From a distance Villa de la Orotava pleases because of the many streams running down the main streets. The Agua Mansa spring, trapped in two large reservoirs, turns several mills and is then released in the nearby vineyards. The climate in the town is even more refreshing than in the port as a strong wind always blows from ten in the morning onwards. Because of the altitude water evaporates in the air and frequently precipitates to make the climate misty. The town lies 160 toises above sea-level; which is 200 toises lower than La Laguna; it was noted that plants flower a month later here.

After dividing all that belongs to astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of New Spain, and the history of the ancient civilizations of certain New World nations into separate works, many general results and local descriptions remained left over, which I could still collect into separate treatises. I had prepared several during my journey; on races in South America; on the Orinoco missions; on what hinders civilization in the torrid zone, from the climate to the vegetation; the landscape of the Andes compared to the Swiss Alps; analogies between the rocks of the two continents; the air in the equinoctial regions, etc. I had left Europe with the firm decision not to write what is usually called the historical narrative of a journey, but just to publish the results of my researches. I had arranged the facts not as they presented themselves individually but in their relationships to each other. Surrounded by such powerful nature, and all the things seen every day, the traveler feels no inclination to record in a journal all the ordinary details of life that happen to him.

After waiting for an hour we saw that our pirogue had safely crossed the raudal. We loaded our instruments and provisions and left the Guahibo rock. We began a journey that was quite dangerous. Above the cataract the river is some 800 toises wide and must be crossed obliquely at the point where the waters start rushing towards the fall. The men had been rowing for over twenty minutes when the pilot said that instead of advancing we were drifting back to the falls. Then there was a storm and heavy rain fell. Those anxious moments seemed to last for ever. The Indians whisper as they always do when in danger; but they rowed very hard and we reached the port of Maypures by nightfall.

May 10th. Overnight our canoe was loaded and we set off a little before dawn to go up the Río Negro to the mouth of the Casiquiare and begin our researches on the true course of this river linking the Orinoco and Amazon. The morning was beautiful, but as the heat rose the sky began to cloud over. The air is so saturated with water in these forests that water bubbles become visible at the slightest increase of evaporation on the earth's surface. As there is no breeze the humid strata are not replaced and renewed by drier air. This clouded sky made us gloomier and gloomier. Through this humidity Bonpland -lost the plants he had collected; for my part I feared finding the same Río Negro mists in the Casiquiare valley. For more than half a century nobody in the missions has doubted the existence of communications between the two great river systems: the important aim of our journey was reduced to fixing the course of the Casiquiare by astronomic means, especially at its point of entry into the Río Negro, and its bifurcation with the Orinoco. Without sun or stars this aim would have been frustrated, and we would have been uselessly exposed to long, weary deprivation. Our travelling companions wanted to return by the shortest journey, along the Pimichín and its small rivers; but Bonpland preferred, like myself, to persist in the original plan we had traced out while crossing the Great Cataracts. We had already traveled by canoe from San Fernando de Apure to San Carlos along the Apure, Orinoco, Atabapo, Temi, Tuamini and Río Negro for over 180 leagues. In entering the Orinoco by the Casiquiare we still had some 320 leagues to cover from San Carlos to Angostura. It would have been a shame to let ourselves be discouraged by the fear of a cloudy sky and the Casiquiare mosquitoes. Our Indian pilot, who had recently visited Mandavaca, promised us sun and 'those great stars that eat up clouds' once we had left the black waters of the Guaviare. So we managed to carry out our first plan and returned to San Fernando along the Casiquiare. Luckily for our researches the Indian's prediction was fulfilled. The white waters brought us a clear sky, stars, mosquitoes and crocodiles.

For the past year so many obstacles had crossed my path that I couldhardly believe that at last my innermost desires would be fulfilled. Weleft Madrid in the middle of May and crossed Old Castile and the kingdomsof Le-n and Galicia to La Coruña, where we were to embark for the island of Cuba. The winter had been long and hard but now, duringour journey, we enjoyed the mild temperatures of spring that in the southusually begin in March or April. Snow still covered the tall granitic peaksof the Guadarrama but in the deep Galician valleys, which reminded me of the picturesque scenery ofSwitzerland and the Tyrol, the rocks were covered in flowering cistus andarborescent heaths. The traveler is happy to quit the Castilian plainsdevoid of vegetation and their intense winter cold and summers of oppressive heat.

We took nine days to travel the 95 leagues from the island of Cucuruparu to the capital of Guiana, commonly called Angostura. We rarely spent the night on land, but the plague of mosquitoes was diminishing. On the morning of the 9th of June we met many boats filled with merchandise going up the Orinoco by sail towards the Apure. It is a much frequented trade route between Angostura and Torunos. Our travelling companion, Don Nicolas Soto, brother-in-law of the governor of Barinas, took this route to return to his family. During the great floods months are lost struggling against the currents. Boatmen are forced to moor to tree trunks and haul themselves up river. In this winding river they can take days just to advance 200 to 300 toises.

If we had reasons to be pleased with the location of our house we had even more for the way we were welcomed by people from all classes. I have had the advantage, which few Spaniards can share with me, of having successively visited Caracas, Havana, Bogotà, Quito, Lima and Mexico, and of making contact with men of all ranks in these six capitals. In Mexico and Bogota it seemed to me that interest in serious scientific studies predominated; in Quito and Lima people seemed more inclined to literature and all that flatters a lively imagination; in Havana and Caracas, there predominated a broader culture in political matters, more open criteria about the state of the colonies and metropolis. Intense commerce with Europe and the Caribbean Sea have powerfully influenced the social evolution of Cuba and the beautiful provinces of Venezuela. Nowhere else in Spanish America does civilization appear so European.