May 13th. We left Mandavaca at half past two in the morning. After six hours of travelling we passed the mouth of the Idapa or Siapa on the east. It rises on the Uturan mountain. It has white waters. Its upper course has been strangely misrepresented on La Cruz's and Surville's maps, which all later maps have imitated. We stopped near the Cunuri raudal. The noise of the little cataract got much louder during the night. Our Indians said that meant certain rain. It fell before sunrise. However, the araguato monkeys' continuous wails had warned us that rain was approaching.

We were forced to cut our own track across the malpaís. The slope is very steep, and the volcanic blocks slipped under our feet. The rubble on the peak's summit has sharp edges and leaves gaps into which explorers risk falling up to their waists. Unfortunately the laziness and bad temper of our guides made this ascent more difficult. They were despairingly phlegmatic. The night before they had tried to convince us not to pass beyond the limit of the rocks. Every ten minutes they would sit down to rest; they threw away pieces of obsidian and pumice-stone that we had carefully collected. Finally we realized that none of them had ever visited the volcano's summit before.

While on the spot I sketched a view (17) of the crater's interior edge as it is seen on the descent through the eastern wall's breach. Nothing is more striking than the superimposition of these lava strata, which reveals similar sinuosities to the calcareous rock of the Alps. These enormous ledges, sometimes horizontal and sometimes sloping or undulating, reminded us that long ago the entire mass had flowed, and that a combination of disruptive causes determined a particular flow. The Crest of the wall exhibits the same strange ramifications we find in coke. The northern edge is the highest. Towards the south-west the wall has considerably subsided and an enormous amount of scoria seems glued to the outer edge. On the west the rock is perforated, and through a wide opening you can see the sea and horizon. Perhaps the force of the steam broke through here just when the lava overflowed from the crater.

I still have to refer to the most isolated of the Christian colonies of the Upper Orinoco. Opposite the point where the Orinoco bifurcates there is a granite mass called Duida, in the form of an amphitheater. The missionaries call this mountain of nearly 8, feet a volcano. Because its slopes on the south and west are very steep it looks grand. The peak is bare and stony; but everywhere else in the less steep slopes earth has collected and jungles seem to hang from the air. At the foot of the Duida lies the Esmeralda mission, a small village of eighty people, surrounded by a lovely plain, and fed by little black-watered but limpid streams; a proper prairie with groups of mauritia palms, the American breadfruit. As you approach the mountain the marshy plain becomes a savannah that stretches along the lower reaches of the chain. There you find enormous, delicious pineapples. These bromelia always grow solitary among the grasses.

Only after Diamante do you enter territory inhabited by tigers, crocodiles and chiguires, a large species of Linnaeus's genus Cavia (capybara). We saw flocks of birds pressed against each other flash across the sky like a black cloud changing shape all the time. The river slowly grew wider. One of the banks is usually arid and sandy due to flooding. The other is higher, covered with full-grown trees. Sometimes the river is lined with jungle on both sides and becomes a straight canal some 150 toises wide. The arrangement of the trees is remarkable. First you see the sauso shrubs (Hermesia castaneifolia), a hedge some 4 feet high as if cut by man. Behind this hedge a brushwood of cedar, Brazil-wood and gayac. Palms are rare; you see only scattered trunks of corozo and thorny piritu. The large quadrupeds of these regions, tigers, tapirs and peccaries, have opened passages in the sauso hedge. They appear through these gaps to drink water. They are not frightened of the canoes, so we see them skirting the river until they disappear into the jungle through a gap in the hedge. I confess that these often repeated scenes greatly appeal to me. The pleasure comes not solely from the curiosity a naturalist feels for the objects of his studies, but also to a feeling common to all men brought up in the customs of civilization. You find yourself in a new world, in a wild, untamed nature. Sometimes it is a jaguar, the beautiful American panther, on the banks; sometimes it is the hocco (Crax alector) with its black feathers and tufted head, slowly strolling along the sauso hedge. All kinds of animals appear, one after the other. 'Es como en el paradiso' ('It is like paradise') our old Indian pilot said. Everything here reminds you of that state of the ancient world revealed in venerable traditions about the innocence and happiness of all people; but when carefully observing the relationships between the animals you see how they avoid and fear each other. The golden age has ended. In this paradise of American jungles, as everywhere else, a long, sad experience has taught all living beings that gentleness is rarely linked to might.

In two days we went down the Orinoco from Carichana to the Uruana mission, again passing the famous Baraguan Strait. The Uruana mission is situated in a very picturesque place. The little Indian village backs on to a high granite mountain. Rocks rise like pillars above the highest jungle trees. Nowhere else is the Orinoco more majestic than when viewed from Father Ramon Bueno's missionary hut. It is more than 2, toises wide and runs in a straight line east like a canal. The mission is inhabited by Otomacs, a barbaric tribe who offered us an extraordinary physiological phenomenon. The Otomacs eat earth; every day for several months they swallow quantities of earth to appease their hunger without any ill effect on their health. This verifiable fact has become, since my return to Europe, the object of lively disputes. Though we could stay only one day in Uruana it was sufficient to find out how the poya (balls of earth) are prepared, to examine the reserves of this the Indians keep, and how much is eaten in twenty-four hours. I also found traces of this perverse appetite among the Guamos, between the Meta and the Apure. Everybody speaks of earth eating or geophagie as anciently known. I shall limit myself to what I saw and heard from the missionary, doomed to twelve years among this wild, unruly Otomac tribe.

The chief of one of the pirogues offered to stay on board to guide us as a coastal pilot. He was a most trustworthy Guaiqueri; a keen observer, and led by a genuine thirst for learning he had studied the produce of the sea and land around him. It was fortunate that the first Indian we met on arrival was a man whose knowledge was to prove extremely helpful for our journey's objectives. With great pleasure I record his name as Carlos del Pino, who accompanied us for sixteen months up and down the coast, and into the interior.