The Giant Raft
by Jules Verne · English · Gutenberg #3091 · 554,188 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Giant Raft
Author: Jules Verne
Release date: February 1, 2002 [eBook #3091]
Most recently updated: March 28, 2025
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3091
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIANT RAFT ***
The Giant Raft
By Jules Verne
CONTENTS
PART 1. EIGHT HUNDRED LEAGUES ON THE AMAZON
CHAPTER I. A CAPTAIN OF THE WOODS
CHAPTER II. ROBBER AND ROBBED
CHAPTER III. THE GARRAL FAMILY
CHAPTER IV. HESITATION
CHAPTER V. THE AMAZON
CHAPTER VI. A FOREST ON THE GROUND
CHAPTER VII. FOLLOWING A LIANA
CHAPTER VIII. THE JANGADA
CHAPTER IX. THE EVENING OF THE FIFTH OF JUNE
CHAPTER X. FROM IQUITOS TO PEVAS
CHAPTER XI. FROM PEVAS TO THE FRONTIER
CHAPTER XII. FRAGOSO AT WORK
CHAPTER XIII. TORRES
CHAPTER XIV. STILL DESCENDING
CHAPTER XV. THE CONTINUED DESCENT
CHAPTER XVI. EGA
CHAPTER XVII. AN ATTACK
CHAPTER XVIII. THE ARRIVAL DINNER
CHAPTER XIX. ANCIENT HISTORY
CHAPTER XX. BETWEEN THE TWO MEN
PART II. THE CRYPTOGRAM
CHAPTER I. MANAOS
CHAPTER II. THE FIRST MOMENTS
CHAPTER III. RETROSPECTIVE
CHAPTER IV. MORAL PROOFS
CHAPTER V. MATERIAL PROOFS
CHAPTER VI. THE LAST BLOW
CHAPTER VII. RESOLUTIONS
CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST SEARCH
CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND ATTEMPT
CHAPTER X. A CANNON SHOT
CHAPTER XI. THE CONTENTS OF THE CASE
CHAPTER XII. THE DOCUMENT
CHAPTER XIII. IS IT A MATTER OF FIGURES?
CHAPTER XIV. CHANCE!
CHAPTER XV. THE LAST EFFORTS
CHAPTER XVI. PREPARATIONS
CHAPTER XVII. THE LAST NIGHT
CHAPTER XVIII. FRAGOSO
CHAPTER XIX. THE CRIME OF TIJUCO
CHAPTER XX. THE LOWER AMAZON
PART I.
THE GIANT RAFT
CHAPTER I.
A CAPTAIN OF THE WOODS
_“P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u
g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o
x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a
y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u
b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o h e p q x
u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q k y
u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q
r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d.”_
The man who held in his hand the document of which this strange
assemblage of letters formed the concluding paragraph remained for some
moments lost in thought.
It contained about a hundred of these lines, with the letters at even
distances, and undivided into words. It seemed to have been written many
years before, and time had already laid his tawny finger on the sheet of
good stout paper which was covered with the hieroglyphics.
On what principle had these letters been arranged? He who held the paper
was alone able to tell. With such cipher language it is as with the
locks of some of our iron safes--in either case the protection is the
same. The combinations which they lead to can be counted by millions,
and no calculator’s life would suffice to express them. Some particular
“word” has to be known before the lock of the safe will act, and some
“cipher” is necessary before that cryptogram can be read.
He who had just reperused the document was but a simple “captain of the
woods.” Under the name of _“Capitaes do Mato”_ are known in Brazil those
individuals who are engaged in the recapture of fugitive slaves. The
institution dates from 1722. At that period anti-slavery ideas had
entered the minds of a few philanthropists, and more than a century had
to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and applied them. That
freedom was a right, that the very first of the natural rights of
man was to be free and to belong only to himself, would seem to be
self-evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass before the glorious
thought was generally accepted, and the nations of the earth had the
courage to proclaim it.
In 1852, the year in which our story opens, there were still slaves in
Brazil, and as a natural consequence, captains of the woods to pursue
them. For certain reasons of political economy the hour of general
emancipation had been delayed, but the black had at this date the right
to ransom himself, the children which were born to him were born free.
The day was not far distant when the magnificent country, into which
could be put three-quarters of the continent of Europe, would no longer
count a single slave among its ten millions of inhabitants.
The occupation of the captains of the woods was doomed, and at the
period we speak of the advantages obtainable from the capture of
fugitives were rapidly diminishing. While, however, the calling
continued sufficiently profitable, the captains of the woods formed
a peculiar class of adventurers, principally composed of freedmen and
deserters--of not very enviable reputation. The slave hunters in fact
belonged to the dregs of society, and we shall not be far wrong in
assuming that the man with the cryptogram was a fitting comrade for his
fellow _“capitaes do mato.”_ Torres--for that was his name--unlike the
majority of his companions, was neither half-breed, Indian, nor negro.
He was a white of Brazilian origin, and had received a better education
than befitted his present condition. One of those unclassed men who are
found so frequently in the distant countries of the New World, at a
time when the Brazilian law still excluded mulattoes and others of mixed
blood from certain employments, it was evident that if such exclusion
had affected him, it had done so on account of his worthless character,
and not because of his birth.
Torres at the present moment was not, however, in Brazil. He had just
passed the frontier, and was wandering in the forests of Peru, from
which issue the waters of the Upper Amazon.
He was a man of about thirty years of age, on whom the fatigues of a
precarious existence seemed, thanks to an exceptional temperament and
an iron constitution, to have had no effect. Of middle height, broad
shoulders, regular features, and decided gait, his face was tanned with
the scorching air of the tropics. He had a thick black beard, and eyes
lost under contracting eyebrows, giving that swift but hard glance
so characteristic of insolent natures. Clothed as backwoodsmen are
generally clothed, not over elaborately, his garments bore witness to
long and roughish wear. On his head, stuck jauntily on one side, was
a leather hat with a large brim. Trousers he had of coarse wool, which
were tucked into the tops of the thick, heavy boots which formed the
most substantial part of his attire, and over all, and hiding all, was a
faded yellowish poncho.
But if Torres was a captain of the woods it was evident that he was not
now employed in that capacity, his means of attack and defense being
obviously insufficient for any one engaged in the pursuit of the blacks.
No firearms--neither gun nor revolver. In his belt only one of those
weapons, more sword than hunting-knife, called a _“manchetta,”_ and
in addition he had an _“enchada,”_ which is a sort of hoe, specially
employed in the pursuit of the tatous and agoutis which abound in the
forests of the Upper Amazon, where there is generally little to fear
from wild beasts.
On the 4th of May, 1852, it happened, then, that our adventurer was
deeply absorbed in the reading of the document on which his eyes
were fixed, and, accustomed as he was to live in the forests of South
America, he was perfectly indifferent to their splendors. Nothing could
distract his attention; neither the constant cry of the howling monkeys,
which St. Hillaire has graphically compared to the ax of the woodman as
he strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle of the rings
of the rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is true, but one of
the most venomous); neither the bawling voice of the horned toad, the
most hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and sonorous croak of
the bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal the bull in size, can
surpass him in noise.
Torres heard nothing of all these sounds, which form, as it were, the
complex voice of the forests of the New World. Reclining at the foot
of a magnificent tree, he did not even admire the lofty boughs of that
_“pao ferro,”_ or iron wood, with its somber bark, hard as the metal
which it replaces in the weapon and utensil of the Indian savage. No.
Lost in thought, the captain of the woods turned the curious paper again
and again between his fingers. With the cipher, of which he had the
secret, he assigned to each letter its true value. He read, he verified
the sense of those lines, unintelligible to all but him, and then he
smiled--and a most unpleasant smile it was.
Then he murmured some phrases in an undertone which none in the solitude
of the Peruvian forests could hear, and which no one, had he been
anywhere else, would have heard.
“Yes,” said he, at length, “here are a hundred lines very neatly
written, which, for some one that I know, have an importance that is
undoubted. That somebody is rich. It is a question of life or death
for him, and looked at in every way it will cost him something.” And,
scrutinizing the paper with greedy eyes, “At a conto[1] only for each
word of this last sentence it will amount to a considerable sum, and it
is this sentence which fixes the price. It sums up the entire document.
It gives their true names to true personages; but before trying to
understand it I ought to begin by counting the number of words it
contains, and even when this is done its true meaning may be missed.”
[1] One thousand reis are equal to three francs, and a conto
of reis is worth three thousand francs.
In saying this Torres began to count mentally.
“There are fifty-eight words, and that makes fifty-eight contos. With
nothing but that one could live in Brazil, in America, wherever one
wished, and even live without doing anything! And what would it be,
then, if all the words of this document were paid for at the same price?
It would be necessary to count by hundreds of contos. Ah! there is quite
a fortune here for me to realize if I am not the greatest of duffers!”
It seemed as though the hands of Torres felt the enormous sum, and
were already closing over the rolls of gold. Suddenly his thoughts took
another turn.
“At length,” he cried, “I see land; and I do not regret the voyage which
has led me from the coast of the Atlantic to the Upper Amazon. But this
man may quit America and go beyond the seas, and then how can I touch
him? But no! he is there, and if I climb to the top of this tree I can
see the roof under which he lives with his family!” Then seizing the
paper and shaking it with terrible meaning: “Before to-morrow I will be
in his presence; before to-morrow he will know that his honor and his
life are contained in these lines. And when he wishes to see the cipher
which permits him to read them, he--well, he will pay for it. He will
pay, if I wish it, with all his fortune, as he ought to pay with all his
blood! Ah! My worthy comrade, who gave me this cipher, who told me where
I could find his old colleague, and the name under which he has been
hiding himself for so many years, hardly suspects that he has made my
fortune!”
For the last time Torres glanced over the yellow paper, and then, after
carefully folding it, put it away into a little copper box which he used
for a purse. This box was about as big as a cigar case, and if what was
in it was all Torres possessed he would nowhere have been considered
a wealthy man. He had a few of all the coins of the neighboring
States--ten double-condors in gold of the United States of Colombia,
worth about a hundred francs; Brazilian reis, worth about as much;
golden sols of Peru, worth, say, double; some Chilian escudos, worth
fifty francs or more, and some smaller coins; but the lot would not
amount to more than five hundred francs, and Torres would have been
somewhat embarrassed had he been asked how or where he had got them. One
thing was certain, that for some months, after having suddenly abandoned
the trade of the slave hunter, which he carried on in the province of
Para, Torres had ascended the basin of the Amazon, crossed the
Brazilian frontier, and come into Peruvian territory. To such a man the
necessaries of life were but few; expenses he had none--nothing for his
lodging, nothing for his clothes. The forest provided his food, which in
the backwoods cost him naught. A few reis were enough for his tobacco,
which he bought at the mission stations or in the villages, and for a
trifle more he filled his flask with liquor. With little he could go
far.
When he had pushed the paper into the metal box, of which the lid shut
tightly with a snap, Torres, instead of putting it into the pocket of
his under-vest, thought to be extra careful, and placed it near him in
a hollow of a root of the tree beneath which he was sitting. This
proceeding, as it turned out, might have cost him dear.
It was very warm; the air was oppressive. If the church of the nearest
village had possessed a clock, the clock would have struck two, and,
coming with the wind, Torres would have heard it, for it was not more
than a couple of miles off. But he cared not as to time. Accustomed to
regulate his proceedings by the height of the sun, calculated with more
or less accuracy, he could scarcely be supposed to conduct himself with
military precision. He breakfasted or dined when he pleased or when he
could; he slept when and where sleep overtook him. If his table was not
always spread, his bed was always ready at the foot of some tree in the
open forest. And in other respects Torres was not difficult to please.
He had traveled during most of the morning, and having already eaten a
little, he began to feel the want of a snooze. Two or three hours’ rest
would, he thought, put him in a state to continue his road, and so he
laid himself down on the grass as comfortably as he could, and waited
for sleep beneath the ironwood-tree.
Torres was not one of those people who drop off to sleep without certain
preliminaries. He was in the habit of drinking a drop or two of strong
liquor, and of then smoking a pipe; the spirits, he said, overexcited
the brain, and the tobacco smoke agreeably mingled with the general
haziness of his reverie.
Torres commenced, then, by applying to his lips a flask which he carried
at his side; it contained the liquor generally known under the name of
_“chica”_ in Peru, and more particularly under that of _“caysuma”_ in
the Upper Amazon, to which fermented distillation of the root of the
sweet manioc the captain had added a good dose of _“tafia”_ or native
rum.
When Torres had drunk a little of this mixture he shook the flask, and
discovered, not without regret, that it was nearly empty.
“Must get some more,” he said very quietly.
Then taking out a short wooden pipe, he filled it with the coarse
and bitter tobacco of Brazil, of which the leaves belong to that
old _“petun”_ introduced into France by Nicot, to whom we owe the
popularization of the most productive and widespread of the solanaceae.
This native tobacco had little in common with the fine qualities of our
present manufacturers; but Torres was not more difficult to please in
this matter than in others, and so, having filled his pipe, he struck a
match and applied the flame to a piece of that stick substance which
is the secretion of certain of the hymenoptera, and is known as “ants’
amadou.” With the amadou he lighted up, and after about a dozen whiffs
his eyes closed, his pipe escaped from his fingers, and he fell asleep.
CHAPTER II.
ROBBER AND ROBBED
Torres slept for about half an hour, and then there was a noise among
the trees--a sound of light footsteps, as though some visitor was
walking with naked feet, and taking all the precaution he could lest
he should be heard. To have put himself on guard against any suspicious
approach would have been the first care of our adventurer had his eyes
been open at the time. But he had not then awoke, and what advanced
was able to arrive in his presence, at ten paces from the tree, without
being perceived.
It was not a man at all, it was a “guariba.”
Of all the prehensile-tailed monkeys which haunt the forests of the
Upper Amazon--graceful sahuis, horned sapajous, gray-coated monos,
sagouins which seem to wear a mask on their grimacing faces--the guariba
is without doubt the most eccentric. Of sociable disposition, and not
very savage, differing therein very greatly from the mucura, who is as
ferocious as he is foul, he delights in company, and generally travels
in troops. It was he whose presence had been signaled from afar by the
monotonous concert of voices, so like the psalm-singing of some church
choir. But if nature has not made him vicious, it is none the less
necessary to attack him with caution, and under any circumstances a
sleeping traveler ought not to leave himself exposed, lest a guariba
should surprise him when he is not in a position to defend himself.
This monkey, which is also known in Brazil as the “barbado,” was of
large size. The suppleness and stoutness of his limbs proclaimed him a
powerful creature, as fit to fight on the ground as to leap from branch
to branch at the tops of the giants of the forest.
He advanced then cautiously, and with short steps. He glanced to
the right and to the left, and rapidly swung his tail. To these
representatives of the monkey tribe nature has not been content to give
four hands--she has shown herself more generous, and added a fifth, for
the extremity of their caudal appendage possesses a perfect power of
prehension.
The guariba noiselessly approached, brandishing a study cudgel, which,
wielded by his muscular arm, would have proved a formidable weapon.
For some minutes he had seen the man at the foot of the tree, but the
sleeper did not move, and this doubtless induced him to come and look at
him a little nearer. He came forward then, not without hesitation, and
stopped at last about three paces off.
On his bearded face was pictured a grin, which showed his sharp-edged
teeth, white as ivory, and the cudgel began to move about in a way that
was not very reassuring for the captain of the woods.
Unmistakably the sight of Torres did not inspire the guariba with
friendly thoughts. Had he then particular reasons for wishing evil to
this defenseless specimen of the human race which chance had delivered
over to him? Perhaps! We know how certain animals retain the memory of
the bad treatment they have received, and it is possible that against
backwoodsmen in general he bore some special grudge.
In fact Indians especially make more fuss about the monkey than any
other kind of game, and, no matter to what species it belongs, follow
its chase with the ardor of Nimrods, not only for the pleasure of
hunting it, but for the pleasure of eating it.
Whatever it was, the guariba did not seen disinclined to change
characters this time, and if he did not quite forget that nature had
made him but a simple herbivore, and longed to devour the captain of the
woods, he seemed at least to have made up his mind to get rid of one of
his natural enemies.
After looking at him for some minutes the guariba began to move round
the tree. He stepped slowly, holding his breath, and getting nearer and
nearer. His attitude was threatening, his countenance ferocious. Nothing
could have seemed easier to him than to have crushed this motionless man
at a single blow, and assuredly at that moment the life of Torres hung
by a thread.
In truth, the guariba stopped a second time close up to the tree, placed
himself at the side, so as to command the head of the sleeper, and
lifted his stick to give the blow.
But if Torres had been imprudent in putting near him in the crevice of
the root the little case which contained his document and his fortune,
it was this imprudence which saved his life.
A sunbeam shooting between the branches just glinted on the case, the
polished metal of which lighted up like a looking-glass. The monkey,
with the frivolity peculiar to his species, instantly had his attention
distracted. His ideas, if such an animal could have ideas, took another
direction. He stopped, caught hold of the case, jumped back a pace or
two, and, raising it to the level of his eyes, looked at it not without
surprise as he moved it about and used it like a mirror. He was if
anything still more astonished when he heard the rattle of the gold
pieces it contained. The music enchanted him. It was like a rattle in
the hands of a child. He carried it to his mouth, and his teeth grated
against the metal, but made no impression on it.
Doubtless the guariba thought he had found some fruit of a new kind, a
sort of huge almost brilliant all over, and with a kernel playing freely
in its shell. But if he soon discovered his mistake he did not consider
it a reason for throwing the case away; on the contrary, he grasped it
more tightly in his left hand, and dropped the cudgel, which broke off a
dry twig in its fall.
At this noise Torres woke, and with the quickness of those who are
always on the watch, with whom there is no transition from the sleeping
to the waking state, was immediately on his legs.
In an instant Torres had recognized with whom he had to deal.
“A guariba!” he cried.
And his hand seizing his manchetta, he put himself into a posture of
defense.
The monkey, alarmed, jumped back at once, and not so brave before a
waking man as a sleeping one, performed a rapid caper, and glided under
the trees.
“It was time!” said Torres; “the rogue would have settled me without any
ceremony!”
Of a sudden, between the hands of the monkey, who had stopped at about
twenty paces, and was watching him with violent grimaces, as if he would
like to snap his fingers at him, he caught sight of his precious case.
“The beggar!” he said. “If he has not killed me, he has done what is
almost as bad. He has robbed me!”
The thought that the case held his money was not however, what then
concerned him. But that which made him jump was the recollection that it
contained the precious document, the loss of which was irreparable, as
it carried with it that of all his hopes.
“Botheration!” said he.
And at the moment, cost what it might to recapture his case, Torres
threw himself in pursuit of the guariba.
He knew that to reach such an active animal was not easy. On the ground
he could get away too fast, in the branches he could get away too far. A
well-aimed gunshot could alone stop him as he ran or climbed, but Torres
possessed no firearm. His sword-knife and hoe were useless unless he
could get near enough to hit him.
It soon became evident that the monkey could not be reached unless by
surprise. Hence Torres found it necessary to employ cunning in dealing
with the mischievous animal. To stop, to hide himself behind some tree
trunk, to disappear under a bush, might induce the guariba to pull up
and retrace his steps, and there was nothing else for Torres to try.
This was what he did, and the pursuit commenced under these conditions;
but when the captain of the woods disappeared, the monkey patiently
waited until he came into sight again, and at this game Torres fatigued
himself without result.
“Confound the guariba!” he shouted at length. “There will be no end to
this, and he will lead me back to the Brazilian frontier. If only he
would let go of my case! But no! The jingling of the money amuses him.
Oh, you thief! If I could only get hold of you!”
And Torres recommenced the pursuit, and the monkey scuttled off with
renewed vigor.
An hour passed in this way without any result. Torres showed a
persistency which was quite natural. How without this document could he
get his money?
And then anger seized him. He swore, he stamped, he threatened the
guariba. That annoying animal only responded by a chuckling which was
enough to put him beside himself.
And then Torres gave himself up to the chase. He ran at top speed,
entangling himself in the high undergrowth, among those thick brambles
and interlacing creepers, across which the guariba passed like a
steeplechaser. Big roots hidden beneath the grass lay often in the way.
He stumbled over them and again started in pursuit. At length, to his
astonishment, he found himself shouting:
“Come here! come here! you robber!” as if he could make him understand
him.
His strength gave out, breath failed him, and he was obliged to stop.
“Confound it!” said he, “when I am after runaway slaves across the
jungle they never give me such trouble as this! But I will have you, you
wretched monkey! I will go, yes, I will go as far as my legs will carry
me, and we shall see!”
The guariba had remained motionless when he saw that the adventurer had
ceased to pursue him. He rested also, for he had nearly reached that
degree of exhaustion which had forbidden all movement on the part of
Torres.
