We left the Esmeralda mission on the 23rd of May. We were not exactly ill, but emaciated and weak thanks to the torment of mosquitoes, the bad food and the long journey on that narrow and damp pirogue. We did not go further up the Orinoco than the mouth of the Guapo; had we wanted to reach the Orinoco sources we would have gone beyond this point, but private travelers are not authorized to leave pacified areas. From the Guapo river to the Guaharibo cataract there are only 15 leagues. But the cataract is crossed by a liana bridge where Indians armed with bows and arrows stop whites from entering their lands. Up to the present time the Orinoco posed two distinct problems for geographers: its sources, and the nature of its communications with the Amazon. This latter was the aim of our journey.

The Caripe grotto measures exactly 472 meters and keeps the same width and height of 60 to 70 feet all through. It was difficult to persuade the Indians to penetrate any further into the grotto than where they usually went to collect the fat. We needed the padres' authority to make them go as far as the point where the ground rises suddenly at a 60-degree angle and where the rivulet forms a small underground cascade. This cave, home of nocturnal birds, is for the Indian a mystical place; they believe that the souls of their ancestors live in its depths. Man - they say - should fear these places not illumined by the sun (zis) or moon (nuna). To join the guàcharos is synonymous with joining your ancestors, that is, to die. For this reason, the magicians (piaches) and the poisoners (imorons) cast their nocturnal spells to call up the supreme evil spirit Ivorokiamo. Thus, all over the earth similarities may be found in the early fictions of people, especially those concerning the two principles ruling the world: the abode of souls after death, the happiness of the virtuous and the punishment of the guilty. The most different and barbarous languages present a certain number of similar images because they have the same source in the nature of our intelligence and our sensations. Darkness is everywhere connected with death.

We stayed another month at Cumanà. The river journey we intended to take up the Orinoco and the Rio Negro demanded all kinds of preparation. We had to choose the easiest instruments to carry on narrow canoes; we had to provide ourselves with the funds for a ten-month trip inland across a country without communications with the coast. As astronomic determination of places was the main aim of our undertaking I did not want to miss the solar eclipse that would be visible at the end of October. I chose to wait until then in Cumanà where the sky is usually beautiful and clear. It was too late to reach the Orinoco river banks, and the high Caracas valley offered less favorable chances due to the mists that gather round the neighboring mountains. Having precisely fixed the Cumanà longitude I had a starting-point for my chronometric determinations, the only ones I could count on when usually I did not remain long enough to take lunar distances or to observe Jupiter's satellites.

The most concentrated sap from the mavacure is not thick enough to stick on arrows. It is thus only to thicken the poison that another concentrated infusion of vegetable sap is added. This is an extremely sticky sap taken from a tree with long leaves called kiracaguero. As this tree grows a long way off, and at this period is without flowers or fruit like the bejuco de mavacure, we were not able to name it botanically. I have often spoken of the ill fate that prevents travelers from studying the most interesting plants. When you travel quickly you hardly see an eighth of the trees that offer the essential parts of their fructification, even in the Tropics where flowers last so long.

Hardly twenty-two months had passed since a previous earthquake had nearly destroyed the city of Cumanà. The people regard the reddish mist veiling the sky and the absence of a sea breeze at night as infallible ill omens. Many people came to see us to ask if our instruments predicted any further quakes. Their anxiety increased greatly when on the 5th of November, at the same time as the day before, there was a violent gust of wind, accompanied by thunder and a few raindrops. But no shock was felt.

The city, dominated by the fort, lies at the foot of a hill without greenery. Not one bell-tower nor one dome attract the traveler from afar; just a few tamarind trees and coconut and date palms stand out above the flat-roofed houses. The surrounding plains, especially near the sea, appear sad, dusty and arid, while fresh, luxuriant vegetation marks out the winding river that divides the city from its outskirts and the European settlers from the copper-colored Indians. The isolated, bare and white San Antonio mountain, with its fort, reflects a great mass of light and heat: it is made of breccia, whose strata contain fossil marine life. Far away towards the south you can make out a dark curtain of mountains. They are the high calcareous New Andalusian alps, topped with sandstone and other recent geological formations. Majestic forests cover this inland mountain chain linked along a forested valley with the salty, clayey and bare ground around Cumana. In the gulf and on its shores you can see flocks of fishing herons and gannets, awkward, heavy birds, which, like swans, sail along the water with their wings raised. Nearer the inhabited areas, you can count thousands of gallinazo vultures, veritable flying jackals, ceaselessly picking at carcasses. A gulf whose depths contain hot thermal springs divides the secondary from the primary and schistose rocks of the Araya peninsula. The two coasts are bathed by a calm blue sea lightly rippled by a constant breeze. A dry, pure sky, only lightly clouded at sunset, lies above the sea, over a peninsula devoid of trees and above the Cumana plains, while one sees storms building up and bursting into fertile downpours around the inland mountain peaks.