Despite the size of the Esmeralda mission three languages are spoken: Catarpen, Idapaminare and Maquiritare. This last is the dominant language of the Upper Orinoco, like Carin in the Lower[Orinoco], Otomac near the Apure, and Tamanac and Maypure at the Great Cataracts. It was strange to see many zambos, mulattos and other colored people who, through vanity, call themselves Spaniards, and think that they are white because they are not red like the Indians. These people lead a miserable life; most of them had been banished to here (desterrados). To found a territory in the interior as quickly as possible, in order to keep the Portuguese out, Solano had rounded up as many vagabonds and criminals as he could and sent them to the Upper Orinoco where they lived with the unhappy Indians lured from the jungle. A mineralogical error had made Esmeralda famous. The Duida and Maraguaca granite holds superficial seams of a pretty rock crystal, sometimes quite transparent and sometimes colored by chlorite or mixed with actonite and mistaken for diamonds and emeralds. In those mountains, so close to the sources of the Orinoco, everybody dreamed of El Dorado, which could not be far off, with Lake Parime and the ruins of the great city of Manoa.

Such considerations have guided my researches, and were always present in my mind as I prepared for the journey. When I began to read the many travel books, which form such an interesting branch of modern literature, I regretted that previous learned travelers seldom possessed a wide enough knowledge to avail themselves of what they saw. It seemed to me that what had been obtained had not kept up with the immense progress of several sciences in the late eighteenth century, especially geology, the history and modifications of the atmosphere, and the physiology of plants and animals. Despite new and accurate instruments I was disappointed, and most scientists would agree with me, that while the number of precise instruments multiplied we were still ignorant of the height of so many mountains and plains; of the periodical oscillations of the aerial oceans; the limit of perpetual snow under the polar caps and on the borders of the torrid zones; the variable intensity of magnetic forces; and many equally important phenomena.

A few minutes before the first shock there was a violent gust of wind, accompanied by flashes of lightning and large raindrops. The sky remained covered; after the storm the wind died down, staying quiet all night. The sunset was extraordinarily beautiful. The thick veil of clouds tore open into strips just above the horizon, forming shreds, and the sun shone at 12 degrees of altitude against an indigo-blue sky. Its disc appeared incredibly swollen, distorted and wavy at its edges. The clouds were gilded, and clusters of rays colored like the rainbow spread in every direction from its center. A great crowd had congregated in the main square. This phenomenon, the accompanying earthquake, thunder rolling as the earth shook, and that reddish mist lasting so many days were blamed on the eclipse.

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.

Most of our animals were locked in small reed cages, but some rail freely about the boat. When it threatened to rain the macaws started a terrible racket, the toucan tried to fly to the shore to fish, and the titi monkeys ran to hide under Father Zea's long sleeves. These spectacles were common, and allowed us to forget the torment of mosquitoes. To camp at night we built a kind of leather box (petaca), held our provisions; next to it we placed our instruments and the animal cages; around this we hung our hammocks and a little further out the Indians' hammocks. Around the outside we lit fires to scare off jungle jaguars. The Indians often spoke of a small nocturnal animal with a long snout, which traps young parrots in their nests and uses its hands to eat like monkeys. They call it guachi; it is doubtless a coati. Missionaries forbid the eating of guachi flesh. Superstition claims that it is an aphrodisiac.

Whoever lives in this region, whether white, mulatto, black or Indian, suffers equally from insect stings. People spend their time complaining of the plaga, del insufrible tormento de las moscas. I have mentioned the curious fact that whites born in the Tropics can walk about barefoot in the same room where a recently arrived European runs the risk of being bitten by niguas, or chigoes (Pulex penetrans). These hardly visible animals dig under toenails and soon reach the size of a pea as they develop their eggs, situated in little sacs under their abdomens. It seems as if the nigua is able to distinguish the cellular membrane and blood of a European from those of a white criollo, something that the most detailed chemical analysis has been unable to do. It is not the same with mosquitoes, despite what is said on South American coasts. These insects attack Indians as much as Europeans; only the consequences of the bites vary with race. The same venomous liquid applied to the skin of a copper-colored Indian and to a recently arrived white does not cause inflammations to the first, while to the second it causes hard, inflamed blisters that last for various numbers of days.

Nothing equals the beauty and mildness of a tropical ocean's climate. While the trade wind blew strongly the thermometer remained steadily at 23'C or 24'C by day, and 22'C to 22. by night. What a contrast between the tempestuous seas of the northern latitudes and those regions where the peace of nature is never disturbed! If the return journey from Mexico or South America was as quick and agreeable as the outgoing one the number of Europeans settled in the colonies would be considerably less than it is at the present. The seas that surround the Azores and Bermudas, which you cross when returning to Europe, are oddly called by Spaniards El Golfo de las Yeguas (Gulf of Mares). Settlers who are not used to the sea and who have lived isolatedly in Guianan forests, or in the savannahs of Caracas, or in the mountains of Peru, fear this gulf more than people fear Cape Horn. They exaggerate the dangers of a journey that is treacherous only in winter. They postpone this dangerous return year after year until death surprises them still planning.