He remained like this during ten minutes, nibbling away at two or three
roots, which he picked off the ground, and from time to time he rattled
the case at his ear.
Torres, driven to distraction, picked up the stones within his reach,
and threw them at him, but did no harm at such a distance.
But he hesitated to make a fresh start. On one hand, to keep on in chase
of the monkey with so little chance of reaching him was madness. On the
other, to accept as definite this accidental interruption to all his
plans, to be not only conquered, but cheated and hoaxed by a dumb
animal, was maddening. And in the meantime Torres had begun to think
that when the night came the robber would disappear without trouble, and
he, the robbed one, would find a difficulty in retracing his way through
the dense forest. In fact, the pursuit had taken him many miles from the
bank of the river, and he would even now find it difficult to return to
it.
Torres hesitated; he tried to resume his thoughts with coolness, and
finally, after giving vent to a last imprecation, he was about to
abandon all idea of regaining possession of his case, when once more, in
spite of himself, there flashed across him the thought of his document,
the remembrance of all that scaffolding on which his future hopes
depended, on which he had counted so much; and he resolved to make
another effort.
Then he got up.
The guariba got up too.
He made several steps in advance.
The monkey made as many in the rear, but this time, instead of plunging
more deeply into the forest, he stopped at the foot of an enormous
ficus--the tree of which the different kinds are so numerous all over
the Upper Amazon basin.
To seize the trunk with his four hands, to climb with the agility of a
clown who is acting the monkey, to hook on with his prehensile tail to
the first branches, which stretched away horizontally at forty feet from
the ground, and to hoist himself to the top of the tree, to the point
where the higher branches just bent beneath its weight, was only sport
to the active guariba, and the work of but a few seconds.
Up there, installed at his ease, he resumed his interrupted repast, and
gathered the fruits which were within his reach. Torres, like him, was
much in want of something to eat and drink, but it was impossible! His
pouch was flat, his flask was empty.
However, instead of retracing his steps he directed them toward the
tree, although the position taken up by the monkey was still more
unfavorable for him. He could not dream for one instant of climbing the
ficus, which the thief would have quickly abandoned for another.
And all the time the miserable case rattled at his ear.
Then in his fury, in his folly, Torres apostrophized the guariba. It
would be impossible for us to tell the series of invectives in which he
indulged. Not only did he call him a half-breed, which is the
greatest of insults in the mouth of a Brazilian of white descent, but
_“curiboca”_--that is to say, half-breed negro and Indian, and of all
the insults that one man can hurl at another in this equatorial latitude
_“curiboca”_ is the cruelest.
But the monkey, who was only a humble quadruman, was simply amused at
what would have revolted a representative of humanity.
Then Torres began to throw stones at him again, and bits of roots and
everything he could get hold of that would do for a missile. Had he the
hope to seriously hurt the monkey? No! he no longer knew what he was
about. To tell the truth, anger at his powerlessness had deprived him
of his wits. Perhaps he hoped that in one of the movements which the
guariba would make in passing from branch to branch the case might
escape him, perhaps he thought that if he continued to worry the monkey
he might throw it at his head. But no! the monkey did not part with the
case, and, holding it with one hand, he had still three left with which
to move.
Torres, in despair, was just about to abandon the chase for good, and
to return toward the Amazon, when he heard the sound of voices. Yes! the
sound of human voices.
Those were speaking at about twenty paces to the right of him.
The first care of Torres was to hide himself in a dense thicket. Like
a prudent man, he did not wish to show himself without at least knowing
with whom he might have to deal. Panting, puzzled, his ears on the
stretch, he waited, when suddenly the sharp report of a gun rang through
the woods.
A cry followed, and the monkey, mortally wounded, fell heavily on the
ground, still holding Torres’ case.
“By Jove!” he muttered, “that bullet came at the right time!”
And then, without fearing to be seen, he came out of the thicket, and
two young gentlemen appeared from under the trees.
They were Brazilians clothed as hunters, with leather boots, light
palm-leaf hats, waistcoats, or rather tunics, buckled in at the waist,
and more convenient than the national poncho. By their features and
their complexion they were at once recognizable as of Portuguese
descent.
Each of them was armed with one of those long guns of Spanish make which
slightly remind us of the arms of the Arabs, guns of long range and
considerable precision, which the dwellers in the forest of the upper
Amazon handle with success.
What had just happened was a proof of this. At an angular distance of
more than eighty paces the quadruman had been shot full in the head.
The two young men carried in addition, in their belts, a sort of
dagger-knife, which is known in Brazil as a _“foca,”_ and which hunters
do not hesitate to use when attacking the ounce and other wild animals
which, if not very formidable, are pretty numerous in these forests.
Torres had obviously little to fear from this meeting, and so he went on
running toward the monkey’s corpse.
But the young men, who were taking the same direction, had less ground
to cover, and coming forward a few paces, found themselves face to face
with Torres.
The latter had recovered his presence of mind.
“Many thanks, gentlemen,” said he gayly, as he raised the brim of his
hat; “in killing this wretched animal you have just done me a great
service!”
The hunters looked at him inquiringly, not knowing what value to attach
to his thanks.
Torres explained matters in a few words.
“You thought you had killed a monkey,” said he, “but as it happens you
have killed a thief!”
“If we have been of use to you,” said the youngest of the two, “it was
by accident, but we are none the less pleased to find that we have done
some good.”
And taking several steps to the rear, he bent over the guariba, and, not
without an effort, withdrew the case from his stiffened hand.
“Doubtless that, sir, is what belongs to you?”
“The very thing,” said Torres briskly, catching hold of the case and
failing to repress a huge sigh of relief.
“Whom ought I to thank, gentlemen,” said he, “for the service you have
rendered me?”
“My friend, Manoel, assistant surgeon, Brazilian army,” replied the
young man.
“If it was I who shot the monkey, Benito,” said Manoel, “it was you that
pointed him out to me.”
“In that case, sirs,” replied Torres, “I am under an obligation to you
both, as well to you, Mr. Manoel, as to you, Mr. ----”
“Benito Garral,” replied Manoel.
The captain of the woods required great command over himself to avoid
giving a jump when he heard this name, and more especially when the
young man obligingly continued:
“My father, Joam Garral, has his farm about three miles from here. If
you would like, Mr. ----”
“Torres,” replied the adventurer.
“If you would like to accompany us there, Mr. Torres, you will be
hospitably received.”
“I do not know that I can,” said Torres, who, surprised by this
unexpected meeting, hesitated to make a start. “I fear in truth that I
am not able to accept your offer. The occurrence I have just related to
you has caused me to lose time. It is necessary for me to return at once
to the Amazon--as I purpose descending thence to Para.”
“Very well, Mr. Torres,” replied Benito, “it is not unlikely that we
shall see you again in our travels, for before a month has passed my
father and all his family will have taken the same road as you.”
“Ah!” said Torres sharply, “your father is thinking of recrossing the
Brazilian frontier?”
“Yes, for a voyage of some months,” replied Benito. “At least we hope to
make him decide so. Don’t we, Manoel?”
Manoel nodded affirmatively.
“Well, gentlemen,” replied Torres, “it is very probable that we shall
meet again on the road. But I cannot, much to my regret, accept your
offer now. I thank you, nevertheless, and I consider myself as twice
your debtor.”
And having said so, Torres saluted the young men, who in turn saluted
him, and set out on their way to the farm.
As for Torres he looked after them as they got further and further away,
and when he had lost sight of them--
“Ah! he is about to recross the frontier!” said he, with a deep voice.
“Let him recross it! and he will be still more at my mercy! Pleasant
journey to you, Joam Garral!”
And having uttered these words the captain of the woods, making for the
south so as to regain the left bank of the river by the shortest road,
disappeared into the dense forest.
CHAPTER III.
THE GARRAL FAMILY
The village of Iquitos is situated on the left bank of the Amazon, near
the seventy-fourth meridian, on that portion of the great river which
still bears the name of the Marânon, and of which the bed separates Peru
from the republic of Ecuador. It is about fifty-five leagues to the west
of the Brazilian frontier.
Iquitos, like every other collection of huts, hamlet, or village met
with in the basin of the Upper Amazon, was founded by the missionaries.
Up to the seventeenth year of the century the Iquito Indians, who
then formed the entire population, were settled in the interior of the
province at some distance from the river. But one day the springs in
their territory all dried up under the influence of a volcanic eruption,
and they were obliged to come and take up their abode on the left of the
Marânon. The race soon altered through the alliances which were entered
into with the riverine Indians, Ticunas, or Omaguas, mixed descent with
a few Spaniards, and to-day Iquitos has a population of two or three
families of half-breeds.
The village is most picturesquely grouped on a kind of esplanade, and
runs along at about sixty feet from the river. It consists of some forty
miserable huts, whose thatched roofs only just render them worthy of the
name of cottages. A stairway made of crossed trunks of trees leads up to
the village, which lies hidden from the traveler’s eyes until the steps
have been ascended. Once at the top he finds himself before an inclosure
admitting of slight defense, and consisting of many different shrubs and
arborescent plants, attached to each other by festoons of lianas, which
here and there have made their way abgove the summits of the graceful
palms and banana-trees.
At the time we speak of the Indians of Iquitos went about in almost a
state of nudity. The Spaniards and half-breeds alone were clothed,
and much as they scorned their indigenous fellow-citizens, wore only
a simple shirt, light cotton trousers, and a straw hat. All lived
cheerlessly enough in the village, mixing little together, and if they
did meet occasionally, it was only at such times as the bell of the
mission called them to the dilapidated cottage which served them for a
church.
But if existence in the village of Iquitos, as in most of the hamlets
of the Upper Amazon, was almost in a rudimentary stage, it was only
necessary to journey a league further down the river to find on the same
bank a wealthy settlement, with all the elements of comfortable life.
This was the farm of Joam Garral, toward which our two young friends
returned after their meeting with the captain of the woods.
There, on a bend of the stream, at the junction of the River Nanay,
which is here about five hundred feet across, there had been established
for many years this farm, homestead, or, to use the expression of the
country, _“fazenda,”_ then in the height of its prosperity. The Nanay
with its left bank bounded it to the north for about a mile, and for
nearly the same distance to the east it ran along the bank of the larger
river. To the west some small rivulets, tributaries of the Nanay, and
some lagoons of small extent, separated it from the savannah and the
fields devoted to the pasturage of the cattle.
It was here that Joam Garral, in 1826, twenty-six years before the date
when our story opens, was received by the proprietor of the fazenda.
This Portuguese, whose name was Magalhaës, followed the trade of
timber-felling, and his settlement, then recently formed, extended for
about half a mile along the bank of the river.
There, hospitable as he was, like all the Portuguese of the old race,
Magalhaës lived with his daughter Yaquita, who after the death of her
mother had taken charge of his household. Magalhaës was an excellent
worker, inured to fatigue, but lacking education. If he understood the
management of the few slaves whom he owned, and the dozen Indians
whom he hired, he showed himself much less apt in the various external
requirements of his trade. In truth, the establishment at Iquitos was
not prospering, and the affairs of the Portuguese were getting somewhat
embarrassed.
It was under these circumstances that Joam Garral, then twenty-two years
old, found himself one day in the presence of Magalhaës. He had arrived
in the country at the limit both of his strength and his resources.
Magalhaës had found him half-dead with hunger and fatigue in the
neighboring forest. The Portuguese had an excellent heart; he did not
ask the unknown where he came from, but what he wanted. The noble,
high-spirited look which Joam Garral bore in spite of his exhaustion
had touched him. He received him, restored him, and, for several days to
begin with, offered him a hospitality which lasted for his life.
Under such conditions it was that Joam Garral was introduced to the farm
at Iquitos.
Brazilian by birth, Joam Garral was without family or fortune. Trouble,
he said, had obliged him to quit his country and abandon all thoughts
of return. He asked his host to excuse his entering on his past
misfortunes--misfortunes as serious as they were unmerited. What he
sought, and what he wished, was a new life, a life of labor. He had
started on his travels with some slight thought of entering a fazenda
in the interior. He was educated, intelligent. He had in all his bearing
that inexpressible something which tells you that the man is genuine and
of frank and upright character. Magalhaës, quite taken with him, asked
him to remain at the farm, where he would, in a measure, supply that
which was wanting in the worthy farmer.
Joam Garral accepted the offer without hesitation. His intention had
been to join a _“seringal,”_ or caoutchouc concern, in which in those
days a good workman could earn from five to six piastres a day, and
could hope to become a master if he had any luck; but Magalhaës very
truly observed that if the pay was good, work was only found in the
seringals at harvest time--that is to say, during only a few months of
the year--and this would not constitute the permanent position that a
young man ought to wish for.
The Portuguese was right. Joam Garral saw it, and entered resolutely
into the service of the fazenda, deciding to devote to it all his
powers.
Magalhaës had no cause to regret his generous action. His business
recovered. His wood trade, which extended by means of the Amazon up to
Para, was soon considerably extended under the impulse of Joam Garral.
The fazenda began to grow in proportion, and to spread out along the
bank of the river up to its junction with the Nanay. A delightful
residence was made of the house; it was raised a story, surrounded by a
veranda, and half hidden under beautiful trees--mimosas, fig-sycamores,
bauhinias, and paullinias, whose trunks were invisible beneath a network
of scarlet-flowered bromelias and passion-flowers.
At a distance, behind huge bushes and a dense mass of arborescent
plants, were concealed the buildings in which the staff of the fazenda
were accommodated--the servants’ offices, the cabins of the blacks, and
the huts of the Indians. From the bank of the river, bordered with reeds
and aquatic plants, the tree-encircled house was alone visible.
A vast meadow, laboriously cleared along the lagoons, offered excellent
pasturage. Cattle abounded--a new source of profit in these fertile
countries, where a herd doubles in four years, and where ten per cent.
interest is earned by nothing more than the skins and the hides of
the animals killed for the consumption of those who raise them! A few
_“sitios,”_ or manioc and coffee plantations, were started in parts of
the woods which were cleared. Fields of sugar-canes soon required the
construction of a mill to crush the sacchariferous stalks destined to be
used hereafter in the manufacture of molasses, tafia, and rum. In short,
ten years after the arrival of Joam Garral at the farm at Iquitos
the fazenda had become one of the richest establishments on the Upper
Amazon. Thanks to the good management exercised by the young clerk
over the works at home and the business abroad, its prosperity daily
increased.
The Portuguese did not wait so long to acknowledge what he owed to Joam
Garral. In order to recompense him in proportion to his merits he had
from the first given him an interest in the profits of his business,
and four years after his arrival he had made him a partner on the same
footing as himself, and with equal shares.
But there was more that he had in store for him. Yaquita, his daughter,
had, in this silent young man, so gentle to others, so stern to himself,
recognized the sterling qualities which her father had done. She was in
love with him, but though on his side Joam had not remained insensible
to the merits and the beauty of this excellent girl, he was too proud
and reserved to dream of asking her to marry him.
A serious incident hastened the solution.
Magalhaës was one day superintending a clearance and was mortally
wounded by the fall of a tree. Carried home helpless to the farm, and
feeling himself lost, he raised up Yaquita, who was weeping by his side,
took her hand, and put it into that of Joam Garral, making him swear to
take her for his wife.
“You have made my fortune,” he said, “and I shall not die in peace
unless by this union I know that the fortune of my daughter is assured.”
“I can continue her devoted servant, her brother, her protector, without
being her husband,” Joam Garral had at first replied. “I owe you all,
Magalhaës. I will never forget it, but the price you would pay for my
endeavors is out of all proportion to what they are worth.”
The old man insisted. Death would not allow him to wait; he demanded the
promise, and it was made to him.
Yaquita was then twenty-two years old, Joam was twenty-six. They
loved each other and they were married some hours before the death of
Magalhaës, who had just strength left to bless their union.
It was under these circumstances that in 1830 Joam Garral became the
new fazender of Iquitos, to the immense satisfaction of all those who
composed the staff of the farm.
The prosperity of the settlement could not do otherwise than grow when
these two minds were thus united.
A year after her marriage Yaquita presented her husband with a son, and,
two years after, a daughter. Benito and Minha, the grandchildren of the
old Portuguese, became worthy of their grandfather, children worthy of
Joam and Yaquita.
The daughter grew to be one of the most charming of girls. She never
left the fazenda. Brought up in pure and healthy surroundings, in the
midst of the beauteous nature of the tropics, the education given to her
by her mother, and the instruction received by her from her father, were
ample. What more could she have learned in a convent at Manaos or Belem?
Where would she have found better examples of the domestic virtues?
Would her mind and feelings have been more delicately formed away from
her home? If it was ordained that she was not to succeed her mother in
the management of the fazenda, she was equal to any other position to
which she might be called.
With Benito it was another thing. His father very wisely wished him to
receive as solid and complete an education as could then be obtained
in the large towns of Brazil. There was nothing which the rich fazender
refused his son. Benito was possessed of a cheerful disposition, an
active mind, a lively intelligence, and qualities of heart equal to
those of his head. At the age of twelve he was sent into Para, to Belem,
and there, under the direction of excellent professors, he acquired
the elements of an education which could not but eventually make him a
distinguished man. Nothing in literature, in the sciences, in the arts,
was a stranger to him. He studied as if the fortune of his father would
not allow him to remain idle. He was not among such as imagine that
riches exempt men from work--he was one of those noble characters,
resolute and just, who believe that nothing should diminish our natural
obligation in this respect if we wish to be worthy of the name of men.
During the first years of his residence at Belem, Benito had made the
acquaintance of Manoel Valdez. This young man, the son of a merchant in
Para, was pursuing his studies in the same institution as Benito. The
conformity of their characters and their tastes proved no barrier to
their uniting in the closest of friendships, and they became inseparable
companions.
Manoel, born in 1832, was one year older than Benito. He had only a
mother, and she lived on the modest fortune which her husband had left
her. When Manoel’s preliminary studies were finished, he had taken
up the subject of medicine. He had a passionate taste for that noble
profession, and his intention was to enter the army, toward which he
felt himself attracted.
At the time that we saw him with his friend Benito, Manoel Valdez had
already obtained his first step, and he had come away on leave for some
months to the fazenda, where he was accustomed to pass his holidays.
Well-built, and of distinguished bearing, with a certain native pride
which became him well, the young man was treated by Joam and Yaquita as
another son. But if this quality of son made him the brother of Benito,
the title was scarcely appreciated by him when Minha was concerned, for
he soon became attached to the young girl by a bond more intimate than
could exist between brother and sister.
In the year 1852--of which four months had already passed before
the commencement of this history--Joam Garral attained the age of
forty-eight years. In that sultry climate, which wears men away so
quickly, he had known how, by sobriety, self-denial, suitable living,
and constant work, to remain untouched where others had prematurely
succumbed. His hair, which he wore short, and his beard, which was
full, had already grown gray, and gave him the look of a Puritan. The
proverbial honesty of the Brazilian merchants and fazenders showed
itself in his features, of which straightforwardness was the leading
characteristic. His calm temperament seemed to indicate an interior
fire, kept well under control. The fearlessness of his look denoted a
deep-rooted strength, to which, when danger threatened, he could never
appeal in vain.
But, notwithstanding one could not help remarking about this quiet man
of vigorous health, with whom all things had succeeded in life, a depth
of sadness which even the tenderness of Yaquita had not been able to
subdue.
Respected by all, placed in all the conditions that would seem necessary
to happiness, why was not this just man more cheerful and less reserved?
Why did he seem to be happy for others and not for himself? Was this
disposition attributable to some secret grief? Herein was a constant
source of anxiety to his wife.
Yaquita was now forty-four. In that tropical country where women are
already old at thirty she had learned the secret of resisting the
climate’s destructive influences, and her features, a little sharpened
but still beautiful, retained the haughty outline of the Portuguese
type, in which nobility of face unites so naturally with dignity of
mind.
Benito and Minha responded with an affection unbounded and unceasing for
the love which their parents bore them.
Benito was now aged twenty-one, and quick, brave, and sympathetic,
contrasted outwardly with his friend Manoel, who was more serious and
reflective. It was a great treat for Benito, after quite a year passed
at Belem, so far from the fazenda, to return with his young friend to
his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to
find himself, enthusiastic hunter as he was, in the midst of these
superb forests of the Upper Amazon, some of whose secrets remained after
so many centuries still unsolved by man.
Minha was twenty years old. A lovely girl, brunette, and with large blue
eyes, eyes which seemed to open into her very soul; of middle height,
good figure, and winning grace, in every way the very image of Yaquita.
A little more serious than her brother, affable, good-natured, and
charitable, she was beloved by all. On this subject you could fearlessly
interrogate the humblest servants of the fazenda. It was unnecessary to
ask her brother’s friend, Manoel Valdez, what he thought of her. He was
too much interested in the question to have replied without a certain
amount of partiality.
