The ground of the island rises to form an amphitheatre and, as in Peru and Mexico, contains in miniature all the possible climates, from African heat to alpine cold. (14) The mean temperatures of Santa Cruz, the port of Orotava, Orotava itself and La Laguna form a descending series. In southern Europe the change of seasons is too strongly felt to offer the same advantages. Tenerife on the other hand, on the threshold of the Tropics and a few days' journey from Spain, benefits from a good part of what nature has lavished in the Tropics. Its flora include the beautiful and imposing bananas and palms. He who is able to feel nature's beauty finds in this precious island a far more effective remedy than the climate. Nowhere else in the world seems more appropriate to dissipate melancholy and restore peace to troubled minds than Tenerife and Madeira. These effects are due not only to the magnificent situation and to the purity of air, but above all to the absence of slavery, which so deeply revolts us in all those places where Europeans have brought what they call their 'enlightenment and their 'commerce' to their colonies

Among the Indians gathered at Pararuma we found some whites who had come from Angostura to buy turtle butter. After wearying us with their complaints about the 'poor harvest' and about the harm done by the jaguars as the turtles laid their eggs, they led us under an ajupa raised in the middle of the Indian camp. There we found the missionary monks from Carichana and the cataracts sitting on the ground playing cards and smoking tobacco in long pipes. These poor priests received us in a very friendly manner. They had been suffering from tertiary fever for months. Pale and emaciated, they had no trouble convincing us that the countries we were about to visit were dangerous for our health.

Caracas is the capital of a country almost twice the size of Peru and only a little smaller than Nueva Granada (Colombia). This country is officially called in Spanish the Capitanía-General de Caracas or the Capitanía-General de las Provincias de Venezuela, and has nearly a million inhabitants, of whom some 60, are slaves. The copper-colored natives, the indios, form a large part of the population only where Spaniards found complex urban societies already established. In the Capitanía-General the rural Indian population in the cultivated areas outside the missions is insignificant. In 1800 I calculated that the Indian population was about 90,000, which is one ninth of the total population, while in Mexico it rose to almost 50 per cent.

The cave, known by the Indians as a 'mine of fat', is not in the Caripe valley itself, but some 3 leagues to the west-south-west. On the 18th of September we set out for that sierra, accompanied by the alcaldes and the majority of the monks. A narrow path led us first for an hour and a half south through an attractive plain covered with beautiful grass; then we turned west and ascended a rivulet that issues from the cave mouth. We followed this for three quarters of an hour, sometimes walking in the shallow water, or between the water and the rocky walls on very slippery and muddy ground. Many earthfalls and uprooted tree trunks, over which the mules labored, and creeping plants made this stretch very tiring. We were surprised to find here, at barely 500 toises above sea-level, the cruciferous plant Raphanus pinnatus.

An alley of avocado trees led us to the Aragonese Capuchins' hospice. We stopped in front of a Brazil-wood cross, surrounded with benches on which the sick monks sit and say their rosaries, in the middle of a spacious square. The convent backs on to an enormous perpendicular wall of rock, covered with thick vegetation. Dazzling white stone appears every now and then through the foliage. It would be hard to imagine a more picturesque place. Instead of European beeches and maples you find here the imposing ceiba trees and the praga and irasse palms. Numerous springs bubble out from the mountainsides that encircle the Caripe basin and whose southern slopes rise to some 1, feet in height. These springs issue mainly from crevices or narrow gorges. The humidity they bring favors the growth of huge trees, and the Indians, who prefer solitary places, set up their conucos along these ravines. Banana and papaw trees grow around groves of arborescent ferns. This mixture of wild and cultivated plants gives a special charm to this place. From afar, on the naked mountainside, you can pick out the springs by the thick tangles of vegetation, which at first seem to hang from the rock, and then, as they descend into the valley, follow the meandering streams.

The mission of San Antonio was usually named after its Indian founder Javita. This captain, Javita, was still living when we arrived at the Río Negro. He was an Indian with a lively mind and body, and spoke Spanish with great ease. As he accompanied us on all our herborizations we obtained very useful information directly from him. In his youth he had seen all the Indian tribes of the region eat human flesh, and the Daricavanos, Puchirinavis and Manitibitanos seemed to him to be the greatest cannibals. (113) He believed that cannibalism was the effect of a system of vengeance; they only eat enemies captured in battle. It was very rare for an Indian to eat a close relation like a wife or an unfaithful mistress.

We crossed some violent rapids before reaching the Mandavaca mission. The village, also called Quirabuena, has only sixty inhabitants. Most of these Christian settlements are in such a deplorable condition that over a stretch of 50 leagues we counted barely 200 people. The river banks were more populated before the arrival of the missionaries. The Indians retreated into the jungle towards the east as the plains on the west are uninhabited. They live for part of the year off the large ants I have already described. In Mandavaca we met a good missionary who had spent 'over twenty years of mosquitoes in the Casiquiare jungles' and whose legs were so spotted by mosquito bites that you could hardly see he was a white. He spoke of his isolation, and the sad necessity that forced him to witness how the most atrocious crimes went unpunished. In Vasiva a few years before an Indian chief had eaten one of his wives after taking her from her conuco and fattening her up with plenty of food. If the Guiana Indians eat human flesh it is not because of privations, or during rituals, but out of vengeance after a victory or, as the missionaries say, 'out of their perverted greed'. Victory over an enemy horde is celebrated with a feast where parts of prisoners' corpses are eaten. During the night an enemy family is attacked, or an enemy found by chance in the jungle is killed by a poisoned arrow. The corpse is cut up and brought home like a trophy. Civilization has led man to sense the unity of the human race, the bonds that link him to customs and languages which he does not know. Wild Indians hate all those who do not belong to their tribe or family. Indians who are at war with a neighboring tribe hunt them as we would animals in the wood. When they see unknown jungle Indians arrive at their mission they say: 'They must be related to us as we understand what they say. They recognize only their own family: a tribe is but a reunion of relations. They recognize family and kin ties, but not those of humanity in general. No feelings of compassion prevent them from killing women or children of an enemy tribe. These latter are their favorite food after a skirmish or ambush.