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.

The old Indian called 'master of the poison' was flattered by our interest in his chemical procedures. He found us intelligent enough to think that we could make soap; for making soap, after making curare, seemed to him the greatest of human inventions. Once the poison was poured into its jars, we accompanied the Indian to the juvias fiesta. They were celebrating the Brazil-nut harvest, and became wildly drunk. The hut where the Indians had gathered over several days was the strangest sight you could imagine. Inside there were no tables or benches, only large smoked and roasted monkeys lined up symmetrically against the wall. These were marimondas (Ateles belzebuth) and the bearded capuchins. The way these animals, which look so like human beings, are roasted helps you understand why civilized people find eating them so repulsive. A little grill made of a hard wood is raised about a foot from the ground. The skinned monkey is placed on top in a sitting position so that he is held up by his long thin hands; sometimes the hands are crossed over his shoulders. Once it is fixed to the grill a fire is lit underneath; flames and smoke cover the monkey, which is roasted and smoked at the same time. Seems Indians eat a leg or arm of a roasted monkey makes you realize why cannibalism is not so repugnant to Indians. Roasted monkeys especially those with very round heads, look horribly like children. Europeans who are forced to eat them prefer to cut off the head and hands before serving up the rest of the monkey The flesh of the monkey is so lean and dry that Bonpland kept an arm and a hand, roasted in Esmeralda, in his Paris collections. After many years it did not smell in the least.

Red paint is - we could say - the only clothing the Indians use. Two kinds may be distinguished according to how prosperous they are. The common decoration of the Caribs, Otomacs and Yaruros is annatto, which Spaniards call achote. It is the coloring matter extracted from the pulp of Bixa orellana. To prepare this annatto Indian women throw the seeds of the plant into a tub filled with water. They beat this for an hour and then leave the mixture to deposit the coloring fecula, which is an intense brick-red. After pouring off the water they take out the fecula, dry it in their hands and mix it with turtle oil, after which it is shaped into rounded cakes. Another more precious pigment comes from a plant of the Bignoniaceae family, which Bonpland has made known by the name Bignonia chica. It climbs up the tallest trees by attaching its tendrils. Its bilabiate flowers are an inch long and of a pretty violet color. The fruit is a pod filled with winged seeds, some 2 feet long. This bignonia grows wild and abundantly near Maypures. The red chica dye does not come from the fruit but from the leaves when soaked in water. The coloring matter separates itself as a light powder. It is gathered, without being mixed with turtle oil, into little loaves. When heated they give off a pleasant smell of benzoin. Chica, which was not known until our voyage, could even be used in the arts. The chemistry practiced by the savage is essentially the preparation of pigments and poisons, and the neutralization of amylaceous roots.

In the cool of dawn we set off to climb the Turimiquiri. This is the name given to the Cocollar peak, which forms one large mountain range with the Brigantín, called before by the Indians Sierra de los Tageres. We traveled a part of the way on the horses that run free on the savannahs, but are used to being saddled. Even when they look heavily laden they climb the slipperiest slopes with ease. Wherever the sandstone appears above ground the land is even and forms small plateaux succeeding each other like steps. Up to 700 feet, and even further, the mountain is covered with grass. On the Cocollar the short turf begins to grow some 350 toises above sea-level, and you continue to walk on this grass up to 1, toises high; above those strips of grassy land you find, on virtually inaccessible peaks, a little forest of cedrela, javillo (Hura crepitans) and mahogany. Judging by local conditions, the mountainous savannahs of the Cocollar and Turimiquiri owe their existence to the destructive custom of Indians burning the woods to make pasture land. Today, after a thick tangle of grass and alpine plants have been covering the ground for over three centuries, seeds of trees cannot root themselves in the ground and germinate, despite the wind and the birds that continually bring them from the distant jungle.

In the Turbaco forest, full of palm trees, there is a clearing about 800 square feet in size without any vegetation, bordered by tufts of Bromelia kavatas, whose leaf is like a pineapple's. The surface of the ground was composed of layers of cracked grey-black clay. What they call volcancitos are fifteen to twenty small truncated cones rising in the middle of the clearing. They are some 3 to 4 toises high. The high edges are filled with water and they periodically release large air bubbles. I counted five explosions in two minutes. The force of the rising air makes you think of a powerful pressure deep in the earth. Indian children who came with us helped us block some of the smaller craters with clay, but : gas always pushed the earth away. According to the Indians the number and shape of the cones near the path had not changed for over twenty years, and they remain full of water even in droughts. The heat of the water was the same as that of the air. With long sticks we could reach some 6 to 7 feet down inside a cone. Leaving the water in a glass it became quite clear, and tasted slightly of alum.