This sketch of the Garral family would not be complete, and would lack
some of its features, were we not to mention the numerous staff of the
fazenda.
In the first place, then, it behooves us to name an old negress, of some
sixty years, called Cybele, free through the will of her master, a slave
through her affection for him and his, and who had been the nurse
of Yaquita. She was one of the family. She thee-ed and thou-ed both
daughter and mother. The whole of this good creature’s life was passed
in these fields, in the middle of these forests, on that bank of the
river which bounded the horizon of the farm. Coming as a child to
Iquitos in the slave-trading times, she had never quitted the village;
she was married there, and early a widow, had lost her only son, and
remained in the service of Magalhaës. Of the Amazon she knew no more
than what flowed before her eyes.
With her, and more specially attached to the service of Minha, was a
pretty, laughing mulatto, of the same age as her mistress, to whom
she was completely devoted. She was called Lina. One of those gentle
creatures, a little spoiled, perhaps, to whom a good deal of familiarity
is allowed, but who in return adore their mistresses. Quick, restless,
coaxing, and lazy, she could do what she pleased in the house.
As for servants they were of two kinds--Indians, of whom there were
about a hundred, employed always for the works of the fazenda, and
blacks to about double the number, who were not yet free, but whose
children were not born slaves. Joam Garral had herein preceded the
Brazilian government. In this country, moreover, the negroes coming
from Benguela, the Congo, or the Gold Coast were always treated with
kindness, and it was not at the fazenda of Iquitos that one would look
for those sad examples of cruelty which were so frequent on foreign
plantations.
CHAPTER IV.
HESITATION
Manoel was in love with the sister of his friend Benito, and she was
in love with him. Each was sensible of the other’s worth, and each was
worthy of the other.
When he was no longer able to mistake the state of his feelings toward
Minha, Manoel had opened his heart to Benito.
“Manoel, my friend,” had immediately answered the enthusiastic young
fellow, “you could not do better than wish to marry my sister. Leave
it to me! I will commence by speaking to the mother, and I think I can
promise that you will not have to wait long for her consent.”
Half an hour afterward he had done so.
Benito had nothing to tell his mother which she did not know; Yaquita
had already divined the young people’s secret.
Before ten minutes had elapsed Benito was in the presence of Minha. They
had but to agree; there was no need for much eloquence. At the first
words the head of the gentle girl was laid on her brother’s shoulder,
and the confession, “I am so happy!” was whispered from her heart.
The answer almost came before the question; that was obvious. Benito did
not ask for more.
There could be little doubt as to Joam Garral’s consent. But if Yaquita
and her children did not at once speak to him about the marriage, it was
because they wished at the same time to touch on a question which might
be more difficult to solve. That question was, Where should the wedding
take place?
Where should it be celebrated? In the humble cottage which served for
the village church? Why not? Joam and Yaquita had there received the
nuptial benediction of the Padre Passanha, who was then the curate of
Iquitos parish. At that time, as now, there was no distinction in Brazil
between the civil and religious acts, and the registers of the mission
were sufficient testimony to a ceremony which no officer of the civil
power was intrusted to attend to.
Joam Garral would probably wish the marriage to take place at Iquitos,
with grand ceremonies and the attendance of the whole staff of the
fazenda, but if such was to be his idea he would have to withstand a
vigorous attack concerning it.
“Manoel,” Minha said to her betrothed, “if I was consulted in the matter
we should not be married here, but at Para. Madame Valdez is an invalid;
she cannot visit Iquitos, and I should not like to become her daughter
without knowing and being known by her. My mother agrees with me in
thinking so. We should like to persuade my father to take us to Belem.
Do you not think so?”
To this proposition Manoel had replied by pressing Minha’s hand. He also
had a great wish for his mother to be present at his marriage. Benito
had approved the scheme without hesitation, and it was only necessary to
persuade Joam Garral. And hence on this day the young men had gone out
hunting in the woods, so as to leave Yaquita alone with her husband.
In the afternoon these two were in the large room of the house. Joam
Garral, who had just come in, was half-reclining on a couch of plaited
bamboos, when Yaquita, a little anxious, came and seated herself beside
him.
To tell Joam of the feelings which Manoel entertained toward his
daughter was not what troubled her. The happiness of Minha could not
but be assured by the marriage, and Joam would be glad to welcome to his
arms the new son whose sterling qualities he recognized and appreciated.
But to persuade her husband to leave the fazenda Yaquita felt to be a
very serious matter.
In fact, since Joam Garral, then a young man, had arrived in the
country, he had never left it for a day. Though the sight of the Amazon,
with its waters gently flowing to the east, invited him to follow its
course; though Joam every year sent rafts of wood to Manaos, to Belem,
and the seacoast of Para; though he had seen each year Benito leave
after his holidays to return to his studies, yet the thought seemed
never to have occurred to him to go with him.
The products of the farm, of the forest, and of the fields, the fazender
sold on the spot. He had no wish, either with thought or look, to go
beyond the horizon which bounded his Eden.
From this it followed that for twenty-five years Joam Garral had never
crossed the Brazilian frontier, his wife and daughter had never set
foot on Brazilian soil. The longing to see something of that beautiful
country of which Benito was often talking was not wanting, nevertheless.
Two or three times Yaquita had sounded her husband in the matter. But
she had noticed that the thought of leaving the fazenda, if only for a
few weeks, brought an increase of sadness to his face. His eyes would
close, and in a tone of mild reproach he would answer:
“Why leave our home? Are we not comfortable here?”
And Yaquita, in the presence of the man whose active kindness and
unchangeable tenderness rendered her so happy, had not the courage to
persist.
This time, however, there was a serious reason to make it worth while.
The marriage of Minha afforded an excellent opportunity, it being so
natural for them to accompany her to Belem, where she was going to live
with her husband. She would there see and learn to love the mother
of Manoel Valdez. How could Joam Garral hesitate in the face of so
praiseworthy a desire? Why, on the other hand, did he not participate
in this desire to become acquainted with her who was to be the second
mother of his child?
Yaquita took her husband’s hand, and with that gentle voice which had
been to him all the music of his life:
“Joam,” she said, “I am going to talk to you about something which we
ardently wish, and which will make you as happy as we are.”
“What is it about, Yaquita?” asked Joam.
“Manoel loves your daughter, he is loved by her, and in this union they
will find the happiness----”
At the first words of Yaquita Joam Garral had risen, without being able
to control a sudden start. His eyes were immediately cast down, and he
seemed to designedly avoid the look of his wife.
“What is the matter with you?” asked she.
“Minha? To get married!” murmured Joam.
“My dear,” said Yaquita, feeling somewhat hurt, “have you any objection
to make to the marriage? Have you not for some time noticed the feelings
which Manoel has entertained toward our daughter?”
“Yes; and a year since----”
And Joam sat down without finishing his thoughts. By an effort of his
will he had again become master of himself. The unaccountable impression
which had been made upon him disappeared. Gradually his eyes returned to
meet those of Yaquita, and he remained thoughtfully looking at her.
Yaquita took his hand.
“Joam,” she said, “have I been deceived? Had you no idea that this
marriage would one day take place, and that it would give her every
chance of happiness?”
“Yes,” answered Joam. “All! Certainly. But, Yaquita, this wedding--this
wedding that we are both thinking of--when is it coming off? Shortly?”
“It will come off when you choose, Joam.”
“And it will take place here--at Iquitos?”
This question obliged Yaquita to enter on the other matter which she had
at heart. She did not do so, however, without some hesitation, which was
quite intelligible.
“Joam,” said she, after a moment’s silence, “listen to me. Regarding
this wedding, I have got a proposal which I hope you will approve of.
Two or three times during the last twenty years I have asked you to take
me and my daughter to the provinces of the Lower Amazon, and to Para,
where we have never been. The cares of the fazenda, the works which have
required your presence, have not allowed you to grant our request.
To absent yourself even for a few days would then have injured your
business. But now everything has been successful beyond your dreams, and
if the hour of repose has not yet come for you, you can at least for a
few weeks get away from your work.”
Joam Garral did not answer, but Yaquita felt his hand tremble in hers,
as though under the shock of some sorrowful recollection. At the same
time a half-smile came to her husband’s lips--a mute invitation for her
to finish what she had begun.
“Joam,” she continued, “here is an occasion which we shall never see
again in this life. Minha is going to be married away from us, and is
going to leave us! It is the first sorrow which our daughter has caused
us, and my heart quails when I think of the separation which is so near!
But I should be content if I could accompany her to Belem! Does it
not seem right to you, even in other respects that we should know her
husband’s mother, who is to replace me, and to whom we are about to
entrust her? Added to this, Minha does not wish to grieve Madame Valdez
by getting married at a distance from her. When we were married, Joam,
if your mother had been alive, would you not have liked her to be
present at your wedding?”
At these words of Yaquita Joam made a movement which he could not
repress.
“My dear,” continued Yaquita, “with Minha, with our two sons, Benito and
Manoel, with you, how I should like to see Brazil, and to journey down
this splendid river, even to the provinces on the seacoast through which
it runs! It seems to me that the separation would be so much less cruel!
As we came back we should revisit our daughter in her house with her
second mother. I would not think of her as gone I knew not where. I
would fancy myself much less a stranger to the doings of her life.”
This time Joam had fixed his eyes on his wife and looked at her for some
time without saying anything.
What ailed him? Why this hesitation to grant a request which was so just
in itself--to say “Yes,” when it would give such pleasure to all who
belonged to him? His business affairs could not afford a sufficient
reason. A few weeks of absence would not compromise matters to such a
degree. His manager would be able to take his place without any hitch in
the fazenda. And yet all this time he hesitated.
Yaquita had taken both her husband’s hands in hers, and pressed them
tenderly.
“Joam,” she said, “it is not a mere whim that I am asking you to grant.
No! For a long time I have thought over the proposition I have just
made to you; and if you consent, it will be the realization of my most
cherished desire. Our children know why I am now talking to you. Minha,
Benito, Manoel, all ask this favor, that we should accompany them. We
would all rather have the wedding at Belem than at Iquitos. It will be
better for your daughter, for her establishment, for the position which
she will take at Belem, that she should arrive with her people, and
appear less of a stranger in the town in which she will spend most of
her life.”
Joam Garral leaned on his elbows. For a moment he hid his face in his
hands, like a man who had to collect his thoughts before he made answer.
There was evidently some hesitation which he was anxious to overcome,
even some trouble which his wife felt but could not explain. A secret
battle was being fought under that thoughtful brow. Yaquita got anxious,
and almost reproached herself for raising the question. Anyhow, she was
resigned to what Joam should decide. If the expedition would cost
too much, she would silence her wishes; she would never more speak
of leaving the fazenda, and never ask the reason for the inexplicable
refusal.
Some minutes passed. Joam Garral rose. He went to the door, and did not
return. Then he seemed to give a last look on that glorious nature, on
that corner of the world where for twenty years of his life he had met
with all his happiness.
Then with slow steps he returned to his wife. His face bore a new
expression, that of a man who had taken a last decision, and with whom
irresolution had ceased.
“You are right,” he said, in a firm voice. “The journey is necessary.
When shall we start?”
“Ah! Joam! my Joam!” cried Yaquita, in her joy. “Thank you for me! Thank
you for them!”
And tears of affection came to her eyes as her husband clasped her to
his heart.
At this moment happy voices were heard outside at the door of the house.
Manoel and Benito appeared an instant after at the threshold, almost at
the same moment as Minha entered the room.
“Children! your father consents!” cried Yaquita. “We are going to
Belem!”
With a grave face, and without speaking a word, Joam Garral received the
congratulations of his son and the kisses of his daughter.
“And what date, father,” asked Benito, “have you fixed for the wedding?”
“Date?” answered Joam. “Date? We shall see. We will fix it at Belem.”
“I am so happy! I am so happy!” repeated Minha, as she had done on the
day when she had first known of Manoel’s request. “We shall now see the
Amazon in all its glory throughout its course through the provinces of
Brazil! Thanks, father!”
And the young enthusiast, whose imagination was already stirred,
continued to her brother and to Manoel:
“Let us be off to the library! Let us get hold of every book and every
map that we can find which will tell us anything about this magnificent
river system! Don’t let us travel like blind folks! I want to see
everything and know everything about this king of the rivers of the
earth!”
CHAPTER V.
THE AMAZON
“The largest river in the whole world!” said Benito to Manoel Valdez, on
the morrow.
They were sitting on the bank which formed the southern boundary of the
fazenda, and looking at the liquid molecules passing slowly by, which,
coming from the enormous range of the Andes, were on their road to lose
themselves in the Atlantic Ocean eight hundred leagues away.
“And the river which carries to the sea the largest volume of water,”
replied Manoel.
“A volume so considerable,” added Benito, “that it freshens the sea
water for an immense distance from its mouth, and the force of whose
current is felt by ships at eight leagues from the coast.”
“A river whose course is developed over more than thirty degrees of
latitude.”
“And in a basin which from south to north does not comprise less than
twenty-five degrees.”
“A basin!” exclaimed Benito. “Can you call it a basin, the vast plain
through which it runs, the savannah which on all sides stretches out of
sight, without a hill to give a gradient, without a mountain to bound
the horizon?”
“And along its whole extent,” continued Manoel, “like the thousand
tentacles of some gigantic polyp, two hundred tributaries, flowing from
north or south, themselves fed by smaller affluents without number, by
the side of which the large rivers of Europe are but petty streamlets.”
“And in its course five hundred and sixty islands, without counting
islets, drifting or stationary, forming a kind of archipelago, and
yielding of themselves the wealth of a kingdom!”
“And along its flanks canals, lagoons, and lakes, such as cannot be met
with even in Switzerland, Lombardy, Scotland, or Canada.”
“A river which, fed by its myriad tributaries, discharges into the
Atlantic over two hundred and fifty millions of cubic meters of water
every hour.”
“A river whose course serves as the boundary of two republics, and
sweeps majestically across the largest empire of South America, as if it
were, in very truth, the Pacific Ocean itself flowing out along its own
canal into the Atlantic.”
“And what a mouth! An arm of the sea in which one island, Marajo, has a
circumference of more than five hundred leagues!”
“And whose waters the ocean does not pond back without raising in a
strife which is phenomenal, a tide-race, or _‘pororoca,’_ to which the
ebbs, the bores, and the eddies of other rivers are but tiny ripples
fanned up by the breeze.”
“A river which three names are scarcely enough to distinguish, and which
ships of heavy tonnage, without any change in their cargoes, can ascend
for more than three thousand miles from its mouth.”
“A river which, by itself, its affluents, and subsidiary streams,
opens a navigable commercial route across the whole of the south of
the continent, passing from the Magdalena to the Ortequazza, from the
Ortequazza to the Caqueta, from the Caqueta to the Putumayo, from the
Putumayo to the Amazon! Four thousand miles of waterway, which only
require a few canals to make the network of navigation complete!”
“In short, the biggest and most admirable river system which we have in
the world.”
The two young men were speaking in a kind of frenzy of their
incomparable river. They were themselves children of this great
Amazon, whose affluents, well worthy of itself, from the highways which
penetrate Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, New Grenada, Venezuela, and the four
Guianas--English, French, Dutch and Brazilian.
What nations, what races, has it seen whose origin is lost in the
far-distant past! It is one of the largest rivers of the globe. Its true
source still baffles our explorers. Numbers of States still claim
the honor of giving it birth. The Amazon was not likely to escape the
inevitable fate, and Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia have for years disputed
as to the honor of its glorious paternity.
To-day, however, there seems to be little doubt but that the Amazon
rises in Peru, in the district of Huaraco, in the department of Tarma,
and that it starts from the Lake of Lauricocha, which is situated
between the eleventh and twelfth degree of south latitude.
Those who make the river rise in Bolivia, and descend form the mountains
of Titicaca, have to prove that the true Amazon is the Ucayali, which is
formed by the junction of the Paro and the Apurimac--an assertion which
is now generally rejected.
At its departure from Lake Lauricocha the youthful river starts toward
the northeast for a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, and does
not strike to the west until it has received an important tributary--the
Panta. It is called the Marañon in its journey through Colombia and Peru
up to the Brazilian frontier--or, rather, the Maranhao, for Marañon is
only the French rendering of the Portuguese name.
From the frontier of Brazil to Manaos, where the superb Rio Negro joins
it, it takes the name of the Solimaës, or Solimoens, from the name of
the Indian tribe Solimao, of which survivors are still found in the
neighboring provinces. And, finally, from Manaos to the sea it is the
Amasenas, or river of the Amazons, a name given it by the old
Spaniards, the descendants of the adventurous Orellana, whose vague but
enthusiastic stories went to show that there existed a tribe of female
warriors on the Rio Nhamunda, one of the middle-sized affluents of the
great river.
From its commencement the Amazon is recognizable as destined to become
a magnificent stream. There are neither rapids nor obstacles of any sort
until it reaches a defile where its course is slightly narrowed between
two picturesque and unequal precipices. No falls are met with until this
point is reached, where it curves to the eastward, and passes through
the intermediary chain of the Andes. Hereabouts are a few waterfalls,
were it not for which the river would be navigable from its mouth to its
source. As it is, however, according the Humboldt, the Amazon is free
for five-sixths of its length.
And from its first starting there is no lack of tributaries, which are
themselves fed by subsidiary streams. There is the Chinchipa, coming
from the northeast, on its left. On its right it is joined by the
Chachapoyas, coming from the northeast. On the left we have the Marona
and the Pastuca; and the Guallaga comes in from the right near the
mission station of Laguna. On the left there comes the Chambyra and the
Tigré, flowing from the northeast; and on the right the Huallaga, which
joins the main stream twenty-eight hundred miles from the Atlantic, and
can be ascended by steamboats for over two hundred miles into the very
heart of Peru. To the right, again, near the mission of San Joachim
d’Omaguas, just where the upper basin terminates, and after flowing
majestically across the pampas of Sacramento, it receives the
magnificent Ucayali, the great artery which, fed by numerous affluents,
descends from Lake Chucuito, in the northeast of Arica.
Such are the principal branches above the village of Iquitos. Down the
stream the tributaries become so considerable that the beds of most
European rivers would fail to contain them. But the mouths of these
auxiliary waters Joam Garral and his people will pass as they journey
down the Amazon.
To the beauties of this unrivaled river, which waters the finest country
in the world, and keeps along its whole course at a few degrees to the
south of the equator, there is to be added another quality, possessed
by neither the Nile, the Mississippi, nor the Livingstone--or, in
other words, the old Congo-Zaira-Lualaba--and that is (although some
ill-informed travelers have stated to the contrary) that the Amazon
crosses a most healthy part of South America. Its basin is constantly
swept by westerly winds. It is not a narrow valley surrounded by high
mountains which border its banks, but a huge plain, measuring three
hundred and fifty leagues from north to south, scarcely varied with a
few knolls, whose whole extent the atmospheric currents can traverse
unchecked.
Professor Agassiz very properly protested against the pretended
unhealthiness of the climate of a country which is destined to become one
of the most active of the world’s producers. According to him, “a soft
and gentle breeze is constantly observable, and produces an evaporation,
thanks to which the temperature is kept down, and the sun does not give
out heat unchecked. The constancy of this refreshing breeze renders the
climate of the river Amazon agreeable, and even delightful.”
The Abbé Durand has likewise testified that if the temperature does not
drop below 25 degrees Centigrade, it never rises above 33 degrees, and
this gives for the year a mean temperature of from 28 degrees to 29
degrees, with a range of only 8 degrees.
After such statements we are safe in affirming that the basin of the
Amazon has none of the burning heats of countries like Asia and Africa,
which are crossed by the same parallels.
The vast plain which serves for its valley is accessible over its whole
extent to the generous breezes which come from off the Atlantic.
And the provinces to which the river has given its name have
acknowledged right to call themselves the healthiest of a country which
is one of the finest on the earth.
And how can we say that the hydrographical system of the Amazon is not
known?
In the sixteenth century Orellana, the lieutenant of one of the brothers
Pizarro, descended the Rio Negro, arrived on the main river in 1540,
ventured without a guide across the unknown district, and, after
eighteen months of a navigation of which is record is most marvelous,
reached the mouth.
In 1636 and 1637 the Portuguese Pedro Texeira ascended the Amazon to
Napo, with a fleet of forty-seven pirogues.
In 1743 La Condamine, after having measured an arc of the meridian at
the equator, left his companions Bouguer and Godin des Odonais, embarked
on the Chinchipe, descended it to its junction with the Marañon, reached
the mouth at Napo on the 31st of July, just in time to observe an
emersion of the first satellite of Jupiter--which allowed this “Humboldt
of the eighteenth century” to accurately determine the latitude and
longitude of the spot--visited the villages on both banks, and on the
6th of September arrived in front of the fort of Para. This immense
journey had important results--not only was the course of the Amazon
made out in scientific fashion, but it seemed almost certain that it
communicated with the Orinoco.
