Jules Verne (11 page)

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!

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!"