We had as travelling companions a Frenchman, Dr Rieux from Carcassonne, and the young son of the ill-fated Nariìo. The bad luck of these two moved us, reminding us of the state of oppression in this unhappy country. Dr Rieux, a charming, educated man, had come from Europe as doctor to Viceroy Ezpeleta. He was accused of interfering in politics, dragged out of his house in Honda in 1794, clapped in irons and taken to the inquisition prison in Cartagena. This damp place caused him a chronic blindness. For more than a year his wife had no news of his whereabouts. His belongings were dispersed and, as nothing could be proved, he was sent (bajo partido de registro) to Càdiz prison where his case would be forgotten. He managed to escape off the African coast.

It was moving to see the beach where we had first arrived, and where Bonpland had nearly lost his life. Among the cacti stood the Guaiquerí Indian huts. Every part of the landscape was familiar to us, from the forest of cacti to the huts and the giant ceiba, which grew near where we had swum every evening. Our Cumanà friends came to meet the lancha; botanizing had enabled us to meet people from all social classes. They were relieved as there had been news that Bonpland had died of fever on the banks of the Orinoco, and that we had sunk in a storm near the Urana mission.

At nightfall we ordered our instruments to be disembarked; and to our relief none had been damaged. We hired a spacious and well-situated house for our astronomical observations. When the sea wind blew we enjoyed the cool air. The windows did not have glass panes, nor the paper squares that replace glass in most Cumana houses. All the passengers on the Pizarro left the ship, but those with the malignant fever recovered very slowly. Some were still terribly pale and emaciated after a month of illness, despite the care lavished on them by their compatriots. In the Spanish colonies the hospitality is such that a European who arrives without money or recommendations is almost sure to find help should he disembark sick in any port. Catalans, Galicians and Basques maintain an intense trade with America, where they form three distinct bodies, and exercise a great influence on the customs, industry and commerce of the colonies. The poorest inhabitant of Sitges or Vigo may be assured of being received in the house of a Catalan or Galician merchant (pulpero) (26) whether in Chile or Mexico or the Philippines. I have witnessed moving examples where strangers are looked after assiduously for years. Some may say that hospitality is no virtue in a land with such a magnificent climate, with plenty of food, and where indigenous plants supply efficient medicines, and a sick person finds necessary refuge in a hammock under a covering. But does not the arrival of a stranger in a family imply more work? Are not the proofs of disinterested sympathy, the spirit of sacrifice in the women, the patience that long convalescence requires, worthy of note? It has been observed that, with the exception of some populated cities, hospitality has not really decreased since the arrival of the Spanish settlers in the New World. It distresses me to think that this change will happen as the colonial population and industry progress rapidly, and that the state of society that we have agreed to call advanced civilization might banish 'the ancient Castilian frankness'.

In the Turbaco forest, full of palm trees, there is a clearing about 800 square feet in size without any vegetation, bordered by tufts of Bromelia kavatas, whose leaf is like a pineapple's. The surface of the ground was composed of layers of cracked grey-black clay. What they call volcancitos are fifteen to twenty small truncated cones rising in the middle of the clearing. They are some 3 to 4 toises high. The high edges are filled with water and they periodically release large air bubbles. I counted five explosions in two minutes. The force of the rising air makes you think of a powerful pressure deep in the earth. Indian children who came with us helped us block some of the smaller craters with clay, but : gas always pushed the earth away. According to the Indians the number and shape of the cones near the path had not changed for over twenty years, and they remain full of water even in droughts. The heat of the water was the same as that of the air. With long sticks we could reach some 6 to 7 feet down inside a cone. Leaving the water in a glass it became quite clear, and tasted slightly of alum.

On leaving Spain I had promised to join his expedition wherever I could reach it. Bonpland, as active and optimistic as usual, and I immediately decided to split our herbals into three lots to avoid the risk of losing what had taken so much trouble to collect on the banks of the Orinoco, Atabapo and Río Negro. We sent one collection by way of England to Germany, another via Càdiz to France, and the third we left in Havana. We had reason to congratulate ourselves on this prudence. Each collection contained virtually the same species; if the cases were taken by pirates there were instructions to send them to Sir Joseph Banks or to the natural history museum in Paris. Luckily I did not send my manuscripts to Càdiz with our friend and fellow traveler Father Juan Gonzalez, who left Cuba soon after us but whose vessel sank off Africa, with the loss of all life. We lost duplicates of our herbal collection, and all the insects Bonpland had gathered. For over two years we did not receive one letter from Europe; and those we got in the following three years never mentioned earlier letters. You may easily guess how nervous I was about sending a journal with my astronomical observations and barometrical measurements when I had not had the patience to make a copy. After visiting New Granada, Peru and Mexico I happened to be reading a scientific journal in the public library in Philadelphia and saw: 'M. de Humboldt's manuscripts have arrived at his brother's house in Paris via Spain. I could scarcely suppress an exclamation of joy.

The great earthquakes, which appear between long series of slight shocks, do not happen regularly at Cumana. We have seen them take place at intervals of eighty, a hundred and sometimes less than thirty years, while on the Peruvian coasts, for example at Lima, a certain regularity has marked the complete ruin of the city. The local belief in this uniformity has luckily aided public tranquillity and encouraged industry. Most admit that a long period of time elapses before the same causes act with the same energy. But such reasoning counts only if the shocks are considered as a local phenomenon, and if one supposes that great catastrophes are caused at one particular place. When new buildings are raised on the ruins of the old we learn from those who refuse to rebuild that the destruction of Lisbon on the 1st of November 1755 was soon followed by a second and no less fatal quake on the 31st of March 1761.

Another characteristic common to both the New Andalusian coast and Peru is the frequency of earthquakes and the limits nature seems to have prescribed for these phenomena. In Cumana we ourselves felt violent seismic shocks; they were still rebuilding the ruined houses and so we were able to gather detailed information on the spot about the terrible catastrophe of the 14th of December 1797. These notions will be the more interesting as earthquakes have been considered up to now less from a physical and geographical point of view than from the way they disastrously affect the population and well-being of society.