Fifty-five years later Humboldt and Bonpland completed the valuable work
of La Condamine, and drew up the map of the Manañon as far as Napo.
Since this period the Amazon itself and all its principal tributaries
have been frequently visited.
In 1827 Lister-Maw, in 1834 and 1835 Smyth, in 1844 the French
lieutenant in command of the “Boulonnaise,” the Brazilian Valdez in
1840, the French “Paul Marcoy” from 1848 to 1860, the whimsical painter
Biard in 1859, Professor Agassiz in 1865 and 1866, in 1967 the Brazilian
engineer Franz Keller-Linzenger, and lastly, in 1879 Doctor Crevaux,
have explored the course of the river, ascended many of its tributaries,
and ascertained the navigability of its principal affluents.
But what has won the greatest honor for the Brazilian government is
that on the 31st of July, 1857, after numerous frontier disputes between
France and Brazil, about the Guiana boundary, the course of the Amazon
was declared to be free and open to all flags; and, to make practice
harmonize with theory, Brazil entered into negotiations with the
neighboring powers for the exploration of every river-road in the basin
of the Amazon.
To-day lines of well-found steamboats, which correspond direct with
Liverpool, are plying on the river from its mouth up to Manaos; others
ascend to Iquitos; others by way of the Tapajoz, the Madeira, the Rio
Negro, or the Purus, make their way into the center of Peru and Bolivia.
One can easily imagine the progress which commerce will one day make in
this immense and wealthy area, which is without a rival in the world.
But to this medal of the future there is a reverse. No progress can be
accomplished without detriment to the indigenous races.
In face, on the Upper Amazon many Indian tribes have already
disappeared, among others the Curicicurus and the Sorimaos. On the
Putumayo, if a few Yuris are still met with, the Yahuas have abandoned
the district to take refuge among some of the distant tributaries, and
the Maoos have quitted its banks to wander in their diminished numbers
among the forests of Japura.
The Tunantins is almost depopulated, and there are only a few families
of wandering Indians at the mouth of the Jurua. The Teffé is almost
deserted, and near the sources of the Japur there remained but the
fragments of the great nation of the Umaüa. The Coari is forsaken. There
are but few Muras Indians on the banks of the Purus. Of the ancient
Manaos one can count but a wandering party or two. On the banks of the
Rio Negro there are only a few half-breeds, Portuguese and natives,
where a few years ago twenty-four different nations had their homes.
Such is the law of progress. The Indians will disappear. Before the
Anglo-Saxon race Australians and Tasmanians have vanished. Before the
conquerors of the Far West the North American Indians have been wiped
out. One day perhaps the Arabs will be annihilated by the colonization
of the French.
But we must return to 1852. The means of communication, so numerous now,
did not then exist, and the journey of Joam Garral would require not
less than four months, owing to the conditions under which it was made.
Hence this observation of Benito, while the two friends were watching
the river as it gently flowed at their feet:
“Manoel, my friend, if there is very little interval between our arrival
at Belem and the moment of our separation, the time will appear to you
to be very short.”
“Yes, Benito,” said Manoel, “and very long as well, for Minha cannot by
my wife until the end of the voyage.”
CHAPTER VI.
A FOREST ON THE GROUND
The Garral family were in high glee. The magnificent journey on the
Amazon was to be undertaken under conditions as agreeable as possible.
Not only were the fazender and his family to start on a voyage for
several months, but, as we shall see, he was to be accompanied by a part
of the staff of the farm.
In beholding every one happy around him, Joam forgot the anxieties which
appeared to trouble his life. From the day his decision was taken he had
been another man, and when he busied himself about the preparations
for the expedition he regained his former activity. His people rejoiced
exceedingly at seeing him again at work. His moral self reacted against
his physical self, and Joam again became the active, energetic man of
his earlier years, and moved about once more as though he had spent
his life in the open air, under the invigorating influences of forests,
fields, and running waters.
Moreover, the few weeks that were to precede his departure had been well
employed.
At this period, as we have just remarked, the course of the Amazon was
not yet furrowed by the numberless steam vessels, which companies were
only then thinking of putting into the river. The service was worked by
individuals on their own account alone, and often the boats were only
employed in the business of the riverside establishments.
These boats were either _“ubas,”_ canoes made from the trunk of a tree,
hollowed out by fire, and finished with the ax, pointed and light in
front, and heavy and broad in the stern, able to carry from one to
a dozen paddlers, and of three or four tons burden: _“egariteas,”_
constructed on a larger scale, of broader design, and leaving on each
side a gangway for the rowers: or _“jangada,”_ rafts of no particular
shape, propelled by a triangular sail, and surmounted by a cabin of mud
and straw, which served the Indian and his family for a floating home.
These three kinds of craft formed the lesser flotilla of the Amazon, and
were only suited for a moderate traffic of passengers or merchandise.
Larger vessels, however, existed, either _“vigilingas,”_ ranging from
eight up to ten tons, with three masts rigged with red sails, and which
in calm weather were rowed by four long paddles not at all easy to work
against the stream; or _“cobertas,”_ of twenty tons burden, a kind
of junk with a poop behind and a cabin down below, with two masts and
square sails of unequal size, and propelled, when the wind fell, by six
long sweeps which Indians worked from a forecastle.
But neither of these vessels satisfied Joam Garral. From the moment that
he had resolved to descend the Amazon he had thought of making the most
of the voyage by carrying a huge convoy of goods into Para. From this
point of view there was no necessity to descend the river in a hurry.
And the determination to which he had come pleased every one, excepting,
perhaps, Manoel, who would for very good reasons have preferred some
rapid steamboat.
But though the means of transport devised by Joam were primitive in the
extreme, he was going to take with him a numerous following and abandon
himself to the stream under exceptional conditions of comfort and
security.
It would be, in truth, as if a part of the fazenda of Iquitos had
been cut away from the bank and carried down the Amazon with all that
composed the family of the fazender--masters and servants, in their
dwellings, their cottages, and their huts.
The settlement of Iquitos included a part of those magnificent forests
which, in the central districts of South America, are practically
inexhaustible.
Joam Garral thoroughly understood the management of these woods, which
were rich in the most precious and diverse species adapted for joinery,
cabinet work, ship building, and carpentry, and from them he annually
drew considerable profits.
The river was there in front of him, and could it not be as safely and
economically used as a railway if one existed? So every year Joam Garral
felled some hundreds of trees from his stock and formed immense rafts of
floating wood, of joists, beams, and slightly squared trunks, which were
taken to Para in charge of capable pilots who were thoroughly acquainted
with the depths of the river and the direction of its currents.
This year Joam Garral decided to do as he had done in preceding years.
Only, when the raft was made up, he was going to leave to Benito all
the detail of the trading part of the business. But there was no time
to lose. The beginning of June was the best season to start, for the
waters, increased by the floods of the upper basin, would gradually and
gradually subside until the month of October.
The first steps had thus to be taken without delay, for the raft was
to be of unusual proportions. It would be necessary to fell a half-mile
square of the forest which was situated at the junction of the Nanay and
the Amazon--that is to say, the whole river side of the fazenda, to form
the enormous mass, for such were the _jangadas,_ or river rafts, which
attained the dimensions of a small island.
It was in this _jangada,_ safer than any other vessel of the country,
larger than a hundred _egariteas_ or _vigilingas_ coupled together, that
Joam Garral proposed to embark with his family, his servants, and his
merchandise.
“Excellent idea!” had cried Minha, clapping her hands, when she learned
her father’s scheme.
“Yes,” said Yaquita, “and in that way we shall reach Belem without
danger or fatigue.”
“And during the stoppages we can have some hunting in the forests which
line the banks,” added Benito.
“Won’t it take rather long?” observed Manoel; “could we not hit upon
some quicker way of descending the Amazon?”
It would take some time, obviously, but the interested observation of
the young doctor received no attention from any one.
Joam Garral then called in an Indian who was the principal manager of
the fazenda.
“In a month,” he said to him, “the jangada must be built and ready to
launch.”
“We’ll set to work this very day, sir.”
It was a heavy task. There were about a hundred Indians and blacks,
and during the first fortnight in May they did wonders. Some people
unaccustomed to these great tree massacres would perhaps have groaned to
see giants many hundred years old fall in a few hours beneath the axes
of the woodmen; but there was such a quantity on the banks of the
river, up stream and down stream, even to the most distant points of
the horizon, that the felling of this half-mile of forest would scarcely
leave an appreciable void.
The superintendent of the men, after receiving the instructions of Joam
Garral, had first cleared the ground of the creepers, brushwood, weeds,
and arborescent plants which obstructed it. Before taking to the saw
and the ax they had armed themselves with a felling-sword, that
indispensable tool of every one who desires to penetrate the Amazonian
forests, a large blade slightly curved, wide and flat, and two or three
feet long, and strongly handled, which the natives wield with consummate
address. In a few hours, with the help of the felling-sword, they had
cleared the ground, cut down the underwood, and opened large gaps into
the densest portions of the wood.
In this way the work progressed. The ground was cleared in front of the
woodmen. The old trunks were divested of their clothing of creepers,
cacti, ferns, mosses, and bromelias. They were stripped naked to the
bark, until such time as the bark itself was stripped from off them.
Then the whole of the workers, before whom fled an innumerable crowd
of monkeys who were hardly their superiors in agility, slung themselves
into the upper branches, sawing off the heavier boughs and cutting down
the topmost limbs, which had to be cleared away on the spot. Very soon
there remained only a doomed forest, with long bare stems, bereft of
their crowns, through which the sun luxuriantly rayed on to the humid
soil which perhaps its shots had never before caressed.
There was not a single tree which could not be used for some work of
skill, either in carpentry or cabinet-work. There, shooting up like
columns of ivory ringed with brown, were wax-palms one hundred and
twenty feet high, and four feet thick at their base; white chestnuts,
which yield the three-cornered nuts; _“murichis,”_ unexcelled for
building purposes; _“barrigudos,”_ measuring a couple of yards at the
swelling, which is found at a few feet above the earth, trees with
shining russet bark dotted with gray tubercles, each pointed stem of
which supports a horizontal parasol; and _“bombax”_ of superb stature,
with its straight and smooth white stem. Among these magnificent
specimens of the Amazonian flora there fell many _“quatibos”_ whose
rosy canopies towered above the neighboring trees, whose fruits are
like little cups with rows of chestnuts ranged within, and whose wood of
clear violet is specially in demand for ship-building. And besides there
was the ironwood; and more particularly the _“ibiriratea,”_ nearly black
in its skin, and so close grained that of it the Indians make
their battle-axes; _“jacarandas,”_ more precious than mahogany;
_“cæsalpinas,”_ only now found in the depths of the old forests which
have escaped the woodman’s ax; _“sapucaias,”_ one hundred and fifty feet
high, buttressed by natural arches, which, starting from three yards
from their base, rejoin the tree some thirty feet up the stem, twining
themselves round the trunk like the filatures of a twisted column, whose
head expands in a bouquet of vegetable fireworks made up of the yellow,
purple, and snowy white of the parasitic plants.
Three weeks after the work was begun not one was standing of all the
trees which had covered the angle of the Amazon and the Nanay. The
clearance was complete. Joam Garral had not even had to bestir himself
in the demolition of a forest which it would take twenty or thirty
years to replace. Not a stick of young or old wood was left to mark the
boundary of a future clearing, not even an angle to mark the limit of
the denudation. It was indeed a clean sweep; the trees were cut to the
level of the earth, to wait the day when their roots would be got out,
over which the coming spring would still spread its verdant cloak.
This square space, washed on its sides by the waters of the river and
its tributary, was destined to be cleared, plowed, planted, and sown,
and the following year fields of manioc, coffee-shrubs, sugar-canes,
arrowroot, maize, and peanuts would occupy the ground so recently
covered by the trees.
The last week of the month had not arrived when the trunks, classified
according to their varieties and specific gravity, were symmetrically
arranged on the bank of the Amazon, at the spot where the immense
jangada was to be built--which, with the different habitations for the
accommodation of the crew, would become a veritable floating village--to
wait the time when the waters of the river, swollen by the floods, would
raise it and carry it for hundreds of leagues to the Atlantic coast.
The whole time the work was going on Joam Garral had been engaged in
superintending it. From the clearing to the bank of the fazenda he had
formed a large mound on which the portions of the raft were disposed,
and to this matter he had attended entirely himself.
Yaquita was occupied with Cybele with the preparations for the
departure, though the old negress could not be made to understand why
they wanted to go or what they hoped to see.
“But you will see things that you never saw before,” Yaquita kept saying
to her.
“Will they be better than what I see now?” was Cybele’s invariable
reply.
Minha and her favorite for their part took care of what more
particularly concerned them. They were not preparing for a simple
voyage; for them it was a permanent departure, and there were a thousand
details to look after for settling in the other country in which the
young mulatto was to live with the mistress to whom she was so devotedly
attached. Minha was a trifle sorrowful, but the joyous Lina was quite
unaffected at leaving Iquitos. Minha Valdez would be the same to her as
Minha Garral, and to check her spirits she would have to be separated
from her mistress, and that was never thought of.
Benito had actively assisted his father in the work, which was on the
point of completion. He commenced his apprenticeship to the trade of a
fazender, which would probably one day become his own, as he was about
to do that of a merchant on their descent of the river.
As for Manoel, he divided his time between the house, where Yaquita and
her daughter were as busy as possible, and the clearing, to which Benito
fetched him rather oftener than he thought convenient, and on the whole
the division was very unequal, as may well be imagined.
CHAPTER VII.
FOLLOWING A LIANA
It was a Sunday, the 26th of May, and the young people had made up
their minds to take a holiday. The weather was splendid, the heat being
tempered by the refreshing breezes which blew from off the Cordilleras,
and everything invited them out for an excursion into the country.
Benito and Manoel had offered to accompany Minha through the thick woods
which bordered the right bank of the Amazon opposite the fazenda.
It was, in a manner, a farewell visit to the charming environs of
Iquitos. The young men went equipped for the chase, but as sportsmen who
had no intention of going far from their companions in pursuit of any
game. Manoel could be trusted for that, and the girls--for Lina could
not leave her mistress--went prepared for a walk, an excursion of two or
three leagues being not too long to frighten them.
Neither Joam Garral nor Yaquita had time to go with them. For one reason
the plan of the jangada was not yet complete, and it was necessary that
its construction should not be interrupted for a day, and another was
that Yaquita and Cybele, well seconded as they were by the domestics of
the fazenda, had not an hour to lose.
Minha had accepted the offer with much pleasure, and so, after breakfast
on the day we speak of, at about eleven o’clock, the two young men and
the two girls met on the bank at the angle where the two streams joined.
One of the blacks went with them. They all embarked in one of the ubas
used in the service of the farm, and after having passed between the
islands of Iquitos and Parianta, they reached the right bank of the
Amazon.
They landed at a clump of superb tree-ferns, which were crowned, at
a height of some thirty feet with a sort of halo made of the dainty
branches of green velvet and the delicate lacework of the drooping
fronds.
“Well, Manoel,” said Minha, “it is for me to do the honors of the
forest; you are only a stranger in these regions of the Upper Amazon.
We are at home here, and you must allow me to do my duty, as mistress of
the house.”
“Dearest Minha,” replied the young man, “you will be none the less
mistress of your house in our town of Belem than at the fazenda of
Iquitos, and there as here----”
“Now, then,” interrupted Benito, “you did not come here to exchange
loving speeches, I imagine. Just forget for a few hours that you are
engaged.”
“Not for an hour--not for an instant!” said Manoel.
“Perhaps you will if Minha orders you?”
“Minha will not order me.”
“Who knows?” said Lina, laughing.
“Lina is right,” answered Minha, who held out her hand to Manoel. “Try
to forget! Forget! my brother requires it. All is broken off! As long
as this walk lasts we are not engaged: I am no more than the sister of
Benito! You are only my friend!”
“To be sure,” said Benito.
“Bravo! bravo! there are only strangers here,” said the young mulatto,
clapping her hands.
“Strangers who see each other for the first time,” added the girl; “who
meet, bow to----”
“Mademoiselle!” said Manoel, turning to Minha.
“To whom have I the honor to speak, sir?” said she in the most serious
manner possible.
“To Manoel Valdez, who will be glad if your brother will introduce me.”
“Oh, away with your nonsense!” cried Benito. “Stupid idea that I had! Be
engaged, my friends--be it as much as you like! Be it always!”
“Always!” said Minha, from whom the word escaped so naturally that
Lina’s peals of laughter redoubled.
A grateful glance from Manoel repaid Minha for the imprudence of her
tongue.
“Come along,” said Benito, so as to get his sister out of her
embarrassment; “if we walk on we shall not talk so much.”
“One moment, brother,” she said. “You have seen how ready I am to obey
you. You wished to oblige Manoel and me to forget each other, so as not
to spoil your walk. Very well; and now I am going to ask a sacrifice
from you so that you shall not spoil mine. Whether it pleases you or
not, Benito, you must promise me to forget----”
“Forget what?”
“That you are a sportsman!”
“What! you forbid me to----”
“I forbid you to fire at any of these charming birds--any of the
parrots, caciques, or curucus which are flying about so happily among
the trees! And the same interdiction with regard to the smaller game
with which we shall have to do to-day. If any ounce, jaguar, or such
thing comes too near, well----”
“But----” said Benito.
“If not, I will take Manoel’s arm, and we shall save or lose ourselves,
and you will be obliged to run after us.”
“Would you not like me to refuse, eh?” asked Benito, looking at Manoel.
“I think I should!” replied the young man.
“Well then--no!” said Benito; “I do not refuse; I will obey and annoy
you. Come on!”
And so the four, followed by the black, struck under the splendid trees,
whose thick foliage prevented the sun’s rays from every reaching the
soil.
There is nothing more magnificent than this part of the right bank of
the Amazon. There, in such picturesque confusion, so many different
trees shoot up that it is possible to count more than a hundred
different species in a square mile. A forester could easily see that
no woodman had been there with his hatchet or ax, for the effects of a
clearing are visible for many centuries afterward. If the new trees are
even a hundred years old, the general aspect still differs from what
it was originally, for the lianas and other parasitic plants alter, and
signs remain which no native can misunderstand.
The happy group moved then into the tall herbage, across the thickets
and under the bushes, chatting and laughing. In front, when the brambles
were too thick, the negro, felling-sword in hand, cleared the way, and
put thousands of birds to flight.
Minha was right to intercede for the little winged world which flew
about in the higher foliage, for the finest representations of
tropical ornithology were there to be seen--green parrots and clamorous
parakeets, which seemed to be the natural fruit of these gigantic
trees; humming-birds in all their varieties, light-blue and ruby red;
_“tisauras”_ with long scissors-like tails, looking like detached
flowers which the wind blew from branch to branch; blackbirds,
with orange plumage bound with brown; golden-edged beccaficos; and
_“sabias,”_ black as crows; all united in a deafening concert of shrieks
and whistles. The long beak of the toucan stood out against the golden
clusters of the _“quiriris,”_ and the treepeckers or woodpeckers of
Brazil wagged their little heads, speckled all over with their purple
spots. It was truly a scene of enchantment.
But all were silent and went into hiding when above the tops of the
trees there grated like a rusty weathercock the _“alma de gato”_ or
“soul of the cat,” a kind of light fawn-colored sparrow-hawk. If he
proudly hooted, displaying in the air the long white plumes of his tail,
he in his turn meekly took to flight when in the loftier heights there
appeared the _“gaviao,”_ the large white-headed eagle, the terror of the
whole winged population of these woods.
Minha made Manoel admire the natural wonders which could not be found
in their simplicity in the more civilized provinces of the east. He
listened to her more with his eyes than his ears, for the cries and the
songs of these thousands of birds were every now and then so penetrating
that he was not able to hear what she said. The noisy laughter of Lina
was alone sufficiently shrill to ring out with its joyous note above
every kind of clucking, chirping, hooting, whistling, and cooing.
At the end of an hour they had scarcely gone a mile. As they left the
river the trees assumed another aspect, and the animal life was no
longer met with near the ground, but at from sixty to eighty feet above,
where troops of monkeys chased each other along the higher branches.
Here and there a few cones of the solar rays shot down into the
underwood. In fact, in these tropical forests light does not seem to
be necessary for their existence. The air is enough for the vegetable
growth, whether it be large or small, tree or plant, and all the heat
required for the development of their sap is derived not from the
surrounding atmosphere, but from the bosom of the soil itself, where it
is stored up as in an enormous stove.
