On the 14th of March we entered the Guaurabo river at one of Trinidad de Cuba's two ports, to put our pràctico, or pilot, who had steered us through the Jardinillos and run us aground, ashore. We also hoped to catch a correo marítimo (mail-boat) to Cartagena. Towards evening I landed and began to set up Borda's azimuth compass and the artificial horizon to observe the stars when a party of pulperos, or small traders, who had dined on board a foreign ship cheerfully invited us to accompany them into town. These good people asked us to mount two each to a horse; as it was excessively hot we accepted their offer. The road to Trinidad runs across a plain covered with vegetation where the miraguama, a silver-leafed palm tree, stands out. This fertile soil, although of tierra colorada, needs only to be tilled to yield rich harvests. After emerging from a forest we saw a curtain of hills whose southern slope was covered with houses. This is Trinidad, founded in 1514 on account of the 'rich gold mines' said to lie in the Armani river valley. The streets of Trinidad are all very steep and again show why people complain, as they do over all Spanish America, of how badly the conquistadores chose the sites of new towns.

The American languages have a structure so different from Latin that the Jesuits, who look carefully to anything that might favor a quick establishing of missions, introduced the richer Indian languages, especially Quechua and Guarani, instead of Spanish, to their converts because these languages were systematic and already widespread. They tried to substitute these poorer, coarser dialects with irregular constructions. They found this substitution easy; Indians from different tribes docilely learned them, and these languages became a medium of communication between missionary and Indian. Through these languages the Jesuits found it easier to link the various tribes until then separated from each other by language.