We spent the night of the 16th of July in the Indian village of Santa Cruz de Cachipo, founded in 1749 when several Carib families from the unhealthy, flooding Orinoco gathered together. We lodged in the missionary's house. In the parish register we discovered how rapidly the mission had progressed thanks to his zeal and intelligence. From the middle of the plains the heat had become almost unbearable so we thought of travelling by night; but we were not armed and the llanos were infested with numberless robbers who murdered all whites who fell into their hands in atrociously cunning ways. Nothing can be worse than the administration of justice in these colonies. Everywhere we found the prisons filled with criminals who had waited up to eight years for a trial. About one third escape from prison and find refuge in the llanos, where nobody but cattle live. They attack on horseback, like Bedouin Arabs. The dirt in the prisons would be intolerable if prisoners were not allowed to escape every now and then. It is also common that the death penalty cannot be carried out because there are no executioners. When this happens they pardon one of the guilty if he agrees to hang the others. Our guides told us about a zambo, famous for his violence, who, just before our arrival at Cumanà, chose to avoid his execution by turning executioner The preparations broke his will, and he was horrified at what he was about to do, preferring death to the shame of saving his own life. He asked for his irons to be put back on. He did not stay in prison much longer, as cowardice in another prisoner saw that he was executed. This awakening of honour in a murderer is psychologically very interesting. A man who has spilled so much blood robbing travelers on the steppes hesitates to inflict a punishment that he feels he himself has deserved.

On the 23rd of July we entered the town of Nueva Barcelona, less affected by the heat on the llanos than by the sand wind that painfully chapped our skin. We were well received at the house of Don Pedro Lavié, a wealthy French merchant. He had been accused of hiding the unfortunate Espaìa (133) on the run in 1796. He was arrested by order of the audiencia. But his friendship with the Cumanà governor, and his services as a merchant, got him released. We had visited him in prison before and now found him back with his family, but very ill. He died without seeing the independence of America that his friend Don José Espaìa had predicted just before his execution.