We continued to climb from this pine to the crater of the volcano without crossing one valley, for the ravines do not merit this name. To the eyes of a geologist the whole of the island is one mountain whose oval base is prolonged to the north-east and in which several systems of volcanic rock, formed in different periods, may be distinguished.

During our stay at Cura we made numerous excursions to the rocky islands in the middle of Lake Valencia, to the hot springs at Mariara, and the high mountain called El Cucurucho de Coco. A narrow, dangerous path leads to the port of Turiamo and the famous coastal cacao plantations. Throughout all our excursions we were surprised not only by the progress of culture but also by the increase in the numbers of the free, hard-working population, used to manual work and too poor to buy slaves. Everywhere whites and mulattos had bought small isolated farms. Our host, whose father enjoyed an income of 40, piastres a year, had more land than he could farm; he distributed plots in the Aragua valley to poor families who wanted to grow cotton. He tried to surround his enormous plantation with free working men, because they wanted to work for themselves, or for others. Count Tovar was busy trying to abolish slavery and hoped to make slaves less necessary for the important estates, and to offer the freed slaves land to become farmers themselves. When he left for Europe he had broken up and rented land around Cura. Four years later, on returning to America, he found fine cotton fields and a little village called Punta Samuro, which we often visited with him. The inhabitants are all mulatto, zambo (80) and freed slaves. The rent is ten piastres a fanega of land; it is paid in cash or cotton. As the small farmers are often in need, they sell their cotton at modest prices. They sell it even before harvest, and this advance is used by the rich landowners to make the poor dependent on them as day workers. The price of labor is less than it is in France. A free man is paid five piastres a month without food, which costs very little as meat and vegetables are abundant. I like quoting these details about colonial agriculture because they prove to Europeans that there is no doubt that sugar, cotton and indigo can be produced by free men, and that the miserable slaves can become peasants, farmers and landowners.

When we arrived in Esmeralda, most of the Indians were returning from an excursion they had made beyond the Padamo river to pick juvias, the fruit of the bertholletia, and a liana that gives curare. Their return was celebrated with a feast called in this mission the fiesta de las juvias, which resembles our harvest festivals. Women had prepared plenty of alcohol and for two days you met only drunk Indians. Among people who attach importance to palm-tree fruits and other useful trees, the period when these are harvested is marked by public celebrations. We were lucky to find an Indian slightly less drunk than others, who was making curare with the recently picked plants. He was the chemist of the locality. Around him we saw large clay boilers used to cook the vegetable juices, as well as shallow vessels used for evaporation, and banana leaves rolled into filters to separate the liquid from the fibers. The Indian who was to teach us was known in the mission as master of the poison, amo del curare; he had that same formal and pedantic air that chemists were formerly accused of in Europe. 'I know, he said, 'that whites have the secret of making soap, and that black powder which scares away the animals you hunt when you miss. But the curare that we prepare from father to son is superior to all that you know over there. It is the sap of a plant that "kills silently", without the victim knowing where it comes from.

Some Indians are not content with coloring themselves evenly all over. They sometimes imitate European clothes by painting them on. We saw one at Parurama who had painted a blue jacket with black buttons on to his skin.

The bones are prepared in three different ways; they are whitened, or colored red with annatto, a dye from Bixa orellana, or varnished with a scented resin and wrapped like mummies in banana leaves. Indians insisted that as soon as somebody died the corpse was left for months in damp earth so that the flesh rotted away; then it was dug up and the remains of the flesh scraped off with a sharp stone. Some tribes in Guiana still practice this method. Next to the baskets or mapires we also found half-baked clay urns with the remains of whole families. The largest urns are almost 3 feet high and 5. feet wide. They are greenish, and of a pleasing oval shape. Some have crocodiles and snakes drawn on them. The top edges are decorated with meanders and labyrinths. These are very similar to the decorations covering the walls of the Mexican palace at Mitla; they are found everywhere, even among the Greeks and Romans, as on the shields of the Tahitians and other Pacific Islanders.