There is exciting chemical and physiological work to be done in Europe with the effects of New World poisons once we are sure that different poisons from different areas are properly distinguished. As far as our botanical knowledge about these poisonous plants is concerned we could sort out the differences only very slowly. Most Indians who make poison arrows completely ignore the nature of poisonous substances used by other tribes. A mystery surrounds the history of toxics and antidotes. Among wild Indians the preparation is the monopoly of piaches, who are priests, tricksters and doctors all at once; it is only with Indians from the missions that you can learn anything certain about such problematic matters. Centuries passed before any Europeans learned, thanks to Mutis's researches, that the bejuco del guaco is the most powerful antidote to snake bites, and which we were the first to describe botanically.

The earthquake of the 4th of November, the first I had experienced, made a great impression on me, heightened, perhaps accidentally, by remarkable meteorological variations. It was also a movement that went up and down, not in waves. I would never have thought then that, after a long stay in Quito and on the Peruvian coast, I would get as used to these often violent ground movements as in Europe we get used to thunder. In Quito we never considered getting out of bed when at night there were underground rumblings (bramidos), which seemed to announce a shock from the Pichincha volcano. The casualness of the inhabitants, who know that their city has not been destroyed in three centuries, easily communicates itself to the most frightened traveler. It is not so much a fear of danger as of the novelty of the sensation that strikes one so vividly when an earthquake is felt for the first time.

Land journeys are made very tiresome by having to transport instruments and collections, but these difficulties are compensated by real advantages. It is not by sailing along a coast that the direction, geology and climate of a chain of mountains can be discovered. The wider a continent is the greater the range of its soil and the richness of its animal and vegetable products, and the further the central chain of mountains lies from the ocean coast the greater the variety of stony strata that can be seen, which reveal the history of the earth. Just as every individual can be seen as particular, so can we recognize individuality in the arrangement of brute matter in rocks, in the distribution and relationships of plants and animals. The great problem of the physical description of the planet is how to determine the laws that relate the phenomena of life with inanimate nature.

During a herborizing trip to Rinconada, we tried vainly to penetrate into the crevice. We wanted to closely study the rocks inside that seemed to cause those extraordinary fires. The thickness of the vegetation with its tangle of liana and thorny plants blocked the way Fortunately the inhabitants of the valley took an active part in our researches, not out of fear of a volcanic eruption, but because their imagination was struck by the idea that the Risco de Cuchivano contained a gold mine. They would not listen to our explanation that there could he no gold in secondary limestone; they wanted to know 'what the German miner thought about the richness of the vein' Since the times of Charles V and the government of the Welsers, the people of Terra Firma have retained a belief that Germans know all about exploiting mines. No matter where I was in South America, as soon as people knew where I had been born they brought me mineral samples. In the colonies all the French are doctors, and all Germans miners.

A dreadful accident almost made me put off my Orinoco journey, or postpone it for a long time. On the 27th of October, the night before the eclipse, we were strolling along the gulf shore as usual, to take some fresh air and observe high tide. Its highest point in this area was no more than 12 to 13 inches. It was eight at night and the breeze had not begun. The sky was overcast and during this dead calm it was extremely hot. We were crossing the beach that separates the landing-stage from the Guaiquerí Indian village. I heard somebody walking behind me; as I turned I saw a tall man, the color of a mulatto, and naked to the waist. Just above my head he was holding a macana, a huge stick made of palm-tree wood, enlarged at the end like a club. I avoided his blow by leaping to the left. Bonpland, walking at my right, was less lucky. He had noticed the mulatto later than I had; he received the blow above his temple and fell to the ground. We were alone, unarmed, some half a league from any houses, in a vast plain bordered by the sea. The mulatto, instead of attacking me, turned back slowly to grab Bonpland's hat, which had softened the blow and fallen far from us. Terrified at seeing my travelling companion on the ground and for a few seconds unconscious I was worried only about him. I helped him up; pain and anger doubled his strength. We made for the mulatto who, either due to that cowardice typical of his race or because he saw some men far off on the beach, rushed off into the tunal, a coppice of cacti and tree aviccenia. Luck had him fall as he was running, and Bonpland, who had reached him first, began fighting with him, exposing himself to great danger. The mulatto pulled out a long knife from his trousers, and in such an unequal fight we would surely have been wounded if some Basque merchants taking the fresh air on the beach had not come to our aid. Seeing himself surrounded the mulatto gave up all idea of defending himself: then he managed to escape again and we followed him for a long time through the thorny cacti until he threw himself exhausted into a cow shed from where he let himself be quietly led off to prison.