The journal which I wrote at the time in German, and from which I borrow these extracts, was not entirely exhausted in the narrative of my travels (published in French). It contains a circumstantial description of the nocturnal life of animals; I might say, of their nocturnal voices in the tropical forests. And this sketch seems to me to be especially adapted to constitute one of the chapters of the _Views of Nature_. That which is written down on the spot, or soon after the impression of the phenomena has been received, may at least claim to possess more freshness than what is produced by the recollection of long passed events. We reached the bed of the Orinoco by descending from west to east along the Rio Apure, whose inundations I have noticed in the sketch of the Deserts and Steppes. It was the period of low water, and the average breadth of the Apure was only a little more than 1200 feet; while the Orinoco, at its confluence with the Apure (near the granite rocks of Curiquima, where I was able to measure a base-line), was still upwards of 12,180 feet. Yet this point (the rock of Curiquima,) is 400 miles in a straight line from the sea and from the delta of the Orinoco. Some of the plains, watered by the Apure and the Payara, are inhabited by Yaruros and Achaguas, who are called savages in the mission-villages established by the monks, because they will not relinquish their independence. In reference to social culture, they however occupy about the same scale as those Indians, who, although baptized and living “under the bell” (_baxo la campana_), have remained strangers to every form of instruction and cultivation.