Batabanò was then a poor village, and its church had only just been finished. The ciénega begins about half a league from the village, a marsh stretching about 60 leagues from west to east. At Batabanò it is thought that the sea is encroaching on the land. Nothing is sadder than these marshes. Not even a shrub breaks the monotony; a few stunted palm trees rise like broken masts among tufts of reeds. As we stayed only one night there I regretted not being able to investigate the two species of crocodile, or cocodrilo, infesting the ciénaga. One the locals call a cayman. The crocodile is said to be very daring, and even climbs into boats when it can. It often wanders a league inland just to devour pigs. It reaches some feet long, and even chases (so they say) men on horseback, while the caymans are so shy that people can bathe in the water when they are around.

South of the ravine, in the plain that stretches to the lake shore, another less hot and less gassy sulphurous spring gushes out. The thermometer reached only 42°C. The water collects in a basin surrounded by large trees. The unhappy slaves throw themselves in this pool at sunset, covered in dust after working in the indigo and sugar-cane fields. Despite the water being 52°C to 14°C warmer than the air the negroes call it refreshing. In the torrid zone this word is used for anything that restores your strength, calms nerves or produces a feeling of well-being. We also experienced the salutary effects of this bath. We had our hammocks slung in the trees shading this pond and spent a whole day in this place so rich in plants. Near this bãno de Mariara we found the volador or gyrocarpus. The winged fruits of this tree seem like flying beings when they separate from the stem. On shaking the branches of the volador, we saw the air filled with its fruits, all falling together. We sent some fruit to Europe, and they germinated in Berlin, Paris and Malmaison. The numerous plants of the volador, now seen in hothouses, owe their origin to the only tree of its kind found near Mariara.

In 1797 the San Fernando missionary had led his men to the banks of the Guaviare river on one of those hostile incursions banned both by religion and Spanish law. They found a Guahiba mother with three children in a hut, two of whom were not yet adults. They were busy preparing cassava flour. Resistance was impossible; their father had gone out fishing, so the mother tried to run off with children. She had just reached the savannah when the Indians, who hunt people the way whites hunt blacks in Africa, caught her. The mother and children were tied up and brought back to the river bank. The monks were waiting for this expedition to end, without suffering any of the dangers. Had the mother resisted the Indians would have killed her; anything is allowed in this hunting of souls (conquista espiritual), and it is especially children that are captured and treated as poitos or slaves in the Christian missions. They brought the prisoners to San Fernando, hoping that the mother would not find her way back by land to her home. Separated from those children who had gone fishing with their father the day she was kidnapped, this poor woman began to show signs of the deepest despair. She wanted to bring those children in the power of the missionaries back home, and several times ran off with them from the San Fernando village but the Indians hunted her down each time. After severely punishing her the missionary took the cruel decision of separating the mother from her two infants. She was led alone to a mission on the Río Negro, up the Atabapo river. Loosely tied up, she sat ill the bow of the boat. She had not been told where she was going; but she guessed by the sun's position that she was being taken away from her house and native land. She managed to break her bonds and jumped into the water and swam to the river bank. The current pushed her to a bank of rock, which is named after her today. She climbed up and walked into the jungle. But the head of the mission ordered his Indians to follow and capture her. She was again caught by the evening. She was stretched out on the rock (the Piedra de la Madre) where she was beaten with manatee whips. Her hands tied up behind her back with the strong cords of the mavacure, she was then dragged to the Javita mission and thrown into one of the inns called casas del rey. It was the rainy season and the night was very dark. Impenetrable forests separate the Javita and San Fernando missions some 25 leagues apart in a straight line. The only known route was by river. Nobody ever tried to go by land from one mission to another, even if only a few leagues away. But this did not prevent a mother separated from her children. Her children were at San Fernando so she had to find them, rescue them from Christians, and bring them back to their father on the Guaviare. The Guahiba woman was not closely supervised in the inn. As her hands were bloodied the Javita Indians had loosened her bindings. With her teeth she managed to break the cords, and she disappeared into the night. On the fourth day she was seen prowling round the hut where her children were being kept at the San Fernando mission. This woman had just carried out, added the monk telling us this sad story, 'something that the toughest Indian would not have even considered. She had crossed the jungle in a season when the sky is continuously covered with cloud, when the sun appears. only for a few minutes for days on end. Had she followed the flow of water? But flooding had forced her to walk far from the river, in the middle of jungles where the river is imperceptible. How many times must she have been blocked by thorny liana growing round trees! How many times must she have swum across streams! What on earth could this luckless woman have eaten during her four days' walk? She said that she had eaten only those large black ants called vachacos that climb up trees and hang resinous nests from branches. We pressed the missionary to tell us whether the Guahiba woman had finally enjoyed peace and happiness with her family. He did not want to satisfy our curiosity. But on our return from the Río Negro we learned that this Indian woman was not even left to recover from her wounds before she was again separated from her children, and sent to a mission on the Upper Orinoco. She died by refusing to eat food, as do all Indians when faced with great calamities. (112)

