第 九 章 · THE EVENING OF THE FIFTH OF JUNE

. 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!