We were forced to cut our own track across the malpaís. The slope is very steep, and the volcanic blocks slipped under our feet. The rubble on the peak's summit has sharp edges and leaves gaps into which explorers risk falling up to their waists. Unfortunately the laziness and bad temper of our guides made this ascent more difficult. They were despairingly phlegmatic. The night before they had tried to convince us not to pass beyond the limit of the rocks. Every ten minutes they would sit down to rest; they threw away pieces of obsidian and pumice-stone that we had carefully collected. Finally we realized that none of them had ever visited the volcano's summit before.

The rounded Turimiquiri summit and the sharp peaks, or cucuruchos, stand out, covered with jungle where many tigers live and are hunted for the beauty of their skin. We found that this grassy summit stood at 707 toises above sea-level. A steep rocky ridge going west is broken after a mile by an enormous crevice that descends to the Gulf of Cariaco. In the place where the mountain ridge should have continued two mamelons or calcereous peaks rise, with the more northern one the highest. It is the Cucurucho de Turimiquiri proper, considered to be higher than the Brigantín, well known to sailors approaching the Cumanà coast.

A fresh east-north-east wind blew, allowing us to sail up the Orinoco towards the Encaramada mission. Our pirogue rode the waves so badly that the rocking of the boat caused those who suffered from seasickness to feel sick on the river. The lapping of the waves arises from two rivers meeting. We passed the Punta Curiquima, an isolated mass of quartzite granite, a small promontory composed of rounded blocks. It is there, on the right bank of the Orinoco, that Father Rotella founded a mission for the Palenka and Viriviri or Guire Indians. During flooding the Curiquima rock and village at its foot are completely surrounded by water. This serious inconvenience, and the innumerable mosquitoes and niguas, (95) made the suffering missionaries abandon their damp site. It is entirely deserted today while on the left bank the low Coruato mountains have become the retreat for those nomadic Indians either expelled from missions or from tribes not subject to the monks.

'You cannot imagine, said the old Mandavaca missionary, 'how perverse this familia de indios (family of Indians) is. You accept individuals from another tribe into your mission; they seem tame, honest, good workers; you let them out on a foray (entrada) to capture wild Indians and you can scarcely stop them throttling all they can and hiding pieces of the corpses. We had with us in our pirogue an Indian who had escaped from the Guaisia river. In a few weeks he had become very civilized. At night he helped us prepare our astronomical instruments. He was as cheerful as he was intelligent, and we were ready to employ him. Imagine our disappointment when through an interpreter we heard him say that 'Marimonda monkey meat, although blacker, had the same taste as human meat. He assured us that 'his relations - that is, his tribal brothers -preferred to eat the palms of human hands, as well as those of bears'. As he spoke he gestured to emphasize his brutal greed. We asked this young, pacifistic man through our interpreter if he still felt a desire to 'eat a Cheruvichanena Indian' and he answered calmly that 'in the mission he would eat only what he saw los padres (the fathers) eating'. It is no point reproaching Indians about this abominable practice. In the eyes of a Guaisia Indian, a Cheruvichanena Indian is totally alien to him; to kill one was not morally very different from killing a jaguar. Eating what the fathers ate in the mission was simply convenience. If Indians escape to rejoin their tribes, or are driven by hunger, they quickly fall back into cannibalism.

On the 21st of February, at nightfall, we left the pretty Hacienda de Cura and set off for Guacara and Nueva Valencia. As the heat of the day was stifling we traveled by night. We crossed the village of Punta Zamuro at the foot of Las Viruelas mountain. The road is lined with large zamangs, or mimosa trees, reaching some 60 feet high. Their almost horizontal branches meet at more than 150 feet distance. I have never seen a canopy of leaves so thick and beautiful as these. The night was dark: the Rincòn del Diablo and its dentated rocks appeared every now and then, illuminated by the brilliance of the burning savannahs, or wrapped in clouds of reddish smoke. In the thickest part of the brush our horses panicked when they heard the howl of an animal that seemed to be following us. It was an enormous jaguar that had been roaming these mountains for three years. It had escaped from the most daring hunters. It attacked horses and mules, even when they were penned in, but not lacking food had not yet attacked human beings. Our negro guide screamed wildly to scare off the beast, which he obviously did not achieve.

Opposite Bermúdez's farm two spacious caves open out of Cuchivano's crevice. At times flames, which can be seen from great distances, burst out. They illuminate the surrounding mountains, and from the mark left on the rocks by these burning gases we could be tempted to believe they reach some 100 feet high. During the last violent Cumanà earthquake this phenomenon was accompanied by long, dull, underground noises.