Contrary to geographers, the Indians of San Fernando claim that the Orinoco rises from two rivers, the Guaviare and the Paragua. This latter name they give to the Upper Orinoco. Following their hypothesis they say the Casiquiare is not a branch of the Orinoco, but of the Paragua. If you look at my map you will see these names are quite arbitrary. It does not matter if you do not call the Orinoco the Paragua as long as you trace the rivers as they actually are in nature and do not separate rivers that form part of the same river system with mountain chains. The Paragua, or that part of the Orinoco east of the mouth of the Guaviare, has clearer, purer, more transparent water than the part of the Orinoco below San Fernando. The waters of the Guaviare are white and turbid and have the same taste, according to the Indians whose sense organs are very delicate and well tested, as the Orinoco waters near the Great Cataracts. 'Give me water from three or four great rivers of this country, an old Indian from the Javita mission said, 'and I will tell you by tasting them where they come from; whether it is a white or black river, whether it is the Atabapo, Paragua or Guaviare. European geographers are wrong not to admit to seeing things as Indians do, for they are the geographers of their own country.

April 10th. We were unable to set sail until ten in the morning. It was hard to adapt to the new pirogue, which we saw as a new prison. To make it wider at the back of the boat we made branches into a kind of trellis, which stuck out on both sides. Unfortunately the leaf roof of this lattice-work was so low that you either had to lie down, and consequently saw nothing, or you had to stay hunched over. The need to transport pirogues across rapids, and even from one river to another, and the fear of giving too much hold to the wind by raising the toldo made this construction necessary for the little boats going up the Río Negro. The roof was designed for four people stretched Out on the deck or lattice-work, but your legs stuck far out, and when it rained half your body got wet. Worse still, you lie on oxhides or tiger skins, and the branches under the skins hurt you when you lie down. The front of the boat was filled with the Indian rowers, armed with 3-foot-long paddles in the form of spoons. They are all naked, sitting in twos, and row beautifully together. Their songs are sad and monotonous. The little cages with our birds and monkeys, increasing as we went on, were tied to the toldo and the prow. It was our travelling zoo. Despite losses due to accidents and sunstroke, we counted fourteen little animals when we came back from the Casiquiare. Every night when we established camp, our zoo and instruments occupied the middle; around them we hung our hammocks, then the Indians' hammocks and, outside, the fires we thought indispensable to scare off jaguars. At sunrise our caged monkeys answered the cries of the jungle monkeys.

The missionary led us into several ordered and extremely clean Indian huts. It was painful to see how Carib mothers forced their children from the earliest age to enlarge the calves of their legs, as well as mould their flesh in stripes from the ankle to the top of the thigh. Bands of leather or cotton are tied tightly 2 inches apart and pulled hard so that the muscles in between swell out. Our swaddled children suffer far less than the Carib children, who are meant to be closer to nature. The monks, ignorant of Rousseau's works (132) and even of his name, are unable to prevent this ancient physical education; man from the jungle, whom we believed to be so simple in customs, is far from docile when it comes to his dress and ideas about beauty and well-being. I was also surprised to see that the torture imposed on these children in no way hindered their blood circulation or their muscular movements. There is no tribe that is stronger or runs faster than the Caribs.

April 18th. We set off at three in the morning in order to reach the cataracts known as the Raudal de Guahibos before nightfall. We moored at the mouth of the Tomo river, and the Indians camped on the shore. At five in the afternoon we reached the raudal. It was extremely difficult to row against the current and the mass of water rushing over a bank several feet high. One Indian swam to a rock that divided the cataract in two, tied a rope to it, and began hauling our boat until, halfway up, we were able to get off with our instruments, dried plants and bare provisions. Surprisingly we found that above the natural wall over which the river fell there was a piece of dry land. Our position in the middle of the cataract was strange but without danger. Our companion, the missionary father, had one of his fever fits, and to relieve him we decided to make a refreshing drink. We had taken on board at Apures a mapire, or Indian basket, filled with sugar, lemons and grenadillas, or passion-fruit, which the Spaniards call parchas. As we had no bowl in which to mix the juices we poured river water into one of the holes in the rock with a tutuma, and then added the sugar and acid fruit juices. In a few seconds we had a wonderfully refreshing juice, almost a luxury in this wild spot, but necessity had made us more and more ingenious. After quenching our thirst we wanted to have a swim. Carefully examining the narrow rocky dyke on which we sat, we saw that it formed little coves where the water was clear and still. We had the pleasure of a quiet bathe in the midst of noisy cataracts and screaming Indians. I enter into such detail to remind those who plan to travel afar that at any moment in life pleasures can be found.