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.

They grow banana and cassava, but not maize. Like the majority of Orinoco Indians, those in Maypures also make drinks that could be called nutritious. A famous one in the country is made from a palm called the seje, which grows wild in the vicinity. I estimated the number of flowers on one cluster at 44, the fruit that fall without ripening amount to 8,000. These fruit are little fleshy drupes. They are thrown into boiling water for a few minutes to separate the pulp, which has a sweet taste, from the skin, and are then pounded and bruised in a large vessel filled with water. Taken cold, the infusion is yellowish and tastes like almond milk. Sometimes papelòn (unrefined sugar) or sugar cane is added. The missionary said that the Indians become visibly fatter during the two or three months when they drink this seje or dip their cassava cakes in it. The piaches, or Indian shamans, go into the jungle and sound the botuto (the sacred trumpet) under seje palm trees 'to force the tree to give a good harvest the following year'.

On the morning of the 27th of February we visited the hot springs of La Trinchera, 3 leagues from Valencia. They flow more fully than any we had seen until then, forming a rivulet, which in the dry season maintains a depth of some 2 feet 8 inches of water. The carefully taken water temperature was 90.3°C. We had breakfast near the spring: our eggs were cooked in less than four minutes in the hot water. The rock from which the spring gushes is of real coarse-grained granite. Whenever the water evaporates in the air, it forms sediments and incrustations of carbonate of lime. The exuberance of the vegetation around the basin surprised us. Mimosas with delicate pinnate leaves, clusias and figs send their roots into the muddy ground, which is as hot as 85°C. Two currents flow down on parallel courses, and the Indians showed us how to prepare a bath of whatever temperature you want by opening a hole in the ground between the two streams. The sick, who come to La Trinchera to take steam baths, build a kind of framework with branches and thin reeds above the spring. They lie down naked on this frame, which, as far as I could see, was not very strong, perhaps even dangerous.

In America, from the Eskimos to the Orinoco banks, from the burning plains to the icy Strait of Magellan, mother tongues, quite different in terms of their roots, share the same physiognomy. We recognize striking analogies in grammatical structure, not only in the more learned languages like that of the Incas, the Aymara, the Guaranu, Cora and Mexican, but also in the more primitive ones. It is thanks to this structural analogy rather than words in common that the mission Indian learns another American language more easily than a metropolitan one. In the Orinoco jungle I have met the dullest Indians who speak two or three languages.

In two days we went down the Orinoco from Carichana to the Uruana mission, again passing the famous Baraguan Strait. The Uruana mission is situated in a very picturesque place. The little Indian village backs on to a high granite mountain. Rocks rise like pillars above the highest jungle trees. Nowhere else is the Orinoco more majestic than when viewed from Father Ramon Bueno's missionary hut. It is more than 2, toises wide and runs in a straight line east like a canal. The mission is inhabited by Otomacs, a barbaric tribe who offered us an extraordinary physiological phenomenon. The Otomacs eat earth; every day for several months they swallow quantities of earth to appease their hunger without any ill effect on their health. This verifiable fact has become, since my return to Europe, the object of lively disputes. Though we could stay only one day in Uruana it was sufficient to find out how the poya (balls of earth) are prepared, to examine the reserves of this the Indians keep, and how much is eaten in twenty-four hours. I also found traces of this perverse appetite among the Guamos, between the Meta and the Apure. Everybody speaks of earth eating or geophagie as anciently known. I shall limit myself to what I saw and heard from the missionary, doomed to twelve years among this wild, unruly Otomac tribe.

Guanaguana still does not have a church. The old priest, who had lived for more than thirty years in the American jungles, pointed out that the community's money, meaning the product of the Indians' work, should first be spent on building the missionary house; secondly on building a church; and lastly on their clothes. He seriously insisted that this order could not be altered on any account. The Indians can wait their turn as they prefer walking around completely naked to wearing the scantiest clothes. The spacious padre's house had just been finished and we noted with surprise that the terraced roof was decorated with a great number of chimneys that looked like turrets. Our host told us that this was done to remind him of his Aragonese winters, despite the tropical heat. The Guanaguana Indians grow cotton for themselves, the church and the missionary. The produce is supposed to belong to the community; it is with this communal money that the needs of the priest and altar are looked after. They have simple machines that separate the seed from the plant. Wooden cylinders of tiny diameter between which the cotton passes are activated, like a spinning-wheel, by pedals. However, these primitive machines are very useful and other missions are beginning to imitate them. But here, as in all places where nature's fertility hinders the development of industry, only a few hectares are converted into cultivated land, and nobody thinks of changing that cultivation into one of alimentary plants. Famine is felt each time the maize harvest is lost to a long drought. The Guanaguana Indians told us an amazing story that happened the year before when they went off with their women and children and spent three months al monte, that is, wandering about in the neighboring jungle and living off juicy plants, palm cabbages, fern roots and wild fruit. They did not speak of this nomadic state as one of deprivation. Only the missionary lost out because his village was left completely abandoned, and the community members, when they returned from the woods, appeared to be less docile than before.

The epidemic on board the Pizarro spread rapidly as soon as we neared the coast of Terra Firma. By night the thermometer regularly marked 22'C or 23'C, by day it rose to 24'C and 27'C. Congestion in the head, extreme dryness of skin and the failing of all strength became alarming symptoms but, having reached the end of the voyage, we flattered ourselves that the sick would recover their health as soon as we landed them on Margarita Island or at Cumana harbor, both known for their salubrity.