And on the bromelias, grass plantains, orchids, cacti, and in short all
the parasites which formed a little forest beneath the large one, many
marvelous insects were they tempted to pluck as though they had been
genuine blossoms--nestors with blue wings like shimmering watered silk,
leilu butterflies reflexed with gold and striped with fringes of green,
agrippina moths, ten inches long, with leaves for wings, maribunda bees,
like living emeralds set in sockets of gold, and legions of lampyrons or
pyrophorus coleopters, valagumas with breastplates of bronze, and green
elytræ, with yellow light pouring from their eyes, who, when the night
comes, illuminate the forest with their many-colored scintillations.
“What wonders!” repeated the enthusiastic girl.
“You are at home, Minha, or at least you say so,” said Benito, “and that
is the way you talk of your riches!”
“Sneer away, little brother!” replied Minha; “such beautiful things are
only lent to us; is it not so, Manoel? They come from the hand of the
Almighty and belong to the world!”
“Let Benito laugh on, Minha,” said Manoel. “He hides it very well, but
he is a poet himself when his time comes, and he admires as much as
we do all these beauties of nature. Only when his gun is on his arm,
good-by to poetry!”
“Then be a poet now,” replied the girl.
“I am a poet,” said Benito. “O! Nature-enchanting, etc.”
We may confess, however, that in forbidding him to use his gun Minha
had imposed on him a genuine privation. There was no lack of game in
the woods, and several magnificent opportunities he had declined with
regret.
In some of the less wooded parts, in places where the breaks were
tolerably spacious, they saw several pairs of ostriches, of the species
known as _“naudus,”_ from four to five feet high, accompanied by their
inseparable _“seriemas,”_ a sort of turkey, infinitely better from an
edible point of view than the huge birds they escort.
“See what that wretched promise costs me,” sighed Benito, as, at a
gesture from his sister, he replaced under his arm the gun which had
instinctively gone up to his shoulder.
“We ought to respect the seriemas,” said Manoel, “for they are great
destroyers of the snakes.”
“Just as we ought to respect the snakes,” replied Benito, “because they
eat the noxious insects, and just as we ought the insects because they
live on smaller insects more offensive still. At that rate we ought to
respect everything.”
But the instinct of the young sportsman was about to be put to a still
more rigorous trial. The woods became of a sudden full of game. Swift
stags and graceful roebucks scampered off beneath the bushes, and a
well-aimed bullet would assuredly have stopped them. Here and there
turkeys showed themselves with their milk and coffee-colored plumage;
and peccaries, a sort of wild pig highly appreciated by lovers of
venison, and agouties, which are the hares and rabbits of Central
America; and tatous belonging to the order of edentates, with their
scaly shells of patterns of mosaic.
And truly Benito showed more than virtue, and even genuine heroism, when
he came across some tapirs, called “antas” in Brazil, diminutives of the
elephant, already nearly undiscoverable on the banks of the Upper Amazon
and its tributaries, pachyderms so dear to the hunters for their rarity,
so appreciated by the gourmands for their meat, superior far to beef,
and above all for the protuberance on the nape of the neck, which is a
morsel fit for a king.
His gun almost burned his fingers, but faithful to his promise he kept
it quiet.
But yet--and he cautioned his sister about this--the gun would go off in
spite of him, and probably register a master-stroke in sporting annals,
if within range there should come a _“tamandoa assa,”_ a kind of large
and very curious ant-eater.
Happily the big ant-eater did not show himself, neither did any
panthers, leopards, jaguars, guepars, or cougars, called indifferently
ounces in South America, and to whom it is not advisable to get too
near.
“After all,” said Benito, who stopped for an instant, “to walk is very
well, but to walk without an object----”
“Without an object!” replied his sister; “but our object is to see, to
admire, to visit for the last time these forests of Central America,
which we shall not find again in Para, and to bid them a fast farewell.”
“Ah! an idea!”
It was Lina who spoke.
“An idea of Lina’s can be no other than a silly one,” said Benito,
shaking his head.
“It is unkind, brother,” said Minha, “to make fun of Lina when she
has been thinking how to give our walk the object which you have just
regretted it lacks.”
“Besides, Mr. Benito, I am sure my idea will please you,” replied the
mulatto.
“Well, what is it?” asked Minha.
“You see that liana?”
And Lina pointed to a liana of the _“cipos”_ kind, twisted round a
gigantic sensitive mimosa, whose leaves, light as feathers, shut up at
the least disturbance.
“Well?” said Benito.
“I proposed,” replied Minha, “that we try to follow that liana to its
very end.”
“It is an idea, and it is an object!” observed Benito, “to follow this
liana, no matter what may be the obstacles, thickets, underwood, rocks,
brooks, torrents, to let nothing stop us, not even----”
“Certainly, you are right, brother!” said Minha; “Lina is a trifle
absurd.”
“Come on, then!” replied her brother; “you say that Lina is absurd so as
to say that Benito is absurd to approve of it!”
“Well, both of you are absurd, if that will amuse you,” returned Minha.
“Let us follow the liana!”
“You are not afraid?” said Manoel.
“Still objections!” shouted Benito.
“Ah, Manoel! you would not speak like that if you were already on your
way and Minha was waiting for you at the end.”
“I am silent,” replied Manoel; “I have no more to say. I obey. Let us
follow the liana!”
And off they went as happy as children home for their holidays.
This vegetable might take them far if they determined to follow it to
its extremity, like the thread of Ariadne, as far almost as that which
the heiress of Minos used to lead her from the labyrinth, and perhaps
entangle them more deeply.
It was in fact a creeper of the salses family, one of the cipos known
under the name of the red _“japicanga,”_ whose length sometimes measures
several miles. But, after all, they could leave it when they liked.
The cipo passed from one tree to another without breaking its
continuity, sometimes twisting round the trunks, sometimes garlanding
the branches, here jumping form a dragon-tree to a rosewood, then from
a gigantic chestnut, the _“Bertholletia excelsa,”_ to some of the wine
palms, _“baccabas,”_ whose branches have been appropriately compared
by Agassiz to long sticks of coral flecked with green. Here round
_“tucumas,”_ or ficuses, capriciously twisted like centenarian
olive-trees, and of which Brazil had fifty-four varieties; here round
the kinds of euphorbias, which produce caoutchouc, _“gualtes,”_ noble
palm-trees, with slender, graceful, and glossy stems; and cacao-trees,
which shoot up of their own accord on the banks of the Amazon and its
tributaries, having different melastomas, some with red flowers and
others ornamented with panicles of whitish berries.
But the halts! the shouts of cheating! when the happy company thought
they had lost their guiding thread! For it was necessary to go back and
disentangle it from the knot of parasitic plants.
“There it is!” said Lina, “I see it!”
“You are wrong,” replied Minha; “that is not it, that is a liana of
another kind.”
“No, Lina is right!” said Benito.
“No, Lina is wrong!” Manoel would naturally return.
Hence highly serious, long-continued discussions, in which no one would
give in.
Then the black on one side and Benito on the other would rush at the
trees and clamber up to the branches encircled by the cipo so as to
arrive at the true direction.
Now nothing was assuredly less easy in that jumble of knots, among which
twisted the liana in the middle of bromelias, _“karatas,”_ armed with
their sharp prickles, orchids with rosy flowers and violet lips the size
of gloves, and oncidiums more tangled than a skein of worsted between a
kitten’s paws.
And then when the liana ran down again to the ground the difficulty
of picking it out under the mass of lycopods, large-leaved heliconias,
rosy-tasseled calliandras, rhipsalas encircling it like the thread on
an electric reel, between the knots of the large white ipomas, under
the fleshy stems of the vanilla, and in the midst of the shoots and
branchlets of the grenadilla and the vine.
And when the cipo was found again what shouts of joy, and how they
resumed the walk for an instant interrupted!
For an hour the young people had already been advancing, and nothing had
happened to warn them that they were approaching the end.
They shook the liana with vigor, but it would not give, and the birds
flew away in hundreds, and the monkeys fled from tree to tree, so as to
point out the way.
If a thicket barred the road the felling-sword cut a deep gap, and the
group passed in. If it was a high rock, carpeted with verdure, over
which the liana twisted like a serpent, they climbed it and passed on.
A large break now appeared. There, in the more open air, which is as
necessary to it as the light of the sun, the tree of the tropics, _par
excellence,_ which, according to Humboldt, “accompanies man in the
infancy of his civilization,” the great provider of the inhabitant of
the torrid zones, a banana-tree, was standing alone. The long festoon
of the liana curled round its higher branches, moving away to the other
side of the clearing, and disappeared again into the forest.
“Shall we stop soon?” asked Manoel.
“No; a thousand times no!” cried Benito, “not without having reached the
end of it!”
“Perhaps,” observed Minha, “it will soon be time to think of returning.”
“Oh, dearest mistress, let us go on again!” replied Lina.
“On forever!” added Benito.
And they plunged more deeply into the forest, which, becoming clearer,
allowed them to advance more easily.
Besides, the cipo bore away to the north, and toward the river. It
became less inconvenient to follow, seeing that they approached the
right bank, and it would be easy to get back afterward.
A quarter of an hour later they all stopped at the foot of a ravine in
front of a small tributary of the Amazon. But a bridge of lianas, made
of _“bejucos,”_ twined together by their interlacing branches, crossed
the stream. The cipo, dividing into two strings, served for a handrail,
and passed from one bank to the other.
Benito, all the time in front, had already stepped on the swinging floor
of this vegetable bridge.
Manoel wished to keep his sister back.
“Stay--stay, Minha!” he said, “Benito may go further if he likes, but
let us remain here.”
“No! Come on, come on, dear mistress!” said Lina. “Don’t be afraid, the
liana is getting thinner; we shall get the better of it, and find out
its end!”
And, without hesitation, the young mulatto boldly ventured toward
Benito.
“What children they are!” replied Minha. “Come along, Manoel, we must
follow.”
And they all cleared the bridge, which swayed above the ravine like a
swing, and plunged again beneath the mighty trees.
But they had not proceeded for ten minutes along the interminable cipo,
in the direction of the river, when they stopped, and this time not
without cause.
“Have we got to the end of the liana?” asked Minha.
“No,” replied Benito; “but we had better advance with care. Look!” and
Benito pointed to the cipo which, lost in the branches of a high ficus,
was agitated by violent shakings.
“What causes that?” asked Manoel.
“Perhaps some animal that we had better approach with a little
circumspection!”
And Benito, cocking his gun, motioned them to let him go on a bit, and
stepped about ten paces to the front.
Manoel, the two girls, and the black remained motionless where they
were.
Suddenly Benito raised a shout, and they saw him rush toward a tree;
they all ran as well.
Sight the most unforeseen, and little adapted to gratify the eyes!
A man, hanging by the neck, struggled at the end of the liana, which,
supple as a cord, had formed into a slipknot, and the shakings came from
the jerks into which he still agitated it in the last convulsions of his
agony!
Benito threw himself on the unfortunate fellow, and with a cut of his
hunting-knife severed the cipo.
The man slipped on to the ground. Manoel leaned over him, to try and
recall him to life, if it was not too late.
“Poor man!” murmured Minha.
“Mr. Manoel! Mr. Manoel!” cried Lina. “He breathes again! His heart
beats; you must save him.”
“True,” said Manoel, “but I think it was about time that we came up.”
He was about thirty years old, a white, clothed badly enough, much
emaciated, and he seemed to have suffered a good deal.
At his feet were an empty flask, thrown on the ground, and a cup and
ball in palm wood, of which the ball, made of the head of a tortoise,
was tied on with a fiber.
“To hang himself! to hang himself!” repeated Lina, “and young still!
What could have driven him to do such a thing?”
But the attempts of Manoel had not been long in bringing the luckless
wight to life again, and he opened his eyes and gave an “ahem!” so
vigorous and unexpected that Lina, frightened, replied to his cry with
another.
“Who are you, my friend?” Benito asked him.
“An ex-hanger-on, as far as I see.”
“But your name?”
“Wait a minute and I will recall myself,” said he, passing his hand over
his forehead. “I am known as Fragoso, at your service; and I am
still able to curl and cut your hair, to shave you, and to make you
comfortable according to all the rules of my art. I am a barber, so to
speak more truly, the most desperate of Figaros.”
“And what made you think of----”
“What would you have, my gallant sir?” replied Fragoso, with a smile;
“a moment of despair, which I would have duly regretted had the regrets
been in another world! But eight hundred leagues of country to traverse,
and not a coin in my pouch, was not very comforting! I had lost courage
obviously.”
To conclude, Fragoso had a good and pleasing figure, and as he recovered
it was evident that he was of a lively disposition. He was one of those
wandering barbers who travel on the banks of the Upper Amazon, going
from village to village, and putting the resources of their art at the
service of negroes, negresses, Indians and Indian women, who appreciate
them very much.
But poor Fragoso, abandoned and miserable, having eaten nothing for
forty hours, astray in the forest, had for an instant lost his head, and
we know the rest.
“My friend,” said Benito to him, “you will go back with us to the
fazenda of Iquitos?”
“With pleasure,” replied Fragoso; “you cut me down and I belong to you.
I must somehow be dependent.”
“Well, dear mistress, don’t you think we did well to continue our walk?”
asked Lina.
“That I do,” returned the girl.
“Never mind,” said Benito; “I never thought that we should finish by
finding a man at the end of the cipo.”
“And, above all, a barber in difficulties, and on the road to hang
himself!” replied Fragoso.
The poor fellow, who was now wide awake, was told about what had passed.
He warmly thanked Lina for the good idea she had had of following the
liana, and they all started on the road to the fazenda, where Fragoso
was received in a way that gave him neither wish nor want to try his
wretched task again.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE JANGADA
The half-mile square of forest was cleared. With the carpenters remained
the task of arranging in the form of a raft the many venerable trees
which were lying on the strand.
And an easy task it was. Under the direction of Joam Garral the Indians
displayed their incomparable ingenuity. In everything connected with
house-building or ship-building these natives are, it must be admitted,
astonishing workmen. They have only an ax and a saw, and they work on
woods so hard that the edge of their tools gets absolutely jagged; yet
they square up trunks, shape beams out of enormous stems, and get out of
them joists and planking without the aid of any machinery whatever, and,
endowed with prodigious natural ability, do all these things easily with
their skilled and patient hands.
The trees had not been launched into the Amazon to begin with; Joam
Garral was accustomed to proceed in a different way. The whole mass of
trunks was symmetrically arranged on a flat part of the bank, which
he had already leveled up at the junction of the Nanay with the great
river.
There it was that the jangada was to be built; thence it was that
the Amazon was to float it when the time came for it to start for its
destination.
And here an explanatory note is necessary in regard to the geography
of this immense body of water, and more especially as relating to
a singular phenomenon which the riverside inhabitants describe from
personal observation.
The two rivers which are, perhaps, more extensive than the great artery
of Brazil, the Nile and the Missouri-Mississippi, flow one from south
to north across the African continent, the other from north to south
through North America. They cross districts of many different latitudes,
and consequently of many different climates.
The Amazon, on the contrary, is entirely comprised--at least it is from
the point where it turns to the east, on the frontiers of Ecuador and
Peru--between the second and fourth parallels of south latitude. Hence
this immense river system is under the same climatic conditions during
the whole of its course.
In these parts there are two distinct seasons during which rain falls.
In the north of Brazil the rainy season is in September; in the south
it occurs in March. Consequently the right-hand tributaries and the
left-hand tributaries bring down their floods at half-yearly intervals,
and hence the level of the Amazon, after reaching its maximum in June,
gradually falls until October.
This Joam Garral knew by experience, and he intended to profit by the
phenomenon to launch the jangada, after having built it in comfort
on the river bank. In fact, between the mean and the higher level the
height of the Amazon could vary as much as forty feet, and between the
mean and the lower level as much as thirty feet. A difference of seventy
feet like this gave the fazender all he required.
The building was commenced without delay. Along the huge bank the trunks
were got into place according to their sizes and floating power, which
of course had to be taken into account, as among these thick and heavy
woods there were many whose specific gravity was but little below that
of water.
The first layer was entirely composed of trunks laid side by side.
A little interval had to be left between them, and they were bound
together by transverse beams, which assured the solidity of the whole.
_“Piaçaba”_ ropes strapped them together as firmly as any chain cables
could have done. This material, which consists of the ramicles of a
certain palm-tree growing very abundantly on the river banks, is in
universal use in the district. Piaçaba floats, resists immersion, and
is cheaply made--very good reasons for causing it to be valuable, and
making it even an article of commerce with the Old World.
Above this double row of trunks and beams were disposed the joists and
planks which formed the floor of the jangada, and rose about thirty
inches above the load water-line. The bulk was enormous, as we must
confess when it is considered that the raft measured a thousand feet
long and sixty broad, and thus had a superificies of sixty thousand
square feet. They were, in fact, about to commit a whole forest to the
Amazon.
The work of building was conducted under the immediate direction of Joam
Garral. But when that part was finished the question of arrangement was
submitted to the discussion of all, including even the gallant Fragoso.
Just a word as to what he was doing in his new situation at the fazenda.
The barber had never been so happy as since the day when he had been
received by the hospitable family. Joam Garral had offered to take him
to Para, on the road to which he was when the liana, according to his
account, had seized him by the neck and brought him up with a round
turn. Fragoso had accepted the offer, thanked him from the bottom of his
heart, and ever since had sought to make himself useful in a thousand
ways. He was a very intelligent fellow--what one might call a “double
right-hander”--that is to say, he could do everything, and could do
everything well. As merry as Lina, always singing, and always ready with
some good-natured joke, he was not long in being liked by all.
But it was with the young mulatto that he claimed to have contracted the
heaviest obligation.
“A famous idea that of yours, Miss Lina,” he was constantly saying, “to
play at ‘following the liana!’ It is a capital game even if you do not
always find a poor chap of a barber at the end!”
“Quite a chance, Mr. Fragoso,” would laughingly reply Lina; “I assure
you, you owe me nothing!”
“What! nothing! I owe you my life, and I want it prolonged for a hundred
years, and that my recollection of the fact may endure even longer! You
see, it is not my trade to be hanged! If I tried my hand at it, it was
through necessity. But, on consideration, I would rather die of hunger,
and before quite going off I should try a little pasturage with the
brutes! As for this liana, it is a lien between us, and so you will
see!”
The conversation generally took a joking turn, but at the bottom Fragoso
was very grateful to the mulatto for having taken the initiative in
his rescue, and Lina was not insensible to the attentions of the brave
fellow, who was as straightforward, frank, and good-looking as she was.
Their friendship gave rise to many a pleasant, “Ah, ah!” on the part of
Benito, old Cybele, and others.
To return to the Jangada. After some discussion it was decided, as the
voyage was to be of some months’ duration, to make it as complete and
comfortable as possible. The Garral family, comprising the father,
mother, daughter, Benito, Manoel, and the servants, Cybele and Lina,
were to live in a separate house. In addition to these, there were to
go forty Indians, forty blacks, Fragoso, and the pilot who was to take
charge of the navigation of the raft.
Though the crew was large, it was not more than sufficient for the
service on board. To work the jangada along the windings of the river
and between the hundreds of islands and islets which lay in its course
required fully as many as were taken, for if the current furnished the
motive power, it had nothing to do with the steering, and the hundred
and sixty arms were no more than were necessary to work the long
boathooks by which the giant raft was to be kept in mid-stream.
In the first place, then, in the hinder part of the jangada they built
the master’s house. It was arranged to contain several bedrooms and a
large dining-hall. One of the rooms was destined for Joam and his wife,
another for Lina and Cybele near those of their mistresses, and a third
room for Benito and Manoel. Minha had a room away from the others, which
was not by any means the least comfortably designed.
This, the principal house, was carefully made of weather-boarding,
saturated with boiling resin, and thus rendered water-tight throughout.
It was capitally lighted with windows on all sides. In front, the
entrance-door gave immediate access to the common room. A light veranda,
resting on slender bamboos, protected the exterior from the direct
action of the solar rays. The whole was painted a light-ocher color,
which reflected the heat instead of absorbing it, and kept down the
temperature of the interior.
But when the heavy work, so to speak, had been completed, Minha
intervened with:
“Father, now your care has inclosed and covered us, you must allow us
to arrange our dwelling to please ourselves. The outside belongs to you,
the inside to us. Mother and I would like it to be as though our house
at the fazenda went with us on the journey, so as to make you fancy that
we had never left Iquitos!”
“Do just as you like, Minha,” replied Joam Garral, smiling in the sad
way he often did.
“That will be nice!”
“I leave everything to your good taste.”
“And that will do us honor, father. It ought to, for the sake of the
splendid country we are going through--which is yours, by the way, and
into which you are to enter after so many years’ absence.”
“Yes, Minha; yes,” replied Joam. “It is rather as if we were returning
from exile--voluntary exile! Do your best; I approve beforehand of what
you do.”
