Over night the Orinoco had swollen and its faster current took us in ten hours the 13 leagues from the mouth of the Mataveni to the higher Maypures cataract, reminding us where we had camped coming up river. From the mouth of the Atabapo to that of the Apure we enjoyed travelling through a country in which we had long lived. We were just as squashed in the canoe and were stung by the same mosquitoes, but the certainty that in a few weeks our suffering would end kept our spirits up.

The most concentrated sap from the mavacure is not thick enough to stick on arrows. It is thus only to thicken the poison that another concentrated infusion of vegetable sap is added. This is an extremely sticky sap taken from a tree with long leaves called kiracaguero. As this tree grows a long way off, and at this period is without flowers or fruit like the bejuco de mavacure, we were not able to name it botanically. I have often spoken of the ill fate that prevents travelers from studying the most interesting plants. When you travel quickly you hardly see an eighth of the trees that offer the essential parts of their fructification, even in the Tropics where flowers last so long.

The rounded Turimiquiri summit and the sharp peaks, or cucuruchos, stand out, covered with jungle where many tigers live and are hunted for the beauty of their skin. We found that this grassy summit stood at 707 toises above sea-level. A steep rocky ridge going west is broken after a mile by an enormous crevice that descends to the Gulf of Cariaco. In the place where the mountain ridge should have continued two mamelons or calcereous peaks rise, with the more northern one the highest. It is the Cucurucho de Turimiquiri proper, considered to be higher than the Brigantín, well known to sailors approaching the Cumanà coast.

We spent part of the night on deck as the Indian pilot entertained us with stories about the plants and animals of his land. We learned with great satisfaction that a few leagues from the coast there was a mountain range, inhabited by the Spaniards, where it was quite cold, and that in the plains there were two kinds of very different crocodile (Crocodilus acutus and Crocodilus bava), as well as boas, electric eels (Gymnotus electricus, temblador) and various species of jaguar. Though the words bava, cachicamo and temblador were entirely unknown to us the naive descriptions of the forms and habits of the animals allowed us to identify them easily. Nothing excites a naturalist's curiosity more than marvelous tales of a country he is about to explore.

When one speaks in Europe of a Guianan Indian we imagine a man whose head and waist are decorated with beautiful macaw, toucan and hummingbird feathers. Our painters and sculptors have for a long time seen these ornaments as typical of the native Americans. We were surprised not to find, on any of the Orinoco and Casiquiare banks, these fine feathers that travelers so frequently reported from Cayenne and Demerara. Most of the Guianan Indians, even those with the most developed intellectual faculties, who cultivate food and weave with cotton, are naked and poor. Extreme heat and sweating make clothes unbearable.

We observed that fern trees are usually far rarer than palm trees. Nature has limited them to temperate, humid and shady places. They shun the direct rays of the sun and while the pumos, corypha of the steppes, and other American palms prefer the naked, burning plains these tree fern, which seen from afar look like palms, maintain the character and habits of cryptogams. They prefer solitary places, shade, humidity and damp. Sometimes you find them on the coast, but only when protected by thick shade.