第 八 章 · 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 8. 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!”