On Minha and Lina, to whom were added of their own free will Manoel on
the one side and Fragoso on the other, devolved the care of decorating
the inside of the house. With some imagination and a little artistic
feeling the result was highly satisfactory.
The best furniture of the fazenda naturally found its place within,
as after arriving in Para they could easily return it by one of the
_igariteos_. Tables, bamboo easy-chairs, cane sofas, carved wood
shelves, everything that constituted the charming furniture of the
tropics, was disposed with taste about the floating home. No one is
likely to imagine that the walls remained bare. The boards were hidden
beneath hangings of most agreeable variety. These hangings were made
of valuable bark, that of the _“tuturis,”_ which is raised up in large
folds like the brocades and damasks and softest and richest materials
of our modern looms. On the floors of the rooms were jaguar skins, with
wonderful spots, and thick monkey furs of exquisite fleeciness. Light
curtains of the russet silk, produced by the _“sumauma,”_ hung from the
windows. The beds, enveloped in mosquito curtains, had their pillows,
mattresses, and bolsters filled with that fresh and elastic substance
which in the Upper Amazon is yielded by the bombax.
Throughout on the shelves and side-tables were little odds and ends,
brought from Rio Janeiro or Belem, those most precious to Minha being
such as had come from Manoel. What could be more pleasing in her eyes
than the knickknacks given by a loving hand which spoke to her without
saying anything?
In a few days the interior was completed, and it looked just like the
interior of the fazenda. A stationary house under a lovely clump of
trees on the borders of some beautiful river! Until it descended between
the banks of the larger stream it would not be out of keeping with the
picturesque landscape which stretched away on each side of it.
We may add that the exterior of the house was no less charming than the
interior.
In fact, on the outside the young fellows had given free scope to their
taste and imagination.
From the basement to the roof it was literally covered with foliage. A
confused mass of orchids, bromelias, and climbing plants, all in flower,
rooted in boxes of excellent soil hidden beneath masses of verdure. The
trunk of some ficus or mimosa was never covered by a more startlingly
tropical attire. What whimsical climbers--ruby red and golden yellow,
with variegated clusters and tangled twigs--turned over the brackets,
under the ridges, on the rafters of the roof, and across the lintels
of the doors! They had brought them wholesale from the woods in the
neighborhood of the fazenda. A huge liana bound all the parasites
together; several times it made the round of the house, clinging on
to every angle, encircling every projection, forking, uniting, it
everywhere threw out its irregular branchlets, and allowed not a bit of
the house to be seen beneath its enormous clusters of bloom.
As a delicate piece of attention, the author of which can be easily
recognized, the end of the cipo spread out before the very window of
the young mulatto, as though a long arm was forever holding a bouquet of
fresh flowers across the blind.
To sum up, it was as charming as could be; and as Yaquita, her daughter,
and Lina were content, we need say no more about it.
“It would not take much to make us plant trees on the jangada,” said
Benito.
“Oh, trees!” ejaculated Minha.
“Why not?” replied Manoel. “Transported on to this solid platform,
with some good soil, I am sure they would do well, and we would have
no change of climate to fear for them, as the Amazon flows all the time
along the same parallel.”
“Besides,” said Benito, “every day islets of verdure, torn from the
banks, go drifting down the river. Do they not pass along with their
trees, bushes, thickets, rocks, and fields, to lose themselves in the
Atlantic eight hundred leagues away? Why, then, should we not transform
our raft into a floating garden?”
“Would you like a forest, miss?” said Fragoso, who stopped at nothing.
“Yes, a forest!” cried the young mulatto; “a forest with its birds and
its monkeys----”
“Its snakes, its jaguars!” continued Benito.
“Its Indians, its nomadic tribes,” added Manoel, “and even its
cannibals!”
“But where are you going to, Fragoso?” said Minha, seeing the active
barber making a rush at the bank.
“To look after the forest!” replied Fragoso.
“Useless, my friend,” answered the smiling Minha. “Manoel has given me a
nosegay and I am quite content. It is true,” she added, pointing to the
house hidden beneath the flowers, “that he has hidden our house in his
betrothal bouquet!”
CHAPTER IX.
THE EVENING OF THE FIFTH OF JUNE
While the master’s house was being constructed, Joam Garral was also
busied in the arrangement of the out-buildings, comprising the kitchen,
and offices in which provisions of all kinds were intended to be stored.
In the first place, there was an important stock of the roots of that
little tree, some six or ten feet in height, which yields the
manioc, and which form the principal food of the inhabitants of these
inter-tropical countries. The root, very much like a long black radish,
grows in clumps like potatoes. If it is not poisonous in Africa, it is
certain that in South America it contains a more noxious juice, which it
is necessary to previously get rid of by pressure. When this result is
obtained, the root is reduced to flour, and is then used in many ways,
even in the form of tapioca, according to the fancy of the natives.
On board the jangada there was a huge pile of this useful product
destined for general consumption.
As for preserved meats, not forgetting a whole flock of sheep, kept in
a special stable built in the front, they consisted principally of
a quantity of the _“presunto”_ hams of the district, which are of
first-class quality; but the guns of the young fellows and of some of
the Indians were reckoned on for additional supplies, excellent hunters
as they were, to whom there was likely to be no lack of game on the
islands and in the forests bordering on the stream. The river was
expected to furnish its daily quota; prawns, which ought rather to be
called crawfish; _“tambagus,”_ the finest fish in the district, of
a flavor superior to that of salmon, to which it is often compared;
_“pirarucus”_ with red scales, as large as sturgeons, which when salted
are used in great quantities throughout Brazil; _“candirus,”_ awkward to
capture, but good to eat; _“piranhas,”_ or devil-fish, striped with
red bands, and thirty inches long; turtles large and small, which
are counted by millions, and form so large a part of the food of the
natives; some of every one of these things it was hoped would figure in
turn on the tables of the master and his men.
And so each day shooting and fishing were to be regularly indulged in.
For beverages they had a good store of the best that country produced;
_“caysuma”_ or _“machachera,”_ from the Upper and Lower Amazon, an
agreeable liquor of slightly acidulated taste, which is distilled from
the boiled root of the sweet manioc; _“beiju,”_ from Brazil, a sort of
national brandy, the _“chica”_ of Peru; the _“mazato”_ of the Ucayali,
extracted from the boiled fruits of the banana-tree, pressed and
fermented; _“guarana,”_ a kind of paste made from the double almond of
the _“paulliniasorbilis,”_ a genuine tablet of chocolate so far as its
color goes, which is reduced to a fine powder, and with the addition of
water yields an excellent drink.
And this was not all. There is in these countries a species of dark
violet wine, which is got from the juice of the palm, and the aromatic
flavor of this _“assais”_ is greatly appreciated by the Brazilans, and
of it there were on board a respectable number of frasques (each holding
a little more than half a gallon), which would probably be emptied
before they arrived at Para.
The special cellar of the jangada did honor to Benito, who had been
appointed its commander-in-chief. Several hundred bottles of sherry,
port, and letubal recalled names dear to the earlier conquerors of
South America. In addition, the young butler had stored away certain
demijohns, holding half a dozen gallons each, of excellent _“tafia,”_
a sugared brandy a trifle more pronounced in taste than the national
_beiju_.
As far as tobacco was concerned, there was none of that coarse kind
which usually contents the natives of the Amazonian basin. It all came
direct from Villa Bella da Imperatriz--or, in other words, fro the
district in which is grown the best tobacco in Central America.
The principal habitation, with its annexes--kitchen, offices, and
cellars--was placed in the rear--or, let us say, stern of the craft--and
formed a part reserved for the Garral family and their personal
servants.
In the center the huts for the Indians and the blacks had been erected.
The staff were thus placed under the same conditions as at the fazenda
of Iquitos, and would always be able to work under the direction of the
pilot.
To house the crew a good many huts were required, and these gave to the
jangada the appearance of a small village got adrift, and, to tell the
truth, it was a better built and better peopled village than many of
those on the Upper Amazon.
For the Indians Joam Garral had designed regular cabins--huts without
walls, with only light poles supporting the roof of foliage. The air
circulated freely throughout these open constructions and swung the
hammock suspended in the interior, and the natives, among whom were
three or four complete families, with women and children, were lodged as
if they were on shore.
The blacks here found their customary sheds. They differed from the
cabins by being closed in on their four faces, of which only one gave
access to the interior. The Indians, accustomed to live in the open
air, free and untrammeled, were not able to accustom themselves to the
imprisonment of the _ajoupas,_ which agreed better with the life of the
blacks.
In the bow regular warehouses had arisen, containing the goods which
Joam Garral was carrying to Belem at the same time as the products of
his forests.
There, in vast storerooms, under the direction of Benito, the rich cargo
had been placed with as much order as if it had been carefully stowed
away in a ship’s hold.
In the first place, seven thousand arrobas of caoutchouc, each of about
thirty pounds, composed the most precious part of the cargo, for every
pound of it was worth from three to four francs. The jangada also took
fifty hundredweight of sarsaparilla, a smilax which forms an important
branch of foreign trade throughout the Amazon districts, and is getting
rarer and rarer along the banks of the river, so that the natives are
very careful to spare the stems when they gather them. Tonquin
bans, known in Brazil under the name of _“cumarus,”_ and used in
the manufacture of certain essential oils; sassafras, from which is
extracted a precious balsam for wounds; bales of dyeing plants, cases of
several gums, and a quantity of precious woods, completed a well-adapted
cargo for lucrative and easy sale in the provinces of Para.
Some may feel astonished that the number of Indians and negroes embarked
were only sufficient to work the raft, and that a larger number were not
taken in case of an attack by the riverside Indians.
Such would have been useless. The natives of Central America are not
to be feared in the least, and the times are quite changed since it was
necessary to provide against their aggressions. The Indians along the
river belong to peaceable tribes, and the fiercest of them have retired
before the advancing civilization, and drawn further and further away
from the river and its tributaries. Negro deserters, escaped from the
penal colonies of Brazil, England, Holland, or France, are alone to be
feared. But there are only a small number of these fugitives, they
only move in isolated groups across the savannahs or the woods, and the
jangada was, in a measure, secured from any attack on the parts of the
backwoodsmen.
On the other hand, there were a number of settlements on the
river--towns, villages, and missions. The immense stream no longer
traverses a desert, but a basin which is being colonized day by day.
Danger was not taken into consideration. There were no precautions
against attacks.
To conclude our description of the jangada, we have only to speak of
one or two erections of different kinds which gave it a very picturesque
aspect.
In the bow was the cabin of the pilot--we say in the bow, and not at the
stern, where the helmsman is generally found. In navigating under such
circumstances a rudder is of no use. Long oars have no effect on a raft
of such dimensions, even when worked with a hundred sturdy arms. It was
from the sides, by means of long boathooks or props thrust against the
bed of the stream, that the jangada was kept in the current, and had
its direction altered when going astray. By this means they could range
alongside either bank, if they wished for any reason to come to a halt.
Three or four ubas, and two pirogues, with the necessary rigging, were
carried on board, and afforded easy communications with the banks. The
pilot had to look after the channels of the river, the deviations of the
current, the eddies which it was necessary to avoid, the creeks or bays
which afforded favorable anchorage, and to do this he had to be in the
bow.
If the pilot was the material director of this immense machine--for can
we not justly call it so?--another personage was its spiritual director;
this was Padre Passanha, who had charge of the mission at Iquitos.
A religious family, like that of Joam Garral’s, had availed themselves
enthusiastically of this occasion of taking him with them.
Padre Passanha, then aged seventy, was a man of great worth, full of
evangelical fervor, charitable and good, and in countries where the
representatives of religion are not always examples of the virtues, he
stood out as the accomplished type of those great missionaries who have
done so much for civilization in the interior of the most savage regions
of the world.
For fifty years Padre Passanha had lived at Iquitos, in the mission of
which he was the chief. He was loved by all, and worthily so. The Garral
family held him in great esteem; it was he who had married the daughter
of Farmer Magalhaës to the clerk who had been received at the fazenda.
He had known the children from birth; he had baptized them, educated
them, and hoped to give each of them the nuptial blessing.
The age of the padre did not allow of his exercising his important
ministry any longer. The horn of retreat for him had sounded; he was
about to be replaced at Iquitos by a younger missionary, and he was
preparing to return to Para, to end his days in one of those convents
which are reserved for the old servants of God.
What better occasion could offer than that of descending the river with
the family which was as his own? They had proposed it to him, and he had
accepted, and when arrived at Belem he was to marry the young couple,
Minha and Manoel.
But if Padre Passanha during the course of the voyage was to take his
meals with the family, Joam Garral desired to build for him a dwelling
apart, and heaven knows what care Yaquita and her daughter took to make
him comfortable! Assuredly the good old priest had never been so lodged
in his modest parsonage!
The parsonage was not enough for Padre Passanha; he ought to have a
chapel.
The chapel then was built in the center of the jangada, and a little
bell surmounted it.
It was small enough, undoubtedly, and it could not hold the whole of
the crew, but it was richly decorated, and if Joam Garral found his
own house on the raft, Padre Passanha had no cause to regret the
poverty-stricken church of Iquitos.
Such was the wonderful structure which was going down the Amazon. It was
then on the bank waiting till the flood came to carry it away. From the
observation and calculation of the rising it would seem as though there
was not much longer to wait.
All was ready to date, the 5th of June.
The pilot arrived the evening before. He was a man about fifty, well up
in his profession, but rather fond of drink. Such as he was, Joam Garral
in large matters at different times had employed him to take his rafts
to Belem, and he had never had cause to repent it.
It is as well to add that Araujo--that was his name--never saw better
than when he had imbibed a few glasses of tafia; and he never did any
work at all without a certain demijohn of that liquor, to which he paid
frequent court.
The rise of the flood had clearly manifested itself for several days.
From minute to minute the level of the river rose, and during the
twenty-four hours which preceded the maximum the waters covered the bank
on which the raft rested, but did not lift the raft.
As soon as the movement was assured, and there could be no error as to
the height to which the flood would rise, all those interested in the
undertaking were seized with no little excitement. For if through some
inexplicable cause the waters of the Amazon did not rise sufficiently to
flood the jangada, it would all have to be built over again. But as the
fall of the river would be very rapid it would take long months before
similar conditions recurred.
On the 5th of June, toward the evening, the future passengers of the
jangada were collected on a plateau which was about a hundred feet above
the bank, and waited for the hour with an anxiety quite intelligible.
There were Yaquita, her daughter, Manoel Valdez, Padre Passanha, Benito,
Lina, Fragoso, Cybele, and some of the servants, Indian or negro, of the
fazenda.
Fragoso could not keep himself still; he went and he came, he ran down
the bank and ran up the plateau, he noted the points of the river gauge,
and shouted “Hurrah!” as the water crept up.
“It will swim, it will swim!” he shouted. “The raft which is to take us
to Belem! It will float if all the cataracts of the sky have to open to
flood the Amazon!”
Joam Garral was on the raft with the pilot and some of the crew. It was
for him to take all the necessary measures at the critical moment. The
jangada was moored to the bank with solid cables, so that it could not
be carried away by the current when it floated off.
Quite a tribe from one hundred and fifty to two hundred Indians, without
counting the population of the village, had come to assist at the
interesting spectacle.
They were all keenly on the watch, and silence reigned over the
impressionable crowd.
Toward five o’clock in the evening the water had reached a level higher
than that of the night before--by more than a foot--and the bank had
already entirely disappeared beneath the liquid covering.
A certain groaning arose among the planks of the enormous structure,
but there was still wanting a few inches before it was quite lifted and
detached from the ground.
For an hour the groanings increased. The joists grated on all sides. A
struggle was going on in which little by little the trunks were being
dragged from their sandy bed.
Toward half-past six cries of joy arose. The jangada floated at
last, and the current took it toward the middle of the river, but, in
obedience to the cables, it quietly took up its position near the bank
at the moment that Padre Passanha gave it his blessing, as if it were
a vessel launched into the sea whose destinies are in the hands of the
Most High!
CHAPTER X.
FROM IQUITOS TO PEVAS
On the 6th of June, the very next day, Joam Garral and his people bade
good-by to the superintendent and the Indians and negroes who were to
stay behind at the fazenda. At six o’clock in the morning the jangada
received all its passengers, or rather inhabitants, and each of them
took possession of his cabin, or perhaps we had better say his house.
The moment of departure had come. Araujo, the pilot, got into his place
at the bow, and the crew, armed with their long poles, went to their
proper quarters.
Joam Garral, assisted by Benito and Manoel, superintended the unmooring.
At the command of the pilot the ropes were eased off, and the poles
applied to the bank so as to give the jangada a start. The current
was not long in seizing it, and coasting the left bank, the islands of
Iquitos and Parianta were passed on the right.
The voyage had commenced--where would it finish? In Para, at Belem,
eight hundred leagues from this little Peruvian village, if nothing
happened to modify the route. How would it finish? That was the secret
of the future.
The weather was magnificent. A pleasant _“pampero”_ tempered the ardor
of the sun--one of those winds which in June or July come from off the
Cordilleras, many hundred leagues away, after having swept across the
huge plain of the Sacramento. Had the raft been provided with masts and
sails she would have felt the effects of the breeze, and her speed would
have been greater; but owing to the sinuosities of the river and
its abrupt changes, which they were bound to follow, they had had to
renounce such assistance.
In a flat district like that through which the Amazon flows, which is
almost a boundless plain, the gradient of the river bed is scarcely
perceptible. It has been calculated that between Tabatinga on the
Brazilian frontier, and the source of this huge body of water, the
difference of level does not exceed a decimeter in each league. There is
no other river in the world whose inclination is so slight.
It follows from this that the average speed of the current cannot be
estimated at more than two leagues in twenty-four hours, and sometimes,
while the droughts are on, it is even less. However, during the period
of the floods it has been known to increase to between thirty and forty
kilometers.
Happily, it was under these latter conditions that the jangada was to
proceed; but, cumbrous in its movements, it could not keep up to the
speed of the current which ran past it. There are also to be taken into
account the stoppages occasioned by the bends in the river, the numerous
islands which had to be rounded, the shoals which had to be avoided, and
the hours of halting, which were necessarily lost when the night was too
dark to advance securely, so that we cannot allow more than twenty-five
kilometers for each twenty-four hours.
In addition, the surface of the water is far from being completely
clear. Trees still green, vegetable remains, islets of plants constantly
torn from the banks, formed quite a flotilla of fragments carried on by
the currents, and were so many obstacles to speedy navigation.
The mouth of the Nanay was soon passed, and lost to sight behind a point
on the left bank, which, with its carpet of russet grasses tinted by the
sun, formed a ruddy relief to the green forests on the horizon.
The jangada took the center of the stream between the numerous
picturesque islands, of which there are a dozen between Iquitos and
Pucalppa.
Araujo, who did not forget to clear his vision and his memory by an
occasional application to his demijohn, maneuvered very ably when
passing through this archipelago. At his word of command fifty poles
from each side of the raft were raised in the air, and struck the water
with an automatic movement very curious to behold.
While this was going on, Yaquita, aided by Lina and Cybele, was getting
everything in order, and the Indian cooks were preparing the breakfast.
As for the two young fellows and Minha, they were walking up and down in
company with Padre Passanha, and from time to time the lady stopped
and watered the plants which were placed about the base of the
dwelling-house.
“Well, padre,” said Benito, “do you know a more agreeable way of
traveling?”
“No, my dear boy,” replied the padre; “it is truly traveling with all
one’s belongings.”
“And without any fatigue,” added Manoel; “we might do hundreds of
thousands of miles in this way.”
“And,” said Minha, “you do not repent having taken passage with us? Does
it not seem to you as if we were afloat on an island drifted quietly
away from the bed of the river with its prairies and its trees?
Only----”
“Only?” repeated the padre.
“Only we have made the island with our own hands; it belongs to us, and
I prefer it to all the islands of the Amazon. I have a right to be proud
of it.”
“Yes, my daughter; and I absolve you from your pride. Besides, I am not
allowed to scold you in the presence of Manoel!”
“But, on the other hand,” replied she, gayly, “you should teach Manoel
to scold me when I deserve it. He is a great deal too indulgent to my
little self.”
“Well, then, dear Minha,” said Manoel, “I shall profit by that
permission to remind you----”
“Of what?”
“That you were very busy in the library at the fazenda, and that you
promised to make me very learned about everything connected with the
Upper Amazon. We know very little about it in Para, and here we have
been passing several islands and you have not even told me their names!”
“What is the good of that?” said she.
“Yes; what is the good of it?” repeated Benito. “What can be the use of
remembering the hundreds of names in the ‘Tupi’ dialect with which these
islands are dressed out? It is enough to know them. The Americans
are much more practical with their Mississippi islands; they number
them----”
“As they number the avenues and streets of their towns,” replied Manoel.
