Chapter Chapter 10 · FROM IQUITOS TO PEVAS

. 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.