MEsmeralda is the most famous place on the Orinoco for the making of the active poison that is used in war, out hunting and, surprisingly, as a remedy against gastric illnesses. The poison of the Amazonian Tikuna, the upas-tieute of Java and the Guianan curare are the most poisonous substances known. Already by the sixteenth century Raleigh had heard the word urari spoken, signifying a vegetable substance used to poison arrows. However, nothing was known for sure in Europe about this poison.

The pilots trusted the ship's log more than my time- keeper, and smiled at my prediction that we would soon sight land, sure that we still had two to three days of sailing. It was with great satisfaction that on the 13th, at about six in the morning, high land was seen through the mist by someone from the mast. A strong wind blew and the sea was very rough. Every now and then heavy drops of rain fell. Everything pointed to a difficult situation. The captain intended to pass through the channel that separates the islands of Tobago and Trinidad and, knowing that our corvette was slow to turn, feared the south wind and the approach to the Boca del Dragon.

A little above the Davipe mission the Río Negro receives a branch of the Casiquiare whose existence is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of river branching. This branch emerges from the Casiquiare, north of Vasiva, under the name Itinivi; and after crossing a flat, virtually uninhabited country some 25 leagues long, pours into the Río Negro under the name of Río Conorichite. It seemed to me, near its mouth, to be 120 toises wide, and added large quantities of white waters to the black waters. Even though the Conorichite current is very fast, you shorten the journey from Davipe to Esmeralda by three days using this canal. It is not surprising to find a double communication between the Casiquiare and the Río Negro when you recall that so many American rivers form deltas when they meet other rivers. In this way the Branco and the Jupura pour into the Río Negro and Amazon through many branches. At the confluence with the Jupura there is another more extraordinary phenomenon. Before joining the Amazon this river, which is its main recipient, sends three branches called Uaranapu, Manhama and Avateprana to the Jupura, which is none other than its tributary. The Amazon thus sends its waters into the Jupura before receiving the waters of the latter back.

The vagabonds of the plains had as little interest in working as the Indians, who were obliged to live 'under the sound of the church bell'. The former used their pride to justify their indolence. In the missions every colored person who is not completely black like an African, or copper-colored like an Indian, calls himself a Spaniard; belongs to the gente de razon, that is, gifted with reason, and this reason', which is both arrogant and lazy, tells the whites and those who think themselves white that agriculture is work for slaves, poitos and newly converted Indians. As these American colonists were separated from their homelands by jungles and savannahs they soon dispersed, some going north to Caura and Caroni, and others south to the Portuguese possessions. Thus, the fame of the emerald mines of Duida died out, and Esmeralda became a cursed place of banishment for monks where the dreadful cloud of mosquitoes darkens the atmosphere all year round. When the father superior of the mission wants to upbraid his monks he threatens to send them to Esmeralda: 'That is, say the monks, 'to be condemned to mosquitoes, to be devoured by zancudos gritones (shouting flies), which God seems to have created to punish man.

That night Bonpland had a fever; but being brave, and gifted with that good character which a traveler should rank higher than anything else, he took up his work the next morning. The blow from the macana reached the crown of his head; he felt it for two to three months, up to our stay in Caracas. When he bent down to pick up plants he was several times made dizzy, which made us worry that some internal damage might have been done. Luckily our fears had no base and these alarming symptoms slowly vanished. The Cumanà inhabitants showed us the greatest kindness. We discovered that the mulatto came from one of the Indian villages round the great Maracaibo lake. He had served on a pirate ship from the island of Santo Domingo and, after a quarrel with the captain, had abandoned ship on the Cumanà coast. Why, after knocking one of us down, did he then try to steal a hat? In an interrogation his answers were so confused and stupid that we were unable to clear this matter up.

During the night we had left the Orinoco waters almost without realizing it. At sunrise we found ourselves in a new country, on the banks of a river whose name we had hardly heard mentioned, and which would lead us after a foot journey over Pimichín to the Río Negro on the Brazilian frontier. The father superior of the San Fernando mission said to us: 'First you must go up the Atabapo, then the Temi, and finally the Tuamini. If the black-water current is too strong to do this the guides will take you over flooded land through the jungle. In that deserted zone between the Orinoco and the Río Negro you will meet only two monks established there. In Javita you will find people to carry your canoe over land in four days to Caìo Pimichín. If the canoe is not wrecked go straight down the Río Negro to the fort of San Carlos, then go up the Casiquiare and in a month you will reach San Fernando along the Upper Orinoco. That was the plan drawn up for us, which we carried out, without danger, in thirty-three days. The bends are such in this labyrinth of rivers that without the map which I have drawn it would be impossible to picture the route we took. In the first part of this journey from east to west you find the famous bifurcations that have given rise to so many disputes, and whose location I was the first to establish through astronomic observations. One arm of the Orinoco, the Casiquiare (108) running north to south, pours into the Guainia or Río Negro, which in turn joins the Maraìon or Amazon.

A dreadful circumstance forced us to stay a whole month in Angostura. The first days after our arrival we felt tired and weak, but completely healthy. Bonpland began to study the few plants that he had managed to protect from the humidity while I was busy determining the longitude and latitude of the capital and observing the dip of the magnetic needle. All our work was interrupted. On almost the same day we were struck by an illness that took the form of a malignant typhus in my travelling companion. At that time the air in Angostura was quite healthy and, as the only servant we had brought from Cumana showed the same symptoms, our generous hosts were sure that we had caught the typhus germs somewhere in the damp Casiquiare jungles. As our mulatto servant had been far more exposed to the intense rains, his illness developed with alarming speed. He got so weak that after eight days we thought he was dead. However, he had only fainted, and he later recovered. I too was attacked by a violent fever; I was given a mixture of honey and quinine from the Caroni river (Cortex angosturae), a medicine recommended by the Capuchin monks. My fever continued to rise, but vanished the following day. Bonpland's fever was more serious, and for weeks we worried about his health. Luckily be was strong enough to look after himself; and took medicines that suited him better than the Caroni river quinine. The fever continued and, as is usual in the Tropics, developed into dysentery. During his illness Bonpland maintained his strength of character and that calmness which never left him even in the most trying circumstances. I was tortured by premonitions. It was I who had chosen to go up-river; the danger to my companion seemed to be the fatal consequence of my rash choice.