When we reached the Piton's summit we were surprised to find that there was barely enough room to sit down comfortably. We faced a small circular wall of porphyritic lava, with a base of pitchstone, which prevented us from seeing the interior of the crater called La Caldera or the Cauldron. The wind blew so hard from the west that we could scarcely stand on our feet. It was eight in the morning and we were frozen though the temperature was just above freezing-point. We had become accustomed to heat, and the dry wind increased the sensation of cold.

April 13th. Early in the morning we passed the Tabaje rapids and landed again. Father Zea, who accompanied us, wanted to say mass in the new San Borja mission established two years before. We found six huts inhabited by uncatechized Indians. They were no different from wild Indians. Only their large black eyes showed more liveliness than those living in older missions. They refused our brandy without even trying it. The young girls had their faces marked with round black spots. The rest of their bodies were not painted. Some of the men had beards, and they seemed proud. Holding our chins they showed through signs that they were made like us. I was again struck by how similar all the Orinoco Indians are. Their look is somber and sad, not hard or ferocious. Without any notions about the practices of the Christian religion they behaved quite decently in the church. Indians like representations; they submit themselves momentarily to any nuisance provided they are sure of being stared at. Just before the moment of communion they make signs to show that the priest was about to bring the chalice to his lips. Apart from this gesture they stay immobile, in their imperturbable apathy.

Guanaguana still does not have a church. The old priest, who had lived for more than thirty years in the American jungles, pointed out that the community's money, meaning the product of the Indians' work, should first be spent on building the missionary house; secondly on building a church; and lastly on their clothes. He seriously insisted that this order could not be altered on any account. The Indians can wait their turn as they prefer walking around completely naked to wearing the scantiest clothes. The spacious padre's house had just been finished and we noted with surprise that the terraced roof was decorated with a great number of chimneys that looked like turrets. Our host told us that this was done to remind him of his Aragonese winters, despite the tropical heat. The Guanaguana Indians grow cotton for themselves, the church and the missionary. The produce is supposed to belong to the community; it is with this communal money that the needs of the priest and altar are looked after. They have simple machines that separate the seed from the plant. Wooden cylinders of tiny diameter between which the cotton passes are activated, like a spinning-wheel, by pedals. However, these primitive machines are very useful and other missions are beginning to imitate them. But here, as in all places where nature's fertility hinders the development of industry, only a few hectares are converted into cultivated land, and nobody thinks of changing that cultivation into one of alimentary plants. Famine is felt each time the maize harvest is lost to a long drought. The Guanaguana Indians told us an amazing story that happened the year before when they went off with their women and children and spent three months al monte, that is, wandering about in the neighboring jungle and living off juicy plants, palm cabbages, fern roots and wild fruit. They did not speak of this nomadic state as one of deprivation. Only the missionary lost out because his village was left completely abandoned, and the community members, when they returned from the woods, appeared to be less docile than before.

People in Turbaco out botanizing with us often spoke of a marshy land in the middle of a palm-tree forest that they called 'little volcanoes', los volcancitos. A village tradition claims that this land had once been in flames but that a good priest, known for his piety, cast holy water and put the underground fire out, changing the volcano of fire into a volcano of water, volcàn de agua. This tale reminded me of the geological disputes between Neptunists and Vulcanists of the last century. The local wise man, the Turbaco priest, assured us that the volcancitos were simply thermal waters swimming with sulphur, erupting during storms with 'moans'. We had been too long in the Spanish colonies not to doubt these marvellous fantasies coming more from superstitious whites than from Indians, half-castes and African slaves. We were led to the volcancitos in the jungle by Indians and found salses, or air volcanoes.

We frequently visited a small farm called the Conuco de Bermúdez, situated opposite the Cuchivano crevice. In its moist soil grow bananas, tobacco and several species of cotton trees, especially the one whose cotton is wild nankeen yellow, so common on Margarita Island The owner told us that the ravine was inhabited by jaguars. These animals spend the day in caverns and prowl around human settlements at night. If well fed they reach some 6 feet in length. A year before, one of these cats had devoured a farm horse. In clear moonlight he dragged his prey across the savannah to the foot of an enormous ceiba. The neighing of the dying horse woke up the farm slaves. Armed with lances and machetes (51) they rushed out in the middle of the night. The jaguar, stretched over its victim, waited quietly, and was killed only after a long and stubborn fight. This fact, and many others verified on the spot, prove that the great jaguar of Terra Firma (Felis onca), like the jaguarete of Paraguay and the Asian tiger, does not run away when attacked by man, and is not scared by the number of his enemy. Naturalists today know that Buffon (52) completely failed to recognize the greatest of American cats. What this famous writer says about the cowardice of tigers in the New World relates to the small ocelots (Felis pardalis). In the Orinoco, the American jaguar sometimes leaps into the water to attack Indians in their canoes.

These scattered features of the countryside, this trait of solitude and grandeur, characterizes the course of the Orinoco, one of the greatest New World rivers. Everywhere water, like land, displays its unique characteristics. The Orinoco bed has no similarities with the Meta, Guaviare, Río Negro or Amazon beds. These differences do not depend solely on the width or speed of the current; they derive from a combination of relations easier to grasp on the spot than to define precisely. In the same way, the shape of the waves, the color of the water, the kind of sky and clouds, all help a navigator guess whether he is in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean or in the equinoctial part of the Pacific.

The Chaimas, like all semi-wild people in hot climates, show a great aversion to clothes. In the torrid zone the Indians are ashamed so they say to wear clothes, and if they are forced to do so too soon they rush off into the jungle in order to remain naked. Despite the efforts of the monks the Chaima men and women walk around naked in their houses. When they go into villages they put on a kind of cotton shirt, which hardly reaches to their knees. Sometimes we met Indians outside the mission grounds, during a rainstorm, who had taken their clothes off and rolled them under their arms. They prefer to let the rain fall on their naked bodies than letting it wet their clothes. The older women hid behind trees and burst into loud fits of laughter when they saw us pass by fully dressed.