The proper herbaceous tobacco (for missionaries call niopo 'tree-tobacco') has been cultivated from time immemorial by all the Orinoco tribes: from the rime of the conquest smoking had spread to all the Americas. The Tamanacs and Maypures wrap their cigars in maize leaves, as the Mexicans had done when Cortes arrived. Imitating them, the Spaniards substituted maize leaf for paper. The poor Indians of the Orinoco jungles know as well as the great lords in Montezuma's Court that tobacco smoke is an excellent narcotic. They use it not only to take siestas but also to reach that quiet state they naively call 'a dream with your eyes open, or day-dream'.

I have shown that winged insects which live in society and whose suckers contain a liquid that irritates skin make vast territories virtually uninhabitable. Other insects, just as small, called termites (comején) create insuperable obstacles to the progress of civilization in several hot countries. They rapidly devour paper, cardboard and parchment, and thus destroy archives and libraries. Whole provinces of Spanish America do not have any document that dates back more than a hundred years.

We stayed another month at Cumanà. The river journey we intended to take up the Orinoco and the Rio Negro demanded all kinds of preparation. We had to choose the easiest instruments to carry on narrow canoes; we had to provide ourselves with the funds for a ten-month trip inland across a country without communications with the coast. As astronomic determination of places was the main aim of our undertaking I did not want to miss the solar eclipse that would be visible at the end of October. I chose to wait until then in Cumanà where the sky is usually beautiful and clear. It was too late to reach the Orinoco river banks, and the high Caracas valley offered less favorable chances due to the mists that gather round the neighboring mountains. Having precisely fixed the Cumanà longitude I had a starting-point for my chronometric determinations, the only ones I could count on when usually I did not remain long enough to take lunar distances or to observe Jupiter's satellites.

After dividing all that belongs to astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of New Spain, and the history of the ancient civilizations of certain New World nations into separate works, many general results and local descriptions remained left over, which I could still collect into separate treatises. I had prepared several during my journey; on races in South America; on the Orinoco missions; on what hinders civilization in the torrid zone, from the climate to the vegetation; the landscape of the Andes compared to the Swiss Alps; analogies between the rocks of the two continents; the air in the equinoctial regions, etc. I had left Europe with the firm decision not to write what is usually called the historical narrative of a journey, but just to publish the results of my researches. I had arranged the facts not as they presented themselves individually but in their relationships to each other. Surrounded by such powerful nature, and all the things seen every day, the traveler feels no inclination to record in a journal all the ordinary details of life that happen to him.

On the 14th of September we descended the Cocollar towards the San Antonio mission. The road passes at first through savannahs strewn with huge calcareous blocks, and then enters a thick jungle. Having crossed two steep passes we saw before us a pretty valley, some 5 to 6 leagues long from east to west. Here lie the San Antonio and Guanaguana missions. The first is famous for its little brick church, with two towers and Doric columns, in a tolerable style. The prefect of the Capuchins finished building it in less than two summers, despite using only Indians from his village. The moulding of the capitals on the columns, the cornices and the frieze, decorated with suns and arabesques, were all modeled from clay mixed with ground brick. The provincial governor disapproved of such luxury in a mission and the church remained unfinished, much to the regret of the fathers. The Indians in San Antonio did not complain at all, indeed they secretly approved the governor's decision, as it favored their natural laziness.

In the mountainous regions we have just crossed, Indians form half the population of the provinces of Cumanà and New Barcelona. Their number can be calculated at some 60,000, of which some 24, live in New Andalusia. The Indians of Cumanà do not all live in the mission villages. Some are dispersed around the cities, along the coasts, attracted by fishing, and some in the small farms on the llanos or plains. Some 15, Indians, all belonging to the Chaima tribe, live in the Aragonese Capuchin missions we visited. However, their villages are not as densely populated as in New Barcelona province. Their average population is only 500 to 600, while more to the west, in the Franciscan missions of Piritu, there are Indian villages with up to 3, inhabitants. If I calculated the Indian population in the provinces of Cumanà and New Barcelona to be some 60, I included only those living on Terra Firma, not the Guaiquerí on Margarita Island, nor the great number of independent Guaraunos living in the Orinoco delta islands. Their number is estimated, perhaps exaggeratedly, at some 6, to 8,000. Apart from Guaraunos families seen now and then in the marshes (Los Morichales), which are covered with moriche palms, for the last thirty years there have been no wild Indians living in New Andalusia.

The result of my labors have long since been published. My map of the Magdalena river appeared in 1816. Till then no traveler had ever described New Granada, and the public, except in Spain, knew how to navigate the Magdalena only from some lines traced by Bouguer. (142) Travel books have multiplied, and political events have drawn travelers to countries with free institutions who publish their journals too hurriedly on returning to Europe. They have described the towns they visited and stayed in, as well as the beautiful landscape; they give information about the people, the means of travel in boat, on mule or on men's backs. Though these works have familiarized the Old World with Spanish America, the absence of a proper knowledge of Spanish and the little care taken to establish the names of rivers, places and tribes have led to extraordinary mistakes. (143)