As far as the rock of Gayta, that is, up to the beginning of the great retama plain, the Tenerife peak is covered in beautiful vegetation, with no traces of recent devastations. But hardly have you entered the plain littered with pumice-stone than the countryside changes dramatically; at every step you trip over enormous obsidian blocks thrown down by the volcano. Everything here betrays a deep solitude. A few goats and rabbits are the only signs of life in this high plain. From up here the island becomes an immense heap of burned matter surrounded by a narrow fringe of vegetation.

We had yet to climb the steepest part of the mountain, the Piton, which forms the summit. The slope of this small cone, covered with volcanic ashes and fragments of pumice-stone, is so steep that it would have been impossible to reach the top had we not been able to follow an old lava current that seemed to have flowed down from the crater and whose remains have defied the ravages of time. The debris forms a wall of scoria, which reaches into the loose ash. We climbed to the Piton by clinging to this sharp-edged scoria, which, worn down by the weather, often broke off in our hands. It took us half an hour to reach the top, though it was only some 90 toises above us.

Days passed quickly in the Capuchin convent in the Caripe mountains, despite our simple but monotonous life. From sunrise to sunset we toured the forests and mountains near by looking for plants, and have never collected so many. When the heavy rain stopped us travelling far we visited Indian huts and the communal conuco, or attended the nightly meetings when the alcaldes handed out the work for the following day. We did not return to the convent until bells called us for meals in the refectory with the monks. At dawn we sometimes accompanied them to the church to attend doctrina, that is, religious classes for Indians. It was hard explaining dogma to people who hardly knew Spanish. The monks are almost completely ignorant of the Chaima Indian language, and the resemblance of sounds between the languages muddles the poor Indians so that strange ideas arise. One day we witnessed a missionary struggling to explain to his class that invierno, winter, and infierno, hell, were not the same thing, but as different as hot and cold. The Chaima Indians know winter only as the rainy season, and imagine that 'the white's hell' is a place where the evil are exposed to horrific rainstorms. The missionary lost his temper, but it was useless; the first impression caused by the almost identical words persisted; in the Indians' minds the images of rain and hell could not be separated.

One of the four canoes that the Indians had used for their expedition was filled with a kind of reed (carice) used to make blowpipes. The reeds measured 15 to 17 feet without a sign of a knot for leaves and branches. They are quite straight, smooth and cylindrical known as 'reeds of Esmeralda' they are very sought after beyond the Orinoco. A hunter keeps the same blowpipe all his life; he boasts of its lightness, precision and shine as we might our firearms. What monocotyledonous plant do these magnificent reeds come from? I was unable to answer this question, as I was unable to say what plant was used in making the marima shirts. On the slopes of the Duida mountain we saw trunks of this tree reaching to feet high. The Indians cut off cylindrical pieces 2 feet in diameter and peel off the red fibrous bark, careful not to make longitudinal incisions. This bark becomes a kind of garment, like a sack, of a coarse material without seams. You put your head through a hole at the top and your arms through two holes cut in the sides. Indians wear these marima shirts when it rains; they look like cotton ponchos. In these climates the abundance and beneficence of nature are blamed for the Indians' laziness. Missionaries do not miss the opportunity of saying: 'In the Orinoco jungles clothes are found readymade on trees. In the fiesta women were excluded from dancing and other festivities; their sad role was reduced to serving men roast monkey, fermented drinks and palm-tree hearts, which tasted rather like our cauliflowers. Another more nutritious substance comes from the animal kingdom: fish flour (mandioca de pescado). Throughout the Upper Orinoco Indians roast fish, dry them in the sun and crush them into powder, along with the bones. When eaten it is mixed with water into a paste.

At five in the morning on the 4th of September we set out for the missions of the Chaima Indians and the high mountains crossing New Andalusia. Because of the road's extreme difficulties we had been advised to reduce our equipment as much as we could. Two mules sufficed to carry our provisions, our instruments and the paper necessary to dry plants. Our box contained a sextant, a dipping needle, an instrument to determine magnetic variation, thermometers and Saussure's hygrometer. (43) Choosing the instruments caused us most problems on the short journeys.