The rivalry between Spain and Portugal has contributed to the poor geographical knowledge about the tributary rivers of the Amazon. The Indians are excellent geographers and can outflank the enemy despite the limits on the maps and the forts. Each side prefers to conceal what it knows, and the love of what ii mysterious, so common among ignorant people perpetuates doubt. It is also known that different Indian tribes in this labyrinth of rivers give rivers different names that all mean 'river', 'great water' and 'current'. I have often been puzzled trying to determine synonyms after examining the most intelligent Indians through an interpreter. Three or four languages are spoken in the same mission, it is hard to make witnesses agree. Our maps are full of arbitrary names. The desire to leave no void in maps in order to give them an appearance of accuracy has caused rivers to be created whose names are not synonymous. (114)

In 1797 the San Fernando missionary had led his men to the banks of the Guaviare river on one of those hostile incursions banned both by religion and Spanish law. They found a Guahiba mother with three children in a hut, two of whom were not yet adults. They were busy preparing cassava flour. Resistance was impossible; their father had gone out fishing, so the mother tried to run off with children. She had just reached the savannah when the Indians, who hunt people the way whites hunt blacks in Africa, caught her. The mother and children were tied up and brought back to the river bank. The monks were waiting for this expedition to end, without suffering any of the dangers. Had the mother resisted the Indians would have killed her; anything is allowed in this hunting of souls (conquista espiritual), and it is especially children that are captured and treated as poitos or slaves in the Christian missions. They brought the prisoners to San Fernando, hoping that the mother would not find her way back by land to her home. Separated from those children who had gone fishing with their father the day she was kidnapped, this poor woman began to show signs of the deepest despair. She wanted to bring those children in the power of the missionaries back home, and several times ran off with them from the San Fernando village but the Indians hunted her down each time. After severely punishing her the missionary took the cruel decision of separating the mother from her two infants. She was led alone to a mission on the Río Negro, up the Atabapo river. Loosely tied up, she sat ill the bow of the boat. She had not been told where she was going; but she guessed by the sun's position that she was being taken away from her house and native land. She managed to break her bonds and jumped into the water and swam to the river bank. The current pushed her to a bank of rock, which is named after her today. She climbed up and walked into the jungle. But the head of the mission ordered his Indians to follow and capture her. She was again caught by the evening. She was stretched out on the rock (the Piedra de la Madre) where she was beaten with manatee whips. Her hands tied up behind her back with the strong cords of the mavacure, she was then dragged to the Javita mission and thrown into one of the inns called casas del rey. It was the rainy season and the night was very dark. Impenetrable forests separate the Javita and San Fernando missions some 25 leagues apart in a straight line. The only known route was by river. Nobody ever tried to go by land from one mission to another, even if only a few leagues away. But this did not prevent a mother separated from her children. Her children were at San Fernando so she had to find them, rescue them from Christians, and bring them back to their father on the Guaviare. The Guahiba woman was not closely supervised in the inn. As her hands were bloodied the Javita Indians had loosened her bindings. With her teeth she managed to break the cords, and she disappeared into the night. On the fourth day she was seen prowling round the hut where her children were being kept at the San Fernando mission. This woman had just carried out, added the monk telling us this sad story, 'something that the toughest Indian would not have even considered. She had crossed the jungle in a season when the sky is continuously covered with cloud, when the sun appears. only for a few minutes for days on end. Had she followed the flow of water? But flooding had forced her to walk far from the river, in the middle of jungles where the river is imperceptible. How many times must she have been blocked by thorny liana growing round trees! How many times must she have swum across streams! What on earth could this luckless woman have eaten during her four days' walk? She said that she had eaten only those large black ants called vachacos that climb up trees and hang resinous nests from branches. We pressed the missionary to tell us whether the Guahiba woman had finally enjoyed peace and happiness with her family. He did not want to satisfy our curiosity. But on our return from the Río Negro we learned that this Indian woman was not even left to recover from her wounds before she was again separated from her children, and sent to a mission on the Upper Orinoco. She died by refusing to eat food, as do all Indians when faced with great calamities. (112)