In this area there are several species of peccaries, or pigs with lumbar glands, only two of which are known to naturalists in Europe. The Indians call the little peccary a chacharo. Reared in their houses they become tame like our sheep and goats. Another kind is called the apida, which is also domesticated and wanders in large herds. These animals announce themselves from a long way off because they break down all the shrubs in their way. During a botanical excursion Bonpland was warned by his Indian guides to hide behind a tree trunk as these cochinos, or puercos del monte, passed by. The flesh of the chacharo ii flabby and disagreeable, but the Indians hunt them nevertheless, with small lances tied to cords. We were told at Atures that jaguars dread being surrounded by herds of wild pigs and climb trees to save themselves. Is this a hunters' tale, or a fact?

The banks of the Manzanares are very attractive, shaded by mimosas, erythrinas, ceibas and other gigantic trees. A river whose temperature descends during the floods to as low as 22'C when the air is 30'C to 35'C is a blessing in a country where the heat is excessive all year round and one wants to bathe several times a day. Children spend a good part of their lives in this water; everybody, including the richest women, knows how to swim. In a country where people live so close to nature the most important question people ask each other on first meeting is whether the river water is fresher than it was the day before. There are several ways of bathing. Each evening we visited a group of respectable people in the Guaiqueri suburb. In the moonlight they would install chairs by the water; men and women were lightly dressed as if at European spas, and would spend hours smoking cigars and chatting with their families and strangers, according to the habits of the place, about the dryness, the heavy rains and the excessive luxury of Caracas and Havana ladies. Nobody worried about the small but rare crocodiles that approach humans without attacking, although dolphins swim upstream and scare bathers by spouting water.

The same reasons that slowed our communications also delayed the publication of our work, which has to be accompanied by a number of engravings and maps. If such difficulties are met when governments are paying, how much worse they are when paid by private individuals. It would have been impossible to overcome these difficulties if the enthusiasm of the editors had not been matched by public reaction. More than two thirds of our work has now been published. The maps of the Orinoco, the Casiquiare and the Magdalena rivers, based on my astronomical observations, together with several hundred plants, have been engraved and are ready to appear. I shall not leave Europe on my Asian journey before I have finished publishing my travels to the New World.

The city of New Valencia occupies a large area of ground, but its population is of some 6, to 7, souls. The roads are very wide, the market place (plaza mayor) is disproportionately large. As the houses are few the difference between the population and the land they occupy is greater even than at Caracas. Many of the whites of European stock, especially the poorest, leave their town houses and live for most of the year in their cotton and indigo plantations. They dare to work with their own hands, which, given the rigid prejudices in this country, would he a disgrace in the city. The industriousness of the inhabitants has greatly increased after freedom was granted to business in Puerto Cabello, now open as a major port (puerto mayor) to ships coming directly from Spain.

The most majestic palm tree of its tribe, the palma real, gives the countryside around Havana its special character. It is the Oreodoxa regia in our description of American palms; its tall trunk, swelling slightly in the middle, rises 60 to 80 feet high; its upper part shines with a tender green, newly formed by the closing and dilation of the petioles, and contrasts with the rest, which is whitish and fissured. It looks like two columns, one on top of the other. The Cuban palma real has feathery leaves rising straight up towards the sky, curving only at the tips. The form of this plant reminded us of the vadgiai palm covering the rocks on the Orinoco cataracts, balancing its long arrows above the mist of foam. Here, like everywhere, as the population increases so vegetation diminishes. Around Havana, in the Regla amphitheater, these palms that so delighted me are now disappearing year by year. The marshy places covered with bamboos have been cultivated and are drying out. Civilization progresses; and today I am told that the land offers only a few traces of its former savage abundance. From the Punta to San Làzaro, from the Cabaìa to Regla, from Regla to Atares, everything is covered with houses: those circling the bay are lightly and elegantly built. The owners draw a plan and order a house from the United States, as if ordering furniture. As long as yellow fever rages in Havana, people will retire to their country houses and enjoy fresher air. In the cool nights, when ships cross the bay and leave long phosphorescent tracks in the water, these rural sites become a refuge for those who flee a tumultuous, over-populated city. (137)

We could have included all these details in a work devoted solely to volcanoes in Peru and New Spain. Had I written the physical description of a single province I could have incorporated separate chapters on geography, mineralogy and botany, but how could I break the narrative of our travels, or an essay on customs and the great phenomena of general physics, by tiresomely enumerating the produce of the land, or describing new species and making dry astronomical observations? Had I decided to write a book that included in the same chapter everything observed from the same spot, it would have been excessively long, quite lacking in the clarity that comes from a methodical distribution of subject matter. Despite the efforts made to avoid these errors in this narration of my journey, I am aware that I have not always succeeded in separating the observations of detail from the general results that interest all educated minds. These results should bring together the influence of climate on organized beings, the look of the landscape, the variety of soils and plants, the mountains and rivers that separate tribes as much as plants. I do not regret lingering on these interesting objects for modern civilization can be characterized by how it broadens our ideas, making us perceive the connections between the physical and the intellectual worlds. It is likely that my travel journal will interest many more readers than my purely scientific researches into the population, commerce and mines in New Spain.

The macavahu, called by the missionaries viuditas, or 'widows in mourning', has soft glossy black hair. Its face is a kind of whitish-blue square mask, which contains its eyes, nose and mouth. Its ears have an edge; are small, pretty and hairless. Its neck has a white area in two rings. Its feet, or hind legs, are black like its body, but its forehands are white outside and black inside. These white spots led the missionaries to recognize a veil, a neck scarf and the gloves of a widow in mourning. The character of this little monkey, which sits up on its hind legs to eat, is not related to its appearance. It has a wild and shy air, and often refuses food even when ravenous. We have seen it remain motionless for hours without sleeping, attentive to everything happening around it. The viudita, when alone, becomes furious at the sight of a bird, and climbs and runs with astonishing speed, and, like a eat, leaps on to its prey and eats all it can. The viuditas accompanied us throughout our entire voyage on the Casiquiare and Río Negro. It is an advantage to study animals for several months in the open air, and not indoors where they lose their natural vivacity.