It was already dark when we crossed the Orinoco bed for the last time. We meant to spend the night near the small San Rafael fort and begin the journey across the Venezuelan steppes at dawn. Nearly six weeks had passed since our arrival at Angostura, we dearly wanted to reach the Cumanà or Nueva Barcelona coasts to find a boat to take us to Cuba and then on to Mexico. After several months on mosquito-infested rivers in small canoes, a long sea journey excited our imaginations.

The Indian pilot led us across his garden, which seemed more a copse than cultivated land. As proof of the land's fertility he showed us a silk-cotton tree (Bombax heptaphyllum) whose trunk measured nearly 2. feet in diameter after only four years' growth. However, I think the Indian's estimate of the tree's age was somewhat exaggerated. Still on the Cumana beach, in the Guaiqueri's garden, we saw for the first time a guama (Inga spuria) loaded with flowers, remarkable for the length and silvery brilliance of their numerous stamen. We passed the neatly arranged streets of the Indian quarters, bordered with small new houses of attractive design This part of the town has just been rebuilt after the earthquake a year and a half before our arrival that destroyed Cumana. Hardly had we crossed the wooden bridge over the Manzanares river, full of bavas or small crocodiles, than we saw traces of that terrible catastrophe everywhere; new buildings rose over the ruins of the old.

During our stay at Cura we made numerous excursions to the rocky islands in the middle of Lake Valencia, to the hot springs at Mariara, and the high mountain called El Cucurucho de Coco. A narrow, dangerous path leads to the port of Turiamo and the famous coastal cacao plantations. Throughout all our excursions we were surprised not only by the progress of culture but also by the increase in the numbers of the free, hard-working population, used to manual work and too poor to buy slaves. Everywhere whites and mulattos had bought small isolated farms. Our host, whose father enjoyed an income of 40, piastres a year, had more land than he could farm; he distributed plots in the Aragua valley to poor families who wanted to grow cotton. He tried to surround his enormous plantation with free working men, because they wanted to work for themselves, or for others. Count Tovar was busy trying to abolish slavery and hoped to make slaves less necessary for the important estates, and to offer the freed slaves land to become farmers themselves. When he left for Europe he had broken up and rented land around Cura. Four years later, on returning to America, he found fine cotton fields and a little village called Punta Samuro, which we often visited with him. The inhabitants are all mulatto, zambo (80) and freed slaves. The rent is ten piastres a fanega of land; it is paid in cash or cotton. As the small farmers are often in need, they sell their cotton at modest prices. They sell it even before harvest, and this advance is used by the rich landowners to make the poor dependent on them as day workers. The price of labor is less than it is in France. A free man is paid five piastres a month without food, which costs very little as meat and vegetables are abundant. I like quoting these details about colonial agriculture because they prove to Europeans that there is no doubt that sugar, cotton and indigo can be produced by free men, and that the miserable slaves can become peasants, farmers and landowners.

We walked round the island with the missionary and a pulpero who boasted that he had been visiting the Indians' camp and the pesca de tortugas for over ten years. People come to this part of the Orinoco in the same way we visit fairs in Frankfurt or Beaucaire. We were on a plain of perfectly smooth sand. 'As far as the eye can see, they told us, 'a layer of sand covers the turtle eggs. The missionary had a long pole in his hand. He showed us that by sounding with this pole (vara) he could determine the depth of the stratum of eggs in the same way a miner discovers the limits of a bed of marl, bog iron or coal. By thrusting the pole perpendicularly into the sand he immediately feels, by the lack of resistance, that he has penetrated into the cavity hiding the eggs. We saw that the stratum is generally spread with such uniformity that the pole finds it everywhere in a radius of 10 toises around any given spot. People speak of 'square poles of eggs'; it is like a minefield divided into regularly exploited lots. The stratum of eggs is far from covering the whole island; it is no longer found where land rises abruptly because the turtles cannot climb to these plateaux. I reminded my guides that Father Gumilla's vivid descriptions assured us that the Orinoco beaches have less grains of sand than turtles, and that they were so numerous that if men and tigers did not annually kill thousands of them the turtles would stop boats sailing upstream. 'Son cuentos de frailes, the pulpero from Angostura whispered; for the only travelers in these lands are poor missionaries and what one calls monks' tales here are what in Europe would be called travelers' tales.

Our pilot had tied up the pirogue at the Playa de Huevos to buy provisions as our stores were running out. We found fresh meat, Angostura rice and even biscuits made of wheat. Our Indians filled the boat with live young turtles and sun-dried eggs for their own use. After saying good-bye to the missionary who had been so friendly to us we continued our journey upstream. There was a fresh wind that turned into squalls. Since we had entered the mountainous part of the country we had begun to notice that our boat sailed poorly, but the pilot wanted to show the Indians gathered on the bank that by sailing close to the wind he could reach the middle of the stream without tacking. Just as he was boasting of his skill and the daring of his maneuver the wind gusted against the sail with such violence that we nearly sank. One of the boat's sides was submerged. Water poured in so suddenly that we were soon knee-deep in water. It washed over a table I was writing on in the stern. I just managed to rescue my diary, and then saw our books, dried plants and papers floating away. Bonpland was sleeping in the middle of the boat. Woken by the flooding water and the shrieking Indian he immediately took control of the situation with that coolness which he always showed in danger. (96) As one side of the boat rose up out of the water he did not think the boat would sink. He thought that if we had to abandon boat we could swim ashore as there were no crocodiles about. Then the ropes holding the sails broke, and the same gust of wind that almost sank us now helped us recover. We baled the water out with gourds, mended the sail, and' in less than half an hour we were able to continue our journey. When we criticized our pilot for having sailed too close to the wind he resorted to that typical Indian phlegmatic attitude: 'that the whites would find plenty of sun on the beaches to dry their papers'. We had lost only one book overboard - the first volume of Schreber's Genera plantarum. Such losses are particularly painful when you are able to take so few scientific books.

We saw the Indians dancing. These dances are all the more monotonous as women do not dare take part. The men, both young and old, hold hands, form a circle, and for hours turn around to the right, then the left, in utter silence. Usually the dancers themselves are the musicians. Weak notes blown from reeds of different sizes make it all seem slow and sad. To mark the time the leading dancer bends both knees rhythmically. The reeds are tied together in rows. We were surprised to see how quickly young Indians could cut reeds and tune them as flutes when they found them on the banks.

It is difficult to give an idea of the dreadful noise made by thousands of these birds in the darkness of the cave. It cannot be compared to the noise of those crows who live together in nests in our northern pine forests. The guàcharo's piercing scream reverberates against the rocky vault and echoes in the depths of the cave. The Indians showed us their nests by tying torches on to long poles. They were some 50 to 60 feet above us in holes riddling the ceiling in the form of funnels. The further we penetrated into the cave with our copal torches the more the frightened birds screamed. If for a few moments the din around us quietened we heard the plaintive cry of other nesting birds in other parts of the cave. It was as if differing groups answered each other alternatively.