“Frankly, I don’t care much for that numerical system; it conveys
nothing to the imagination--Sixty-fourth Island or Sixty-fifth Island,
any more than Sixth Street or Third Avenue. Don’t you agree with me,
Minha?”
“Yes, Manoel; though I am of somewhat the same way of thinking as my
brother. But even if we do not know their names, the islands of our
great river are truly splendid! See how they rest under the shadows of
those gigantic palm-trees with their drooping leaves! And the girdle of
reeds which encircles them through which a pirogue can with difficulty
make its way! And the mangrove trees, whose fantastic roots buttress
them to the bank like the claws of some gigantic crab! Yes, the islands
are beautiful, but, beautiful as they are, they cannot equal the one we
have made our own!”
“My little Minha is enthusiastic to-day,” said the padre.
“Ah, padre! I am so happy to see everybody happy around me!”
At this moment the voice of Yaquita was heard calling Minha into the
house.
The young girl smilingly ran off.
“You will have an amiable companion,” said the padre. “All the joy of
the house goes away with you, my friend.”
“Brave little sister!” said Benito, “we shall miss her greatly, and the
padre is right. However, if you do not marry her, Manoel--there is still
time--she will stay with us.”
“She will stay with you, Benito,” replied Manoel. “Believe me, I have a
presentiment that we shall all be reunited!”
The first day passed capitally; breakfast, dinner, siesta, walks,
all took place as if Joam Garral and his people were still in the
comfortable fazenda of Iquitos.
During these twenty-four hours the mouths of the rivers Bacali, Chochio,
Pucalppa, on the left of the stream, and those of the rivers Itinicari,
Maniti, Moyoc, Tucuya, and the islands of this name on the right, were
passed without accident. The night, lighted by the moon, allowed them to
save a halt, and the giant raft glided peacefully on along the surface
of the Amazon.
On the morrow, the 7th of June, the jangada breasted the banks of the
village of Pucalppa, named also New Oran. Old Oran, situated fifteen
leagues down stream on the same left bank of the river, is almost
abandoned for the new settlement, whose population consists of Indians
belonging to the Mayoruna and Orejone tribes. Nothing can be more
picturesque than this village with its ruddy-colored banks, its
unfinished church, its cottages, whose chimneys are hidden amid the
palms, and its two or three ubas half-stranded on the shore.
During the whole of the 7th of June the jangada continued to follow
the left bank of the river, passing several unknown tributaries of no
importance. For a moment there was a chance of her grounding on the
easterly shore of the island of Sinicure; but the pilot, well served by
the crew, warded off the danger and remained in the flow of the stream.
In the evening they arrived alongside a narrow island, called Napo
Island, from the name of the river which here comes in from the
north-northwest, and mingles its waters with those of the Amazon through
a mouth about eight hundred yards across, after having watered the
territories of the Coto and Orejone Indians.
It was on the morning of the 7th of June that the jangada was abreast
the little island of Mango, which causes the Napo to split into two
streams before falling into the Amazon.
Several years later a French traveler, Paul Marcoy, went out to examine
the color of the waters of this tributary, which has been graphically
compared to the cloudy greenish opal of absinthe. At the same time he
corrected some of the measurements of La Condamine. But then the mouth
of the Napo was sensibly increased by the floods and it was with a good
deal of rapidity that its current, coming from the eastern slopes of
Cotopaxi, hurried fiercely to mingle itself with the tawny waters of the
Amazon.
A few Indians had wandered to the mouth of this river. They were robust
in build, of tall stature, with shaggy hair, and had their noses pierced
with a rod of palm, and the lobes of their ears lengthened to their
shoulders by the weight of heavy rings of precious wood. Some women were
with them. None of them showed any intention of coming on board. It is
asserted that these natives are cannibals; but if that is true--and
it is said of many of the riverine tribes--there must have been more
evidence for the cannibalism than we get to-day.
Some hours later the village of Bella Vista, situated on a somewhat
lower bank, appeared, with its cluster of magnificent trees, towering
above a few huts roofed with straw, over which there drooped the large
leaves of some medium-sized banana-trees, like the waters overflowing
from a tazza.
Then the pilot, so as to follow a better current, which turned off from
the bank, directed the raft toward the right side of the river, which
he had not yet approached. The maneuver was not accomplished without
certain difficulties, which were successfully overcome after a good many
resorts to the demijohn.
This allowed them to notice in passing some of those numerous lagoons
with black waters, which are distributed along the course of the Amazon,
and which often have no communication with the river. One of these,
bearing the name of the Lagoon of Oran, is of fair size, and receives
the water by a large strait. In the middle of the stream are scattered
several islands and two or three islets curiously grouped; and on the
opposite bank Benito recognized the site of the ancient Oran, of which
they could only see a few uncertain traces.
During two days the jangada traveled sometimes under the left bank,
sometimes under the right, according to the condition of the current,
without giving the least sign of grounding.
The passengers had already become used to this new life. Joam Garral,
leaving to his son everything that referred to the commercial side
of the expedition, kept himself principally to his room, thinking and
writing. What he was writing about he told to nobody, not even Yaquita,
and it seemed to have already assumed the importance of a veritable
essay.
Benito, all observation, chatted with the pilot and acted as manager.
Yaquita, her daughter, and Manoel, nearly always formed a group apart,
discussing their future projects just as they had walked and done in
the park of the fazenda. The life was, in fact, the same. Not quite,
perhaps, to Benito, who had not yet found occasion to participate in the
pleasures of the chase. If, however, the forests of Iquitos failed him
with their wild beasts, agoutis, peccaries, and cabiais, the birds flew
in flocks from the banks of the river and fearlessly perched on the
jangada. When they were of such quality as to figure fairly on the
table, Benito shot them; and, in the interest of all, his sister raised
no objection; but if he came across any gray or yellow herons, or red
or white ibises, which haunt the sides, he spared them through love for
Minha. One single species of grebe, which is uneatable, found no grace
in the eyes of the young merchant; this was the _“caiarara,”_ as quick
to dive as to swim or fly; a bird with a disagreeable cry, but whose
down bears a high price in the different markets of the Amazonian basin.
At length, after having passed the village of Omaguas and the mouth of
the Ambiacu, the jangada arrived at Pevas on the evening of the 11th of
June, and was moored to the bank.
As it was to remain here for some hours before nightfall, Benito
disembarked, taking with him the ever-ready Fragoso, and the two
sportsmen started off to beat the thickets in the environs of the
little place. An agouti and a cabiai, not to mention a dozen partridges,
enriched the larder after this fortunate excursion. At Pevas, where
there is a population of two hundred and sixty inhabitants, Benito would
perhaps have done some trade with the lay brothers of the mission, who
are at the same time wholesale merchants, but these had just sent away
some bales of sarsaparilla and arrobas of caoutchouc toward the Lower
Amazon, and their stores were empty.
The jangada departed at daybreak, and passed the little archipelago of
the Iatio and Cochiquinas islands, after having left the village of the
latter name on the right. Several mouths of smaller unnamed affluents
showed themselves on the right of the river through the spaces between
the islands.
Many natives, with shaved heads, tattooed cheeks and foreheads, carrying
plates of metal in the lobes of their ears, noses, and lower lips,
appeared for an instant on the shore. They were armed with arrows
and blow tubes, but made no use of them, and did not even attempt to
communicate with the jangada.
CHAPTER XI.
FROM PEVAS TO THE FRONTIER
During the few days which followed nothing occurred worthy of note. The
nights were so fine that the long raft went on its way with the stream
without even a halt. The two picturesque banks of the river seemed to
change like the panoramas of the theaters which unroll from one wing to
another. By a kind of optical illusion it appeared as though the raft
was motionless between two moving pathways.
Benito had no shooting on the banks, for no halt was made, but game was
very advantageously replaced by the results of the fishing.
A great variety of excellent fish were taken--_“pacos,” “surubis,”
“gamitanas,”_ of exquisite flavor, and several of those large rays
called _“duridaris,”_ with rose-colored stomachs and black backs armed
with highly poisonous darts. There were also collected by thousands
those _“candirus,”_ a kind of small silurus, of which many are
microscopic, and which so frequently make a pincushion of the calves of
the bather when he imprudently ventures into their haunts.
The rich waters of the Amazon were also frequented by many other aquatic
animals, which escorted the jangada through its waves for whole hours
together.
There were the gigantic _“pria-rucus,”_ ten and twelve feet long,
cuirassed with large scales with scarlet borders, whose flesh was not
much appreciated by the natives. Neither did they care to capture many
of the graceful dolphins which played about in hundreds, striking with
their tails the planks of the raft, gamboling at the bow and stern, and
making the water alive with colored reflections and spurts of spray,
which the refracted light converted into so many rainbows.
On the 16th of June the jangada, after fortunately clearing several
shallows in approaching the banks, arrived near the large island of
San Pablo, and the following evening she stopped at the village of
Moromoros, which is situated on the left side of the Amazon. Twenty-four
hours afterward, passing the mouths of the Atacoari or Cocha--or
rather the _“furo,”_ or canal, which communicates with the lake of
Cabello-Cocha on the right bank--she put in at the rising ground of the
mission of Cocha. This was the country of the Marahua Indians, whose
long floating hair, and mouths opening in the middle of a kind of fan
made of the spines of palm-trees, six inches long, give them a cat-like
look--their endeavor being, according to Paul Marcoy, to resemble
the tiger, whose boldness, strength, and cunning they admire above
everything. Several women came with these Marahuas, smoking cigars, but
holding the lighted ends in their teeth. All of them, like the king of
the Amazonian forests, go about almost naked.
The mission of Cocha was then in charge of a Franciscan monk, who was
anxious to visit Padre Passanha.
Joam Garral received him with a warm welcome, and offered him a seat at
the dinner-table.
On that day was given a dinner which did honor to the Indian cook. The
traditional soup of fragrant herbs; cake, so often made to replace bread
in Brazil, composed of the flour of the manioc thoroughly impregnated
with the gravy of meat and tomato jelly; poultry with rice, swimming in
a sharp sauce made of vinegar and _“malagueta;”_ a dish of spiced herbs,
and cold cake sprinkled with cinnamon, formed enough to tempt a poor
monk reduced to the ordinary meager fare of his parish. They tried all
they could to detain him, and Yaquita and her daughter did their utmost
in persuasion. But the Franciscan had to visit on that evening an Indian
who was lying ill at Cocha, and he heartily thanked the hospitable
family and departed, not without taking a few presents, which would be
well received by the neophytes of the mission.
For two days Araujo was very busy. The bed of the river gradually
enlarged, but the islands became more numerous, and the current,
embarrassed by these obstacles, increased in strength. Great care was
necessary in passing between the islands of Cabello-Cocha, Tarapote, and
Cacao. Many stoppages had to be made, and occasionally they were obliged
to pole off the jangada, which now and then threatened to run aground.
Every one assisted in the work, and it was under these difficult
circumstances that, on the evening of the 20th of June, they found
themselves at Nuestra-Senora-di-Loreto.
Loreto is the last Peruvian town situated on the left bank of the river
before arriving at the Brazilian frontier. It is only a little village,
composed of about twenty houses, grouped on a slightly undulating bank,
formed of ocherous earth and clay.
It was in 1770 that this mission was founded by the Jesuit missionaries.
The Ticuma Indians, who inhabit the territories on the north of the
river, are natives with ruddy skins, bushy hair, and striped designs on
their faces, making them look like the lacquer on a Chinese table. Both
men and women are simply clothed, with cotton bands bound round their
thighs and stomachs. They are now not more than two hundred in number,
and on the banks of the Atacoari are found the last traces of a nation
which was formerly so powerful under its famous chiefs.
At Loreto there also live a few Peruvian soldiers and two or three
Portuguese merchants, trading in cotton stuffs, salt fish, and
sarsaparilla.
Benito went ashore, to buy, if possible, a few bales of this smilax,
which is always so much in demand in the markets of the Amazon. Joam
Garral, occupied all the time in the work which gave him not a moment’s
rest, did not stir. Yaquita, her daughter, and Manoel also remained on
board. The mosquitoes of Loreto have a deserved reputation for driving
away such visitors as do not care to leave much of their blood with the
redoubtable diptera.
Manoel had a few appropriate words to say about these insects, and they
were not of a nature to encourage an inclination to brave their stings.
“They say that all the new species which infest the banks of the Amazon
collect at the village of Loreto. I believe it, but do not wish to
confirm it. There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray
mosquito, the hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf
mosquito, the trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin,
the big black, and the red of the woods; or rather they make take
their choice of you for a little repast, and you will come back hardly
recognizable! I fancy these bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian
frontier considerably better than the poverty-stricken soldiers we see
on the bank.”
“But if everything is of use in nature,” asked Minha, “what is the use
of mosquitoes?”
“They minister to the happiness of entomologists,” replied Manoel; “and
I should be much embarrassed to find a better explanation.”
What Manoel had said of the Loreto mosquitoes was only too true. When
Benito had finished his business and returned on board, his face and
hands were tattooed with thousands of red points, without counting some
chigoes, which, in spite of the leather of his boots, had introduced
themselves beneath his toes.
“Let us set off this very instant,” said Benito, “or these wretched
insects will invade us, and the jangada will become uninhabitable!”
“And we shall take them into Para,” said Manoel, “where there are
already quite enough for its own needs.”
And so, in order not to pass even the night near the banks, the jangada
pushed off into the stream.
On leaving Loreto the Amazon turns slightly toward the southwest,
between the islands of Arava, Cuyari, and Urucutea. The jangada then
glided along the black waters of the Cajaru, as they mingled with the
white stream of the Amazon. After having passed this tributary on
the left, it peacefully arrived during the evening of the 23d of June
alongside the large island of Jahuma.
The setting of the sun on a clear horizon, free from all haze, announced
one of those beautiful tropical nights which are unknown in the
temperate zones. A light breeze freshened the air; the moon arose in the
constellated depths of the sky, and for several hours took the place of
the twilight which is absent from these latitudes. But even during this
period the stars shone with unequaled purity. The immense plain seemed
to stretch into the infinite like a sea, and at the extremity of the
axis, which measures more than two hundred thousand millions of leagues,
there appeared on the north the single diamond of the pole star, on the
south the four brilliants of the Southern Cross.
The trees on the left bank and on the island of Jahuma stood up in sharp
black outline. There were recognizable in the undecided _silhouettes_
the trunks, or rather columns, of _“copahus,”_ which spread out in
umbrellas, groups of _“sandis,”_ from which is extracted the thick and
sugared milk, intoxicating as wine itself, and _“vignaticos”_ eighty
feet high, whose summits shake at the passage of the lightest currents
of air. “What a magnificent sermon are these forests of the Amazon!” has
been justly said. Yes; and we might add, “What a magnificent hymn there
is in the nights of the tropics!”
The birds were giving forth their last evening notes--_“bentivis,”_
who hang their nests on the bank-side reeds; _“niambus,”_ a kind of
partridge, whose song is composed of four notes, in perfect accord;
_“kamichis,”_ with their plaintive melody; kingfishers, whose call
responds like a signal to the last cry of their congeners; _“canindes,”_
with their sonorous trumpets; and red macaws, who fold their wings in
the foliage of the _“jaquetibas,”_ when night comes on to dim their
glowing colors.
On the jangada every one was at his post, in the attitude of repose.
The pilot alone, standing in the bow, showed his tall stature, scarcely
defined in the earlier shadows. The watch, with his long pole on
his shoulder, reminded one of an encampment of Tartar horsemen. The
Brazilian flag hung from the top of the staff in the bow, and the breeze
was scarcely strong enough to lift the bunting.
At eight o’clock the three first tinklings of the Angelus escaped from
the bell of the little chapel. The three tinklings of the second and
third verses sounded in their turn, and the salutation was completed in
the series of more rapid strokes of the little bell.
However, the family after this July day remained sitting under the
veranda to breathe the fresh air from the open.
It had been so each evening, and while Joam Garral, always silent, was
contented to listen, the young people gayly chatted away till bedtime.
“Ah! our splendid river! our magnificent Amazon!” exclaimed the young
girl, whose enthusiasm for the immense stream never failed.
“Unequaled river, in very truth,” said Manoel; “and I do not understand
all its sublime beauties. We are going down it, however, like Orellana
and La Condamine did so many centuries ago, and I am not at all
surprised at their marvelous descriptions.”
“A little fabulous,” replied Benito.
“Now, brother,” said Minha seriously, “say no evil of our Amazon.”
“To remind you that it has its legends, my sister, is to say no ill of
it.”
“Yes, that is true; and it has some marvelous ones,” replied Minha.
“What legends?” asked Manoel. “I dare avow that they have not yet found
their way into Para--or rather that, for my part, I am not acquainted
with them.”
“What, then do you learn in the Belem colleges?” laughingly asked Minha.
“I begin to perceive that they teach us nothing,” replied Manoel.
“What, sir!” replied Minha, with a pleasant seriousness, “you do
not know, among other fables, that an enormous reptile called the
_‘minhocao,’_ sometimes visits the Amazon, and that the waters of the
river rise or fall according as this serpent plunges in or quits them,
so gigantic is he?”
“But have you ever seen this phenomenal minhocao?”
“Alas, no!” replied Lina.
“What a pity!” Fragoso thought it proper to add.
“And the ‘Mae d’Aqua,’” continued the girl--“that proud and redoubtable
woman whose look fascinates and drags beneath the waters of the river
the imprudent ones who gaze a her.”
“Oh, as for the ‘Mae d’Aqua,’ she exists!” cried the naïve Lina; “they
say that she still walks on the banks, but disappears like a water
sprite as soon as you approach her.”
“Very well, Lina,” said Benito; “the first time you see her just let me
know.”
“So that she may seize you and take you to the bottom of the river?
Never, Mr. Benito!”
“She believes it!” shouted Minha.
“There are people who believe in the trunk of Manaos,” said Fragoso,
always ready to intervene on behalf of Lina.
“The ‘trunk of Manaos’?” asked Manoel. “What about the trunk of Manaos?”
“Mr. Manoel,” answered Fragoso, with comic gravity, “it appears that
there is--or rather formerly was--a trunk of _‘turuma,’_ which every
year at the same time descended the Rio Negro, stopping several days at
Manaos, and going on into Para, halting at every port, where the natives
ornamented it with little flags. Arrived at Belem, it came to a halt,
turned back on its road, remounted the Amazon to the Rio Negro, and
returned to the forest from which it had mysteriously started. One day
somebody tried to drag it ashore, but the river rose in anger, and the
attempt had to be given up. And on another occasion the captain of a
ship harpooned it and tried to tow it along. This time again the river,
in anger, broke off the ropes, and the trunk mysteriously escaped.”
“What became of it?” asked the mulatto.
“It appears that on its last voyage, Miss Lina,” replied Fragoso, “it
mistook the way, and instead of going up the Negro it continued in the
Amazon, and it has never been seen again.”
“Oh, if we could only meet it!” said Lina.
“If we meet it,” answered Benito, “we will put you on it! It will take
you back to the mysterious forest, and you will likewise pass into the
state of a legendary mind!”
“And why not?” asked the mulatto.
“So much for your legends,” said Manoel; “and I think your river is
worthy of them. But it has also its histories, which are worth something
more. I know one, and if I were not afraid of grieving you--for it is a
very sad one--I would relate it.”
“Oh! tell it, by all means, Mr. Manoel,” exclaimed Lina; “I like stories
which make you cry!”
“What, do you cry, Lina?” said Benito.
“Yes, Mr. Benito; but I cry when laughing.”
“Oh, well! let us save it, Manoel!”
“It is the history of a Frenchwoman whose sorrows rendered these banks
memorable in the eighteenth century.”
“We are listening,” said Minha.
“Here goes, then,” said Manoel. “In 1741, at the time of the expedition
of the two Frenchmen, Bouguer and La Condamine, who were sent to measure
a terrestrial degree on the equator, they were accompanied by a very
distinguished astronomer, Godin des Odonais. Godin des Odonais set out
then, but he did not set out alone, for the New World; he took with him
his young wife, his children, his father-in-law, and his brother-in-law.
The travelers arrived at Quito in good health. There commenced a series
of misfortunes for Madame Odonais; in a few months she lost some of her
children. When Godin des Odonais had completed his work, toward the end
of the year 1759, he left Quito and started for Cayenne. Once arrived
in this town he wanted his family to come to him, but war had been
declared, and he was obliged to ask the Portuguese government for
permission for a free passage for Madame Odonais and her people. What
do you think? Many years passed before the permission could be given.
