As we approached La Laguna the air cooled. This sensation delighted us as we found the air in Santa Cruz asphyxiating. As we tend to feel disagreeable sensations more strongly, we felt the change in temperature more as we returned from La Laguna to the port, as if we were approaching the mouth of a furnace.

Only those who have seen the quantity of ants that infest the countries of the torrid zone can picture the destruction and the sinking of the ground caused by these insects. They abound to such a degree in Valencia that their excavations resemble underground canals, which flood with water during the rains and threaten buildings. Here they have not used the extraordinary means employed by the monks on the island of Santo Domingo when troops of ants ravaged the fine plains of La Vega. The monks, after trying to burn the ant larvae and fumigate the nests, told the inhabitants to choose a saint by lot who would act as an Abogado contra las Hormigas. The choice fell on Saint Saturnin, and the ants disappeared as soon as the saint's festival was celebrated.

We prolonged our stay in Cartagena as long as our work and my comparisons with Fidalgo's astronomical observations demanded. The company of this excellent sailor and Pombo and Don Ignacio Cavero (once Secretary to Viceroy Gòngora) taught us a lot about statistics. I often quoted Pombo's notes about trade in quinquina and the state of the province of Cartagena's population and agriculture. We also came across a curious collection of drawings, machine models and minerals from New Granada in an artillery officer's house. The Pascua (Easter) processions enabled us to see how civilized the customs of the lower classes are. The temporary altars are decorated with thousands of flowers, including the shiny Plumeria alto and Plumeria rubra. Nothing can be compared with the strangeness of those who took the main parts in the procession. Beggars with crowns of thorns asked for alms, with crucifixes in their hands. They were covered in black cloth and went from house to house having paid the priest a few piastres for the right to collect. Pilate was dressed in a suit of striped silk; the apostles sitting round a long table laid with sweet foods were carried on the shoulders of zambos. At sunset you saw dummies of Jews dressed as Frenchmen, filled with straw and rockets, hanging from strings like our own street lights. People waited for the moment when these judíos (Jews) would be set on fire. They complained that this year the Jews did not burn as well as they had in others because it was so damp. These 'holy recreations' (the name given to this barbarous spectacle) in no way improves manners.

Only after Diamante do you enter territory inhabited by tigers, crocodiles and chiguires, a large species of Linnaeus's genus Cavia (capybara). We saw flocks of birds pressed against each other flash across the sky like a black cloud changing shape all the time. The river slowly grew wider. One of the banks is usually arid and sandy due to flooding. The other is higher, covered with full-grown trees. Sometimes the river is lined with jungle on both sides and becomes a straight canal some 150 toises wide. The arrangement of the trees is remarkable. First you see the sauso shrubs (Hermesia castaneifolia), a hedge some 4 feet high as if cut by man. Behind this hedge a brushwood of cedar, Brazil-wood and gayac. Palms are rare; you see only scattered trunks of corozo and thorny piritu. The large quadrupeds of these regions, tigers, tapirs and peccaries, have opened passages in the sauso hedge. They appear through these gaps to drink water. They are not frightened of the canoes, so we see them skirting the river until they disappear into the jungle through a gap in the hedge. I confess that these often repeated scenes greatly appeal to me. The pleasure comes not solely from the curiosity a naturalist feels for the objects of his studies, but also to a feeling common to all men brought up in the customs of civilization. You find yourself in a new world, in a wild, untamed nature. Sometimes it is a jaguar, the beautiful American panther, on the banks; sometimes it is the hocco (Crax alector) with its black feathers and tufted head, slowly strolling along the sauso hedge. All kinds of animals appear, one after the other. 'Es como en el paradiso' ('It is like paradise') our old Indian pilot said. Everything here reminds you of that state of the ancient world revealed in venerable traditions about the innocence and happiness of all people; but when carefully observing the relationships between the animals you see how they avoid and fear each other. The golden age has ended. In this paradise of American jungles, as everywhere else, a long, sad experience has taught all living beings that gentleness is rarely linked to might.

Days passed quickly in the Capuchin convent in the Caripe mountains, despite our simple but monotonous life. From sunrise to sunset we toured the forests and mountains near by looking for plants, and have never collected so many. When the heavy rain stopped us travelling far we visited Indian huts and the communal conuco, or attended the nightly meetings when the alcaldes handed out the work for the following day. We did not return to the convent until bells called us for meals in the refectory with the monks. At dawn we sometimes accompanied them to the church to attend doctrina, that is, religious classes for Indians. It was hard explaining dogma to people who hardly knew Spanish. The monks are almost completely ignorant of the Chaima Indian language, and the resemblance of sounds between the languages muddles the poor Indians so that strange ideas arise. One day we witnessed a missionary struggling to explain to his class that invierno, winter, and infierno, hell, were not the same thing, but as different as hot and cold. The Chaima Indians know winter only as the rainy season, and imagine that 'the white's hell' is a place where the evil are exposed to horrific rainstorms. The missionary lost his temper, but it was useless; the first impression caused by the almost identical words persisted; in the Indians' minds the images of rain and hell could not be separated.

May 10th. Overnight our canoe was loaded and we set off a little before dawn to go up the Río Negro to the mouth of the Casiquiare and begin our researches on the true course of this river linking the Orinoco and Amazon. The morning was beautiful, but as the heat rose the sky began to cloud over. The air is so saturated with water in these forests that water bubbles become visible at the slightest increase of evaporation on the earth's surface. As there is no breeze the humid strata are not replaced and renewed by drier air. This clouded sky made us gloomier and gloomier. Through this humidity Bonpland -lost the plants he had collected; for my part I feared finding the same Río Negro mists in the Casiquiare valley. For more than half a century nobody in the missions has doubted the existence of communications between the two great river systems: the important aim of our journey was reduced to fixing the course of the Casiquiare by astronomic means, especially at its point of entry into the Río Negro, and its bifurcation with the Orinoco. Without sun or stars this aim would have been frustrated, and we would have been uselessly exposed to long, weary deprivation. Our travelling companions wanted to return by the shortest journey, along the Pimichín and its small rivers; but Bonpland preferred, like myself, to persist in the original plan we had traced out while crossing the Great Cataracts. We had already traveled by canoe from San Fernando de Apure to San Carlos along the Apure, Orinoco, Atabapo, Temi, Tuamini and Río Negro for over 180 leagues. In entering the Orinoco by the Casiquiare we still had some 320 leagues to cover from San Carlos to Angostura. It would have been a shame to let ourselves be discouraged by the fear of a cloudy sky and the Casiquiare mosquitoes. Our Indian pilot, who had recently visited Mandavaca, promised us sun and 'those great stars that eat up clouds' once we had left the black waters of the Guaviare. So we managed to carry out our first plan and returned to San Fernando along the Casiquiare. Luckily for our researches the Indian's prediction was fulfilled. The white waters brought us a clear sky, stars, mosquitoes and crocodiles.

At midday we stopped at a deserted spot called Algodonal. I left my companions while they beached the boat and prepared the meal. I walked along the beach to observe a group of crocodiles asleep in the sun, their tails, covered with broad scaly plates, resting on each other. Small herons, as white as snow, walked on their hacks, even on their heads, as if they were tree trunks. The crocodiles were grey- green, their bodies were half covered in dried mud. From their color and immobility they looked like bronze statues. However, my stroll almost cost me my life. I had been constantly looking towards the river, and then, on seeing a flash of mica in the sand, I also spotted fresh jaguar tracks, easily recognizable by their shape. The animal had gone off into the jungle, and as I looked in that direction I saw it lying down under the thick foliage of a ceiba, eighty steps away from me. Never has a tiger seemed so enormous.