I placed very active curare on the crural nerves of a frog without noticing any change, measuring the degree of its organs' irritability with an arc formed of heterogeneous metals. But these Galvanic experiments hardly worked on birds a few minutes after they had been shot with poison arrows. Curare works only when the poison acts on the vascular system. At Maypures, a colored man (a zambo, a cross between Indian and negro) was preparing one of those poison arrows that are shot in blowpipes, to kill small monkeys or birds for M. Bonpland. He was a carpenter of extraordinary strength. He stupidly rubbed the curare between slightly bleeding fingers and fell to the ground, dizzy for half an hour. Luckily it was a weak curare (destemplado), used for small animals, which may be revived later by placing muriate of soda in the wound. During our journey back from Esmeralda to Atures. I escaped from danger myself. The curare had attracted humidity and become liquid and spilled from a poorly closed jar on to our clothes. We forgot to check the inside of a sock filled with curare when washing our clothes. Just touching this sticky stuff with my hand I realized I should not pull on the poison sock. The danger was all the greater as my toes were bleeding from chigoe wounds.

Having given up hope of the mail-boat from Spain we boarded an American ship loaded with salt for Cuba. We had spent sixteen months on this coast and in the interior of Venezuela. On the 16th of November we left our Cumanà friends to cross the Gulf of Cariaco for Nueva Barcelona for the third time. The sea breeze was strong and after six hours we anchored off the Morro of Nueva Barcelona, where a ship was waiting to take us to Havana. (135)

Once the camp has been set up the Uruana missionary designates his representative or superintendent, who divides the beach into lots according to the number in each tribe who are to harvest. They are all mission Indians, as naked and stupid as jungle Indians: they are called reducidos and neofitos because they attend church when the bells toll, and kneel during Communion. With a long pole made of wood or bamboo, he examines the extent of the stratum of eggs. According to our calculations this reaches 120 feet from the shore, and 3 feet deep. The Indians dig with their hands, put the harvested eggs in baskets called mappiri, and bring them to the camp to throw them into great wooden troughs filled with water. The eggs are smashed with sticks, shaken about and exposed to the sun until the yolk, the oily floating part, thickens out. This oily substance collecting on the surface is scooped off and cooked on a hot fire. The animal oil turns into what is called manteca de tortuga by the Spaniards (turtle fat), and keeps better the longer it is cooked. If it is well done it is completely clear, without smell and barely yellow. Missionaries compare it with the best olive oil and not only use it for burning in lamps but also for cooking, as its taste does not spoil good food. However, we could never obtain the pure oil. Generally it stinks because the eggs are mixed up with the already formed but dead baby turtles.

The treatment of the copper-colored Indians was accompanied by the same acts of inhumanity that later were meted out to the black Africans, with the same consequences of making both conquered and conquering wilder. From that time wars between the Indians became more common; prisoners were dragged from the interior to the coasts to be sold to whites who chained them to their boats. Yet the Spaniards at that period, and long after, were one of the most civilized nations of Europe. The light that art and literature shed over Italy was reflected on every nation whose language stemmed from the same source as that of Dante and Petrarch. One might have expected a general sweetening of manners as the natural consequence of this noble awakening of the mind, this soaring of the imagination. But across the seas, wherever the thirst for riches led to the abuse of power, the nations of Europe have always displayed the same characteristics. The noble century of Leo X was marked in the New World by acts of cruelty that belonged to a barbaric past.

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.