Day was breaking when we left the ice cave. A layer of white fleecy cloud blocked out the lower regions of the surrounding islands. The clouds were spread out so uniformly and in such a flat way that they looked like an immense plain covered in snow. The colossal pyramid of the peak, the volcanic summits of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Palma stuck up like reefs above a sea of fog. Their dark color contrasted vividly with the whiteness of the clouds.

Only those who have seen the quantity of ants that infest the countries of the torrid zone can picture the destruction and the sinking of the ground caused by these insects. They abound to such a degree in Valencia that their excavations resemble underground canals, which flood with water during the rains and threaten buildings. Here they have not used the extraordinary means employed by the monks on the island of Santo Domingo when troops of ants ravaged the fine plains of La Vega. The monks, after trying to burn the ant larvae and fumigate the nests, told the inhabitants to choose a saint by lot who would act as an Abogado contra las Hormigas. The choice fell on Saint Saturnin, and the ants disappeared as soon as the saint's festival was celebrated.

I placed very active curare on the crural nerves of a frog without noticing any change, measuring the degree of its organs' irritability with an arc formed of heterogeneous metals. But these Galvanic experiments hardly worked on birds a few minutes after they had been shot with poison arrows. Curare works only when the poison acts on the vascular system. At Maypures, a colored man (a zambo, a cross between Indian and negro) was preparing one of those poison arrows that are shot in blowpipes, to kill small monkeys or birds for M. Bonpland. He was a carpenter of extraordinary strength. He stupidly rubbed the curare between slightly bleeding fingers and fell to the ground, dizzy for half an hour. Luckily it was a weak curare (destemplado), used for small animals, which may be revived later by placing muriate of soda in the wound. During our journey back from Esmeralda to Atures. I escaped from danger myself. The curare had attracted humidity and become liquid and spilled from a poorly closed jar on to our clothes. We forgot to check the inside of a sock filled with curare when washing our clothes. Just touching this sticky stuff with my hand I realized I should not pull on the poison sock. The danger was all the greater as my toes were bleeding from chigoe wounds.

The Indians of this area have preserved the belief that 'during the great flood, when their ancestors had to take to the canoes to escape, the sea waves beat against the Encaramada rocks'. This tradition is found in nearly all the tribes of the Upper Orinoco. When the Tamanacu are asked how the human race survived that great catastrophe they answer: 'A man and a woman saved themselves on a high mountain called Tamanacu and there threw seed from the mauritia palm over their heads, and little men and women were born from the seeds who repopulated the world. Among wild tribes we find a simple version of a legend that the Greeks had embellished with their great imagination! A few leagues from Encaramada a rock called Tepu-mereme (Painted Rock) rises in the middle of the savannah. It is covered with animal drawings and symbolic signs. The representations that we have found on rocks in uninhabited places - stars, suns, jaguars, crocodiles - do not seem to be related to religious cults. These hieroglyphic figures are frequently carved so high up that only scaffolding could reach them. When we asked the Indians how they could have carved those images, they answered, smiling, as if only whites could ignore such an obvious answer: During the great waters, their ancestors reached those rocks in their canoes.

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.

We will not continue to describe in detail the local changes produced by the different earthquakes of Cumana. In order to follow our original plan we shall try to generalize our ideas, and include in one section everything that relates to these frightening and difficult-to- explain phenomena. If men of science who visit the Alps of Switzerland or the coasts of Lapland should broaden our knowledge about glaciers and the aurora borealis, then a traveler who has journeyed through Spanish America should mainly fix his attention on volcanoes and earthquakes. Every part of the earth merits particular study. When we cannot hope to guess the causes of natural phenomena, we ought at least to try to discover their laws and, by comparing numerous facts, distinguish what is permanent and constant from what is variable and accidental.

Because there are no records kept in Cumana, and thanks to the persistent destructive activity of the termites, the white ants, no documents older than 150 years remain in the archives, thus making it hard to know the exact dates for the earlier earthquakes. We know only that 1766 was most fatal for the settlers and most remarkable for the natural history of the country. There had been a drought for over fifteen months when on the 21st of October 1766 the city of Cumana was completely destroyed. Every year that date is celebrated by a religious service and a solemn procession. All the houses collapsed in a few minutes, and every hour for fourteen months tremors were felt. In several areas in the province the earth opened up and vomited out sulphurous water. During 1766 and 1767 the Cumana inhabitants camped out in the streets and began rebuilding only when the tremors slowed down to a few a month. While the earth continually rocked it felt as if the air was about to dissolve into water. Formidable rainstorms swelled the river; the year was extraordinarily fertile, and the Indians, whose frail shacks survive the most violent earthquakes, celebrated with dances of joy following an ancient superstition about the destruction of the old world and the birth of a new one.