When we carefully examine this wild part of America we imagine how it was in primitive times when the land was peopled in stages, and seem to be present at the birth of human societies. In the New World we do not see the progressive developments of civilization, those moments of rest, those stations in the lives of a people. Such is the wonderful fertility of nature that the Indian's field is a patch of land. To clear it means setting fire to branches. To farm means dropping a few seeds into the ground. However far back in time you go in thought in these dense jungles the Indians have got their food from the earth, but as this earth produces abundantly on a small patch, without much work, these people often change their homes along the river banks. Still today, the Orinoco Indians travel with their seeds, transporting what they cultivate (conucos), like the Arab does his tents.

This tree, which grows only in cultivated areas in the Canaries, Madeira and Porto Santo, presents a curious phenomenon in plant migration. In Africa it has never been found in a wild state, and its country of origin is East India. How has this tree become acclimatized in Tenerife? Did the Guanches have contact with nations originally from Asia?

The Indians who go harvesting take thousands of dried or lightly cooked eggs away to their villages. Our towers always had some in baskets or cotton bags. When they are well preserved the taste is not too bad. They showed us large turtle shells emptied by jaguars, who wait for the turtles on the beach where the eggs are laid. They attack them on the sand. To eat them they turn them upside down so that the undershell is right-side up. In this position the turtles cannot right themselves, and as jaguars turn many more over than they can eat in one night the Indians avail themselves of the cats' greed and cunning. If you think how hard it is for a travelling naturalist to pull the turtle's body out without separating it from the cuirass of the shell you can only admire the litheness of the jaguar's paw as it empties the two-sided shield of the arrau as if the muscular ligaments had been severed by a surgeon. The jaguar chases turtles into the water, even digs up the eggs, and, along with the crocodile, heron and gallinazo vulture, is one of the cruellest enemies of the newborn turtles. When the first rains come called 'turtle rains' (peje canepori) - the wild Indians go along the Orinoco banks with their poisoned arrows and kill the turtles as they warm themselves in the sun.

The Pizarro's captain accompanied us to the provincial governor's residence to present Don Vicente Emparan with our passports granted by the First Secretary of State. He received us with that frankness and simplicity that have always characterized the Basques. Before he was appointed governor of Portobello and Cumana he distinguished himself as a captain in the Royal Navy. His name evokes one of the most notable and distressing episodes in the history of naval warfare. After the last break between Spain and England two of Governor Emparan's brothers, outside Cadiz, attacked each other's ships, thinking the other was the enemy. The battle was ferocious and both ships sunk at almost the same time. Only a few of the crew were saved, and the two brothers realized their mistake just before dying.

On the 13th of July we reached the village of Can, the first of the Carib missions dependent on the Observance monks from the Piritu college. As usual we stayed in the convent, that is, with the parish priest. Apart from passports issued by the Captain-General of the province, we also carried recommendations from bishops and the director of the Orinoco missions. From the coasts of New California to Valdivia and the mouth of the River Plate, along 2, leagues, you can overcome all obstacles by appealing to the protection of the American clergy. Their power is too well entrenched for a new order of things to break out for a long time. Our host could hardly believe how 'people born in northern Europe could arrive in his village from the frontiers with Brazil by the Río Negro, and not by the Cumanà coast'. Although affable, he was also extremely curious, like everyone who meets travelers who are not Spanish. He was sure that the minerals we carried contained gold, and that the plants we had dried were medicinal. Here, as in many parts of Europe, sciences interest people only if they bring immediate and practical benefit.

In the Orinoco the curare made from the raiz (root) is differentiated from that made from the bejuco (the liana or bark from branches). We saw only the latter prepared; the former is weaker and less sought after. On the Amazon we learned to identify poisons made by the Tikuna, Yagua, Pevas and Jibaros tribes, which, coming from the same plant, differ only due to more or less care spent in their elaboration. The Tikuna poison, made famous in Europe by M. de la Condamine, and which is becoming known as tikuna, is taken from a liana that grows on the Upper Maranon. This poison is partly due to the Tikuna Indians, who have remained independent in Spanish territory, and partly to Indians of the same tribe in missions. As poisons are indispensable to hunters in this climate, the Orinoco and Amazon missionaries have not interfered with their production. The poisons just named are completely different from those made by the Peca, the Lamas and Moyobambas. I convey such details because the fragments of plants that we examined have proved (contrary to common opinion) that the three poisons of the Tikuna, Peca and Moyobambas do not come from the same species, not even the same family. just as curare is simple in its composition, so the fabrication of the Moyobamba poison is long and complicated. You mix the sap of the bejuco de ambihuasca, the main ingredient, with pepper (capsicum), tobacco, barbasco (Jacquinia armillaris), sanango (Tabernae montana) and the milk of some apocyneae. The fresh sap of the ambihuasca is poisonous if it touches blood; the sap of the mavacure is deadly only when it is concentrated by heating, and boiling eliminates the poison from the root of the Jatropha manihot (Yucca amarca). When I rubbed the liana, which gives the cruel poison of the Peca, for a long time between my fingers on a very hot day, my hands became numb.

We spent the night of the 16th of July in the Indian village of Santa Cruz de Cachipo, founded in 1749 when several Carib families from the unhealthy, flooding Orinoco gathered together. We lodged in the missionary's house. In the parish register we discovered how rapidly the mission had progressed thanks to his zeal and intelligence. From the middle of the plains the heat had become almost unbearable so we thought of travelling by night; but we were not armed and the llanos were infested with numberless robbers who murdered all whites who fell into their hands in atrociously cunning ways. Nothing can be worse than the administration of justice in these colonies. Everywhere we found the prisons filled with criminals who had waited up to eight years for a trial. About one third escape from prison and find refuge in the llanos, where nobody but cattle live. They attack on horseback, like Bedouin Arabs. The dirt in the prisons would be intolerable if prisoners were not allowed to escape every now and then. It is also common that the death penalty cannot be carried out because there are no executioners. When this happens they pardon one of the guilty if he agrees to hang the others. Our guides told us about a zambo, famous for his violence, who, just before our arrival at Cumanà, chose to avoid his execution by turning executioner The preparations broke his will, and he was horrified at what he was about to do, preferring death to the shame of saving his own life. He asked for his irons to be put back on. He did not stay in prison much longer, as cowardice in another prisoner saw that he was executed. This awakening of honour in a murderer is psychologically very interesting. A man who has spilled so much blood robbing travelers on the steppes hesitates to inflict a punishment that he feels he himself has deserved.