Jules Verne (10 page)

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!"

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.