tropics, sleeping in the din of the cataracts. M. Bonpland proposed to leave me alone on the island with Don Nicolas Soto and swim the bit of the river between the granite dykes. He hoped to reach the jungle and seek help from Father Zea at Atures. We finally managed to dissuade him. He had no idea about the labyrinth of canals that split up the Orinoco or of the dangerous eddies. Then what happened under our noses as we were discussing this proved that the Indians had been wrong to say there were no crocodiles in the cataracts. We had placed our little monkeys on the tip of our island. Soaked by the rain, and sensitive to any fall in temperature, they began to howl, attracting two very old lead-grey crocodiles. Seeing them made me realize how dangerous our swim in this same raudal on our way up had been. After a long wait our Indians turned up just as the sun was setting.

The climate of Nueva Barcelona is not as hot as that of Cumanà, but it is humid and unhealthy during the rainy season. Bonpland had survived the crossing of the llanos and had recovered his strength to work as hard as before. I myself felt worse in Nueva Barcelona than I had in Angostura after our long river trip. One of those tropical downpours, with those enormous raindrops that fall far apart from each other, made me so ill I thought I had typhus. We spent a month in Nueva Barcelona, enjoying all the comforts of the town.

According to my careful trigonometric calculations the Duida mountain rises 2, meters above the Esmeralda plain, some 2, meters, more or less, above sea-level. I say more or less because I had the bad luck to break my barometer before our arrival in Esmeralda. The rain had been so heavy that we could not protect this instrument from the damp and, with the unequal expansion of the wood, the tubes snapped. This accident especially annoyed me as no barometer had ever lasted so long on such a journey. The granite summit of the Duida falls so steeply that Indians have not managed to climb it. Though the mountains are not as high as people think, it is the highest point of the chain that stretches from the Orinoco to the Amazon.

The last days of our crossing were not as peaceful as the mild climate and calm ocean had led us to hope. We were not disturbed by the dangers of the deep, but by the presence of a malignant fever that developed as we approached the West Indies. Between the overcrowded decks the heat was unbearable; the thermometer stayed at 36'C. Two sailors, several passengers and, strangely, two blacks from the Guinean coast and a mulatto child were attacked by an illness that threatened to turn into an epidemic. The symptoms were not as serious in all the sick; but some of them, even among the most robust, became delirious on the second day and lost all body strength. With that indifference which on passenger ships affects everything that is not to do with the ship's movements and speed, the captain did not for a moment think of applying the simplest remedies. He did not fumigate. A phlegmatic and ignorant Galician surgeon prescribed bleedings, attributing the fever to what he called the heat and corruption of blood. There was not an ounce of quinine on board and we, on boarding, had forgotten to bring a supply, more concerned for our instruments than for our health as we had not predicted that a Spanish ship would be without this Peruvian bark febrifuge.