第 六 章 · A FOREST ON THE GROUND

. 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.