On the point of leaving we were surrounded by those inhabitants who called themselves whites and Spaniards. They begged us to ask the Angostura Government to let them return to the llanos, or at least to the Rio Negro missions. 'However serious our crimes, they said, 'we have expiated them after twenty years of hell in this swarm of mosquitoes. I pleaded their case in a report to the government on the industrial and commercial state of these countries.