Having given up hope of the mail-boat from Spain we boarded an American ship loaded with salt for Cuba. We had spent sixteen months on this coast and in the interior of Venezuela. On the 16th of November we left our Cumanà friends to cross the Gulf of Cariaco for Nueva Barcelona for the third time. The sea breeze was strong and after six hours we anchored off the Morro of Nueva Barcelona, where a ship was waiting to take us to Havana. (135)

Those who have not traveled the great rivers of tropical America, like the Orinoco or the Magdalena, cannot imagine how all day long, ceaselessly, you are tormented by mosquitoes that float in the air, and how this crowd of little animals can make huge stretches of land uninhabitable. However used to the pain you may become, without complaining; however much you try to observe the object you are studying, the mosquitoes, jejenes and zancudos will tear you away as they cover your head and hands, pricking you with their needle-like suckers through your clothes, and climbing into your nose and mouth, making you cough and sneeze whenever you try to talk. In the Orinoco missions the plaga de las moscas, or plague of mosquitoes, is an inexhaustible subject of conversation. When two people meet in the morning the first questions they ask each other are, 'Que le han parecido los zancudos de anoche? and 'Como estamos hoy de mosquitos? ('How were the zancudos last night? and 'How are we for mosquitoes today?').

According to my careful trigonometric calculations the Duida mountain rises 2, meters above the Esmeralda plain, some 2, meters, more or less, above sea-level. I say more or less because I had the bad luck to break my barometer before our arrival in Esmeralda. The rain had been so heavy that we could not protect this instrument from the damp and, with the unequal expansion of the wood, the tubes snapped. This accident especially annoyed me as no barometer had ever lasted so long on such a journey. The granite summit of the Duida falls so steeply that Indians have not managed to climb it. Though the mountains are not as high as people think, it is the highest point of the chain that stretches from the Orinoco to the Amazon.

All day, even when rowing, Indians continually slap each other hard with the palm of the hand to scare off mosquitoes. Brusque in all their movements they continue to slap each other mechanically while they sleep. At Maypures we saw young Indians sitting in a circle, cruelly scratching each other's back with bark dried by the fire. With that patience only known in the copper-colored race, some Indian women busied themselves by digging small lumps of coagulated blood from each bite with a sharp, pointed bone. One of the wildest Orinoco tribes, the Otomacs, use mosquito nets woven from fiber from the moriche palm. In villages on the Magdalena river Indians often invited us to lie down on oxhides near the church in the middle of the plaza grande where they had herded all the cattle, as the proximity of cattle gives you some respite from bites. When Indians saw that Bonpland was unable to prepare his plants because of the plague of mosquitoes they invited him into their 'ovens' (hornitos), as they call these small spaces without doors or windows, which they slide into on their bellies through a low opening. Thanks to a fire of greenwood, which gives off plenty of smoke, they expel all the insects and then block the 'oven' door. Bonpland, with a praiseworthy courage and patience, dried hundreds of plants shut up in these Indian hornitos.

The Tuy valley has its 'gold mine', as do nearly all the places near mountains inhabited by white Europeans. I was assured that in 1780 foreign gold seekers had been seen extracting gold nuggets and had set up a place for washing the sand. The overseer of a nearby plantation had followed their tracks and after his death a jacket with gold buttons was found among his belongings, which according to popular logic meant that they came from the gold seam, later covered by a rock fall. It was no use my saying that from simply looking at the ground, without opening up a deep gallery, I would not be able to decide if there once had been a mine there - I had to yield to my host's entreaties. For twenty years the overseer's jacket had been the talking-point of the area. Gold dug out from the ground has; in the people's eyes, a special lure unrelated to the diligent farmer harvesting a fertile land under a gentle climate.

San Fernando is infamous for its suffocating heat throughout most of the year. This western part of the llanos is the hottest because the air from all the arid steppes reaches here. During the rainy season the heat of the llanos increases considerably, especially in July when the sky is covered with cloud. The thermometer reached 39. in the shade.

Wedid not feel like prolonging our stay in Provence until the spring. Thecountryside, and especially the climate, were a delight, but the sight ofthe sea continuously reminded us of the failure of our plans. During a tripwe made to Hyères and Toulon we came across the frigate La Boudeuse, bound for Corsica, whichhad been under the command of Bougainville 5 during his world voyage. This famous navigator had been particularly kindto me during my stay in Paris while I prepared to join CaptainBaudin. I cannot describe the impression that this ship, which had carriedCommerson to the Pacific, had on me. There are moments in our lives whenpainful feelings mingle with our experiences.