From the 14th to the 21st of May we slept out in the open air; but I cannot point out where exactly we camped. This country is so wild and so deserted that, apart from a few rivers, the Indians could not name anything from my compass bearings. No observations of stars could reassure me about our latitude. After passing the place where the Itinivini separates from the Casiquiare to go west towards the granite Daripabo hills, we found the muddy banks covered with bamboo. These arborescent gramina rise up to 20 feet; their stalks arch towards the top. It is a new species of long-leafed bamboo. Bonpland rejoiced to find one in flower. Nothing is more rare in the New World than seeing these gigantic gramina in flower. Mutis (117) herbalized for over twenty years without ever finding one in flower.

I use the word 'savage' grudgingly because it implies a cultural difference between the tamed Indians living in missions and the free ones, which belies the facts. In the South American jungles there are Indian tribes who live peacefully in villages under their chiefs, who cultivate banana trees, cassava and cotton in large areas of land, and weave their hammocks with cotton fibers. They are not more barbarous than the naked Indians of the missions who have learned to make the sign of the cross. In Europe it is a common fallacy to assume that all Indians who are not tamed are nomadic hunters. In Terra Firma agriculture was known long before the arrival of the Europeans, and today is still practiced between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers in jungle clearings never visited by missionaries. What the missionaries have achieved is to have increased the Indians' attachment to owning land, their desire for secure dwelling places, and their taste for more peaceful lives. It would be accepting false ideas about the actual condition of South American Indians to assume that 'Christian', tamed' and 'civilized' were synonymous with 'pagan', 'savage' and free'. The tamed Indian is often as little a Christian as the free Indian is an idolater. Both, caught up in the needs of the moment, betray a marked indifference for religious sentiments, and a secret tendency to worship nature and her powers.

We were struck to see in the Parurama camp that old women were more preoccupied in painting themselves than young ones. We saw an Otomac woman having her hair rubbed with turtle oil and her back painted with annatto by her two daughters. The ornaments consisted of a kind of lattice-work in crossed black lines on a red background. It was work needing incredible patience. We came back from a long herborization and the painting was still only half done. It is all the more amazing that this research into ornament does not result in tattooing, for the painting done so carefully washes off if the Indian exposes herself to a downpour. Some nations paint themselves to celebrate festivals; others are covered in paint all year round. With these Indians annatto is seen as so indispensable that men and women have less shame in appearing without a guayuco (97) than without paint. The Orinoco guayucos are made from bark and cotton. Men wear larger ones than women who, according to the missionaries, seem to feel less shame than men. Shouldn't we attribute this indifference, this lack of shame in the women in tribes that are not depraved, to the state of numbness and slavery to which the female sex has been reduced in South America by the injustice and power of men?

Among the Saliva Indians we found a white woman, the Sister of a Jesuit from New Granada. After having lived with people who did not understand us, it is hard to describe the joy we felt on meeting somebody with whom we could converse without an interpreter. Each mission has at least two interpreters, lenguarazes. These Indians are rather less stupid than the others through whom the missionaries, who do not bother to learn the languages any more, communicate with neophytes. These interpreters accompanied us when we went out botanizing; they understood Spanish but spoke it badly. With their usual apathy they would arbitrarily answer any questions with a smiling 'yes father' or 'no father'. You will understand that after months of this kind of dialogue you lose patience without managing to get the information that you urgently require. It was not rare for us to use several interpreters, and sometimes we had to translate several times the same sentence in order to begin to understand the Indians. 'After leaving my mission, said the goodly monk at Uruana, 'you will be travelling as mutes. This prediction was exact. To get something even from the most primitive Indians we met, we turned to sign language. As soon as the Indian realizes you do not need him as an interpreter but are asking him something directly by pointing it out, he drops his usual apathy and shows a special skill in making himself understood. He varies his signs, pronounces his words slowly, and seems flattered by your interest.

The perpetual cool that prevails in La Laguna makes the city the favorite home for the inhabitants of the Canaries. The residential capital of Tenerife is magnificently placed in a small plain surrounded by gardens at the foot of a hill crowned with laurel, myrtle and strawberry trees. It would be a mistake to rely on some travelers who believe the town lies by a lake. The rain sometimes forms an enormous sheet of water, and a geologist who sees the past rather than the present state of nature in everything would not doubt that the whole plain was once a great lake, now dried up. La Laguna has fallen from its opulence since the erupting volcano destroyed the port of Garachico and Santa Cruz became the trading center of the island. It has no more than 9, inhabitants, with nearly 400 monks distributed in six convents, though some travelers insist half the population wear cassocks. Numerous windmills surround the city, a sign that wheat is cultivated in this high country. The Guanches called wheat at Tenerife tano, at Lanzarote triffa; barley in Gran Canaria was called aramotanoque, and at Lanzarote tamosen. The flour of roasted barley (gofio) and goat's milk constituted the main food of these people about whose origins so many systematic fables have been written.

At midday we stopped at a deserted spot called Algodonal. I left my companions while they beached the boat and prepared the meal. I walked along the beach to observe a group of crocodiles asleep in the sun, their tails, covered with broad scaly plates, resting on each other. Small herons, as white as snow, walked on their hacks, even on their heads, as if they were tree trunks. The crocodiles were grey- green, their bodies were half covered in dried mud. From their color and immobility they looked like bronze statues. However, my stroll almost cost me my life. I had been constantly looking towards the river, and then, on seeing a flash of mica in the sand, I also spotted fresh jaguar tracks, easily recognizable by their shape. The animal had gone off into the jungle, and as I looked in that direction I saw it lying down under the thick foliage of a ceiba, eighty steps away from me. Never has a tiger seemed so enormous.

The sea coast is fringed with date and coconut palms; above them groups of banana trees stand out from the dragon trees whose trunks are often rightly compared to snakes' bodies. The hills are covered in vines, which grow over high stakes. Orange trees loaded with blossom, myrtle and cypress surround chapels raised devotedly by the islanders on cleared hilltops. Land is divided by hedges made of agave and cactus. Innumerable cryptogamous plants, predominantly fern, cover the walls moistened by small clear-water springs. In winter when the volcano is covered with snow and ice this place enjoys an eternal spring. In summer, as the evening falls, a sea breeze freshens the air. The coastal population is very dense and appears to be even greater because the houses and gardens are scattered, increasing the picturesque aspect. Unhappily, the wealth of the inhabitants does not correspond with hard work or with nature's richness. Those who work the land are not its owners; the fruit of their labor belongs to the nobility and the feudal system that for so long was the shame of Europe and still prevents the people's progress here.