In 1765 Godin des Odonais, maddened by the delay, resolved to ascend
the Amazon in search of his wife at Quito; but at the moment of his
departure a sudden illness stopped him, and he could not carry out his
intention. However, his application had not been useless, and Madame
des Odonais learned at last that the king of Portugal had given the
necessary permission, and prepared to embark and descend the river to
her husband. At the same time an escort was ordered to be ready in the
missions of the Upper Amazon. Madame des Odonais was a woman of
great courage, as you will see presently; she never hesitated, and
notwithstanding the dangers of such a voyage across the continent, she
started.”
“It was her duty to her husband, Manoel,” said Yaquita, “and I would
have done the same.”
“Madame des Odonais,” continued Manoel, “came to Rio Bamba, at the
south of Quito, bringing her brother-in-law, her children, and a French
doctor. Their endeavor was to reach the missions on the Brazilian
frontier, where they hoped to find a ship and the escort. The voyage at
first was favorable; it was made down the tributaries of the Amazon in
a canoe. The difficulties, however, gradually increased with the dangers
and fatigues of a country decimated by the smallpox. Of several guides
who offered their services, the most part disappeared after a few
days; one of them, the last who remained faithful to the travelers, was
drowned in the Bobonasa, in endeavoring to help the French doctor. At
length the canoe, damaged by rocks and floating trees, became useless.
It was therefore necessary to get on shore, and there at the edge of the
impenetrable forest they built a few huts of foliage. The doctor offered
to go on in front with a negro who had never wished to leave Madame des
Odonais. The two went off; they waited for them several days, but in
vain. They never returned.
“In the meantime the victuals were getting exhausted. The forsaken ones
in vain endeavored to descend the Bobonasa on a raft. They had to
again take to the forest, and make their way on foot through the almost
impenetrable undergrowth. The fatigues were too much for the poor folks!
They died off one by one in spite of the cares of the noble Frenchwoman.
At the end of a few days children, relations, and servants, were all
dead!”
“What an unfortunate woman!” said Lina.
“Madame des Odonais alone remained,” continued Manoel. “There she was,
at a thousand leagues from the ocean which she was trying to reach! It
was no longer a mother who continued her journey toward the river--the
mother had lost her children; she had buried them with her own hands! It
was a wife who wished to see her husband once again! She traveled night
and day, and at length regained the Bobonasa. She was there received
by some kind-hearted Indians, who took her to the missions, where the
escort was waiting. But she arrived alone, and behind her the stages of
the route were marked with graves! Madame des Odonais reached Loreto,
where we were a few days back. From this Peruvian village she descended
the Amazon, as we are doing at this moment, and at length she rejoined
her husband after a separation of nineteen years.”
“Poor lady!” said Minha.
“Above all, poor mother!” answered Yaquita.
At this moment Araujo, the pilot, came aft and said:
“Joam Garral, we are off the Ronde Island. We are passing the frontier!”
“The frontier!” replied Joam.
And rising, he went to the side of the jangada, and looked long and
earnestly at the Ronde Island, with the waves breaking up against
it. Then his hand sought his forehead, as if to rid himself of some
remembrance.
“The frontier!” murmured he, bowing his head by an involuntary movement.
But an instant after his head was raised, and his expression was that of
a man resolved to do his duty to the last.
CHAPTER XII.
FRAGOSO AT WORK
“Braza” (burning embers) is a word found in the Spanish language as far
back as the twelfth century. It has been used to make the word “brazil,”
as descriptive of certain woods which yield a reddish dye. From this
has come the name “Brazil,” given to that vast district of South America
which is crossed by the equator, and in which these products are so
frequently met with. In very early days these woods were the object of
considerable trade. Although correctly called _“ibirapitunga,”_ from the
place of production, the name of _“brazil”_ stuck to them, and it has
become that of the country, which seems like an immense heap of embers
lighted by the rays of the tropical sun.
Brazil was from the first occupied by the Portuguese. About the
commencement of the sixteenth century, Alvarez Cabral, the pilot, took
possession of it, and although France and Holland partially established
themselves there, it has remained Portuguese, and possesses all the
qualities which distinguish that gallant little nation. It is to-day
the largest state of South America, and has at its head the intelligent
artist-king Dom Pedro.
“What is your privilege in the tribe?” asked Montaigne of an Indian whom
he met at Havre.
“The privilege of marching first to battle!” innocently answered the
Indian.
War, we know, was for a long time the surest and most rapid vehicle of
civilization. The Brazilians did what this Indian did: they fought, they
defended their conquests, they enlarged them, and we see them marching
in the first rank of the civilizing advance.
It was in 1824, sixteen years after the foundation of the
Portugo-Brazilian Empire, that Brazil proclaimed its independence by the
voice of Don Juan, whom the French armies had chased from Portugal.
It remained only to define the frontier between the new empire and that
of its neighbor, Peru. This was no easy matter.
If Brazil wished to extend to the Rio Napo in the west, Peru attempted
to reach eight degrees further, as far as the Lake of Ega.
But in the meantime Brazil had to interfere to hinder the kidnaping of
the Indians from the Amazon, a practice which was engaged in much to the
profit of the Hispano-Brazilian missions. There was no better method of
checking this trade than that of fortifying the Island of the Ronde, a
little above Tabatinga, and there establishing a post.
This afforded the solution, and from that time the frontier of the two
countries passed through the middle of this island.
Above, the river is Peruvian, and is called the Marañon, as has been
said. Below, it is Brazilian, and takes the name of the Amazon.
It was on the evening of the 25th of June that the jangada stopped
before Tabatinga, the first Brazilian town situated on the left bank, at
the entrance of the river of which it bears the name, and belonging to
the parish of St. Paul, established on the right a little further down
stream.
Joam Garral had decided to pass thirty-six hours here, so as to give
a little rest to the crew. They would not start, therefore, until the
morning of the 27th.
On this occasion Yaquita and her children, less likely, perhaps, than
at Iquitos to be fed upon by the native mosquitoes, had announced their
intention of going on ashore and visiting the town.
The population of Tabatinga is estimated at four hundred, nearly all
Indians, comprising, no doubt, many of those wandering families who
are never settled at particular spots on the banks of the Amazon or its
smaller tributaries.
The post at the island of the Ronde has been abandoned for some years,
and transferred to Tabatinga. It can thus be called a garrison town, but
the garrison is only composed of nine soldiers, nearly all Indians, and
a sergeant, who is the actual commandant of the place.
A bank about thirty feet high, in which are cut the steps of a not very
solid staircase, forms here the curtain of the esplanade which carries
the pigmy fort. The house of the commandant consists of a couple of huts
placed in a square, and the soldiers occupy an oblong building a hundred
feet away, at the foot of a large tree.
The collection of cabins exactly resembles all the villages and hamlets
which are scattered along the banks of the river, although in them
a flagstaff carrying the Brazilian colors does not rise above a
sentry-box, forever destitute of its sentinel, nor are four small
mortars present to cannonade on an emergency any vessel which does not
come in when ordered.
As for the village properly so called, it is situated below, at the
base of the plateau. A road, which is but a ravine shaded by ficuses and
miritis, leads to it in a few minutes. There, on a half-cracked hill of
clay, stand a dozen houses, covered with the leaves of the _“boiassu”_
palm placed round a central space.
All this is not very curious, but the environs of Tabatinga are
charming, particularly at the mouth of the Javary, which is of
sufficient extent to contain the Archipelago of the Aramasa Islands.
Hereabouts are grouped many fine trees, and among them a large number of
the palms, whose supple fibers are used in the fabrication of hammocks
and fishing-nets, and are the cause of some trade. To conclude, the
place is one of the most picturesque on the Upper Amazon.
Tabatinga is destined to become before long a station of some
importance, and will no doubt rapidly develop, for there will stop the
Brazilian steamers which ascend the river, and the Peruvian steamers
which descend it. There they will tranship passengers and cargoes. It
does not require much for an English or American village to become in a
few years the center of considerable commerce.
The river is very beautiful along this part of its course. The influence
of ordinary tides is not perceptible at Tabatinga, which is more
than six hundred leagues from the Atlantic. But it is not so with the
_“pororoca,”_ that species of eddy which for three days in the height of
the syzygies raises the waters of the Amazon, and turns them back at the
rate of seventeen kilometers per hour. They say that the effects of this
bore are felt up to the Brazilian frontier.
On the morrow, the 26th of June, the Garral family prepared to go off
and visit the village. Though Joam, Benito, and Manoel had already
set foot in a Brazilian town, it was otherwise with Yaquita and her
daughter; for them it was, so to speak, a taking possession. It is
conceivable, therefore, that Yaquita and Minha should attach some
importance to the event.
If, on his part, Fragoso, in his capacity of wandering barber, had
already run through the different provinces of South America, Lina, like
her young mistress, had never been on Brazilian soil.
But before leaving the jangada Fragoso had sought Joam Garral, and had
the following conversation with him.
“Mr. Garral,” said he, “from the day when you received me at the fazenda
of Iquitos, lodged, clothed, fed--in a word, took me in so hospitably--I
have owed you----”
“You owe me absolutely nothing, my friend,” answered Joam, “so do not
insist----”
“Oh, do not be alarmed!” exclaimed Fragoso, “I am not going to pay it
off! Let me add, that you took me on board the jangada and gave me the
means of descending the river. But here we are, on the soil of Brazil,
which, according to all probability, I ought never to have seen again.
Without that liana----”
“It is to Lina, and to Lina alone, that you should tender your thanks,”
said Joam.
“I know,” said Fragoso, “and I will never forget what I owe here, any
more than what I owe you.”
“They tell me, Fragoso,” continued Joam, “that you are going to say
good-by, and intend to remain at Tabatinga.”
“By no means, Mr. Garral, since you have allowed me to accompany you to
Belem, where I hope at the least to be able to resume my old trade.”
“Well, if that is your intention--what were you going to ask me?”
“I was going to ask if you saw any inconvenience in my working at my
profession on our route. There is no necessity for my hand to rust; and,
besides, a few handfuls of reis would not be so bad at the bottom of my
pocket, more particularly if I had earned them. You know, Mr. Garral,
that a barber who is also a hairdresser--and I hardly like to say a
doctor, out of respect to Mr. Manoel--always finds customers in these
Upper Amazon villages.”
“Particularly among the Brazilians,” answered Joam. “As for the
natives----”
“I beg pardon,” replied Fragoso, “particularly among the natives. Ah!
although there is no beard to trim--for nature has been very stingy
toward them in that way--there are always some heads of hair to be
dressed in the latest fashion. They are very fond of it, these savages,
both the men and the women! I shall not be installed ten minutes in the
square at Tabatinga, with my cup and ball in hand--the cup and ball
I have brought on board, and which I can manage with pretty
pleasantly--before a circle of braves and squaws will have formed around
me. They will struggle for my favors. I could remain here for a month,
and the whole tribe of the Ticunas would come to me to have their hair
looked after! They won’t hesitate to make the acquaintance of ‘curling
tongs’--that is what they will call me--if I revisit the walls of
Tabatinga! I have already had two tries here, and my scissors and comb
have done marvels! It does not do to return too often on the same track.
The Indian ladies don’t have their hair curled every day, like the
beauties of our Brazilian cities. No; when it is done, it is done
for year, and during the twelvemonth they will take every care not to
endanger the edifice which I have raised--with what talent I dare not
say. Now it is nearly a year since I was at Tabatinga; I go to find my
monuments in ruin! And if it is not objectionable to you, Mr. Garral, I
would render myself again worthy of the reputation which I have acquired
in these parts, the question of reis, and not that of conceit, being,
you understand, the principal.”
“Go on, then, friend,” replied Joam Garral laughingly; “but be quick!
we can only remain a day at Tabatinga, and we shall start to-morrow at
dawn.”
“I will not lose a minute,” answered Fragoso--“just time to take the
tools of my profession, and I am off.”
“Off you go, Fragoso,” said Joam, “and may the reis rain into your
pocket!”
“Yes, and that is a proper sort of rain, and there can never be too much
of it for your obedient servant.”
And so saying Fragoso rapidly moved away.
A moment afterward the family, with the exception of Joam, went ashore.
The jangada was able to approach near enough to the bank for the landing
to take place without much trouble. A staircase, in a miserable state,
cut in the cliff, allowed the visitors to arrive on the crest of the
plateau.
Yaquita and her party were received by the commandant of the fort, a
poor fellow who, however, knew the laws of hospitality, and offered
them some breakfast in his cottage. Here and there passed and repassed
several soldiers on guard, while on the threshold of the barrack
appeared a few children, with their mothers of Ticuna blood, affording
very poor specimens of the mixed race.
In place of accepting the breakfast of the sergeant, Yaquita invited the
commandant and his wife to come and have theirs on board the jangada.
The commandant did not wait for a second invitation, and an appointment
was made for eleven o’clock. In the meantime Yaquita, her daughter,
and the young mulatto, accompanied by Manoel, went for a walk in the
neighborhood, leaving Benito to settle with the commandant about the
tolls--he being chief of the custom-house as well as of the military
establishment.
That done, Benito, as was his wont, strolled off with his gun into the
adjoining woods. On this occasion Manoel had declined to accompany him.
Fragoso had left the jangada, but instead of mounting to the fort he had
made for the village, crossing the ravine which led off from the right
on the level of the bank. He reckoned more on the native custom of
Tabatinga than on that of the garrison. Doubtless the soldiers’ wives
would not have wished better than to have been put under his hands,
but the husbands scarcely cared to part with a few reis for the sake of
gratifying the whims of their coquettish partners.
Among the natives it was quite the reverse. Husbands and wives, the
jolly barber knew them well, and he knew they would give him a better
reception.
Behold, then, Fragoso on the road, coming up the shady lane beneath the
ficuses, and arriving in the central square of Tabatinga!
As soon as he set foot in the place the famous barber was signaled,
recognized, surrounded. Fragoso had no big box, nor drum, nor cornet
to attract the attention of his clients--not even a carriage of shining
copper, with resplendent lamps and ornamented glass panels, nor a huge
parasol, no anything whatever to impress the public, as they generally
have at fairs. No; but Fragoso had his cup and ball, and how that cup
and ball were manipulated between his fingers! With what address did he
receive the turtle’s head, which did for the ball, on the pointed end
of the stick! With what grace did he make the ball describe some learned
curve of which mathematicians have not yet calculated the value--even
those who have determined the wondrous curve of “the dog who follows his
master!”
Every native was there--men, women, the old and the young, in their
nearly primitive costume, looking on with all their eyes, listening with
all their ears. The smiling entertainer, half in Portuguese, half in
Ticunian, favored them with his customary oration in a tone of the
most rollicking good humor. What he said was what is said by all the
charlatans who place their services at the public disposal, whether
they be Spanish Figaros or French perruqiers. At the bottom the
same self-possession, the same knowledge of human weakness, the same
description of threadbare witticisms, the same amusing dexterity, and,
on the part of the natives, the same wide-mouth astonishment, the same
curiosity, the same credulity as the simple folk of the civilized world.
It followed, then, that ten minutes later the public were completely
won, and crowded round Fragoso, who was installed in a _“loja”_ of the
place, a sort of serving-bar to the inn.
The _loja_ belonged to a Brazilian settled at Tabatinga. There, for a
few vatems, which are the sols of the country, and worth about twenty
reis, or half a dozen centimes each, the natives could get drinks of the
crudest, and particularly assai, a liquor half-solid, half-liquid,
made of the fruit of the palm-tree, and drunk from a _“coui”_ or
half-calabash in general use in this district of the Amazon.
And then men and women, with equal eagerness, took their places on the
barber’s stool. The scissors of Fragoso had little to do, for it was not
a question of cutting these wealthy heads of hair, nearly all remarkable
for their softness and their quality, but the use to which he could
put his comb and the tongs, which were kept warming in the corner in a
brasier.
And then the encouragements of the artist to the crowd!
“Look here! look here!” said he; “how will that do, my friends--if you
don’t sleep on the top of it! There you are, for a twelvemonth! and
these are the latest novelties from Belem and Rio de Janeiro! The
queen’s maids of honor are not more cleverly decked out; and observe, I
am not stingy with the pomade!”
No, he was not stingy with it. True, it was only a little grease, with
which he had mixed some of the juices of a few flowers, but he plastered
it on like cement!
And as to the names of the capillary edifices--for the monuments reared
by the hands of Fragoso were of every order of architecture--buckles,
rings, clubs, tresses, crimpings, rolls, corkscrews, curls, everything
found there a place. Nothing false; no towers, no chignons, no shams!
These head were not enfeebled by cuttings nor thinned by fallings-off,
but were forests in all their native virginity! Fragoso, however, was
not above adding a few natural flowers, two or three long fish-bones,
and some fine bone or copper ornaments, which were brought him by the
dandies of the district. Assuredly, the exquisites of the Directory
would have envied the arrangement of these high-art coiffures, three and
four stories high, and the great Leonard himself would have bowed before
his transatlantic rival.
And then the vatems, the handfuls of reis--the only coins for which the
natives of the Amazon exchange their goods--which rained into the
pocket of Fragoso, and which he collected with evident satisfaction. But
assuredly night would come before he could satisfy the demands of
the customers, who were so constantly renewed. It was not only the
population of Tabatinga which crowded to the door of the loja. The news
of the arrival of Fragoso was not slow to get abroad; natives came to
him from all sides: Ticunas from the left bank of the river, Mayorunas
from the right bank, as well as those who live on the Cajuru and those
who come from the villages of the Javary.
A long array of anxious ones formed itself in the square. The happy ones
coming from the hands of Fragoso went proudly from one house to another,
showed themselves off without daring to shake themselves, like the big
children that they were.
It thus happened that when noon came the much-occupied barber had not
had time to return on board, but had had to content himself with a
little assai, some manioc flour, and turtle eggs, which he rapidly
devoured between two applications of the curling-tongs.
But it was a great harvest for the innkeeper, as all the operations
could not be conducted without a large absorption of liquors drawn
from the cellars of the inn. In fact, it was an event for the town of
Tabatinga, this visit of the celebrated Fragoso, barber in ordinary and
extraordinary to the tribes of the Upper Amazon!
CHAPTER XIII.
TORRES
At five o’clock in the evening Fragoso was still there, and was asking
himself if he would have to pass the night on the spot to satisfy the
expectant crowd, when a stranger arrived in the square, and seeing all
this native gathering, advanced toward the inn.
For some minutes the stranger eyed Fragoso attentively with some
circumspection. The examination was obviously satisfactory, for he
entered the loja.
He was a man about thirty-five years of age. He was dressed in a
somewhat elegant traveling costume, which added much to his personal
appearance. But his strong black beard, which the scissors had not
touched for some time, and his hair, a trifle long, imperiously required
the good offices of a barber.
“Good-day, friend, good-day!” said he, lightly striking Fragoso on the
shoulder.
Fragoso turned round when he heard the words pronounced in pure
Brazilian, and not in the mixed idiom of the natives.
“A compatriot?” he asked, without stopping the twisting of the
refractory mouth of a Mayouma head.
“Yes,” answered the stranger. “A compatriot who has need of your
services.”
“To be sure! In a minute,” said Fragoso. “Wait till I have finished with
this lady!”
And this was done in a couple of strokes with the curling-tongs.
Although he was the last comer, and had no right to the vacant place, he
sat down on the stool without causing any expostulation on the part of
the natives who lost a turn.
Fragoso put down the irons for the scissors, and, after the manner of
his brethren, said:
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“Cut my beard and my hair,” answered the stranger.
“All right!” said Fragoso, inserting his comb into the mass of hair.
And then the scissors to do their work.
“And you come from far?” asked Fragoso, who could not work without a
good deal to say.
“I have come from the neighborhood of Iquitos.”
“So have I!” exclaimed Fragoso. “I have come down the Amazon from
Iquitos to Tabatinga. May I ask your name?”
“No objection at all,” replied the stranger. “My name is Torres.”
When the hair was cut in the latest style Fragoso began to thin his
beard, but at this moment, as he was looking straight into his face, he
stopped, then began again, and then:
“Eh! Mr. Torres,” said he; “I seem to know you. We must have seen each
other somewhere?”
“I do not think so,” quickly answered Torres.
“I am always wrong!” replied Fragoso, and he hurried on to finish his
task.
A moment after Torres continued the conversation which this question of
Fragoso had interrupted, with:
“How did you come from Iquitos?”
“From Iquitos to Tabatinga?”
“Yes.”
“On board a raft, on which I was given a passage by a worthy fazender
who is going down the Amazon with his family.”
“A friend indeed!” replied Torres. “That is a chance, and if your
fazender would take me----”
“Do you intend, then, to go down the river?”
“Precisely.”
“Into Para?”
“No, only to Manaos, where I have business.”
“Well, my host is very kind, and I think he would cheerfully oblige
you.”
“Do you think so?”
“I might almost say I am sure.”
“And what is the name of this fazender?” asked
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