Although the captain of the Pizarro had orders to remain long enough at Tenerife to allow us to climb the peak, snow permitting, he let us know that the English ships' blockade meant that we could not count on a stay of more than four or five days. So we hurried to the port of Orotova on the western slope of the volcano where we hoped to find guides. Nobody in Santa Cruz had ever climbed to the summit of the mountain.

In the Orinoco the curare made from the raiz (root) is differentiated from that made from the bejuco (the liana or bark from branches). We saw only the latter prepared; the former is weaker and less sought after. On the Amazon we learned to identify poisons made by the Tikuna, Yagua, Pevas and Jibaros tribes, which, coming from the same plant, differ only due to more or less care spent in their elaboration. The Tikuna poison, made famous in Europe by M. de la Condamine, and which is becoming known as tikuna, is taken from a liana that grows on the Upper Maranon. This poison is partly due to the Tikuna Indians, who have remained independent in Spanish territory, and partly to Indians of the same tribe in missions. As poisons are indispensable to hunters in this climate, the Orinoco and Amazon missionaries have not interfered with their production. The poisons just named are completely different from those made by the Peca, the Lamas and Moyobambas. I convey such details because the fragments of plants that we examined have proved (contrary to common opinion) that the three poisons of the Tikuna, Peca and Moyobambas do not come from the same species, not even the same family. just as curare is simple in its composition, so the fabrication of the Moyobamba poison is long and complicated. You mix the sap of the bejuco de ambihuasca, the main ingredient, with pepper (capsicum), tobacco, barbasco (Jacquinia armillaris), sanango (Tabernae montana) and the milk of some apocyneae. The fresh sap of the ambihuasca is poisonous if it touches blood; the sap of the mavacure is deadly only when it is concentrated by heating, and boiling eliminates the poison from the root of the Jatropha manihot (Yucca amarca). When I rubbed the liana, which gives the cruel poison of the Peca, for a long time between my fingers on a very hot day, my hands became numb.

The Indian pilot who had led us from San Fernando de Apure up to the Pararuma beach did not know his way through the Orinoco rapids, and no longer wanted to sail our boat. We had to accept his decision. Luckily the Carichana missionary agreed to loan us a fine pirogue quite cheaply. Father Bernardo Zea, missionary from Atures and Maypures near the Great Cataracts, even offered to accompany us himself to the Brazilian border. The number of Indians willing to carry the canoes along the cataracts was so few that without this monk's presence we risked waiting weeks in that humid and unhealthy area. Father Zea hoped to recover his health by visiting the Río Negro missions. He talked of those places with the enthusiasm that all those in the colonies feel when talking about far-off places.