Jules Verne (4 page)

Under such conditions it was that Joam Garral was introduced to the farm
at Iquitos.

Brazilian by birth, Joam Garral was without family or fortune. Trouble,
he said, had obliged him to quit his country and abandon all thoughts
of return. He asked his host to excuse his entering on his past
misfortunes—misfortunes as serious as they were unmerited. What he
sought, and what he wished, was a new life, a life of labor. He had
started on his travels with some slight thought of entering a fazenda
in the interior. He was educated, intelligent. He had in all his bearing
that inexpressible something which tells you that the man is genuine and
of frank and upright character. Magalhaës, quite taken with him, asked
him to remain at the farm, where he would, in a measure, supply that
which was wanting in the worthy farmer.

Joam Garral accepted the offer without hesitation. His intention had
been to join a
"seringal,"
or caoutchouc concern, in which in those
days a good workman could earn from five to six piastres a day, and
could hope to become a master if he had any luck; but Magalhaës very
truly observed that if the pay was good, work was only found in the
seringals at harvest time—that is to say, during only a few months of
the year—and this would not constitute the permanent position that a
young man ought to wish for.

The Portuguese was right. Joam Garral saw it, and entered resolutely
into the service of the fazenda, deciding to devote to it all his
powers.

Magalhaës had no cause to regret his generous action. His business
recovered. His wood trade, which extended by means of the Amazon up to
Para, was soon considerably extended under the impulse of Joam Garral.
The fazenda began to grow in proportion, and to spread out along the
bank of the river up to its junction with the Nanay. A delightful
residence was made of the house; it was raised a story, surrounded by a
veranda, and half hidden under beautiful trees—mimosas, fig-sycamores,
bauhinias, and paullinias, whose trunks were invisible beneath a network
of scarlet-flowered bromelias and passion-flowers.

At a distance, behind huge bushes and a dense mass of arborescent
plants, were concealed the buildings in which the staff of the fazenda
were accommodated—the servants' offices, the cabins of the blacks, and
the huts of the Indians. From the bank of the river, bordered with reeds
and aquatic plants, the tree-encircled house was alone visible.

A vast meadow, laboriously cleared along the lagoons, offered excellent
pasturage. Cattle abounded—a new source of profit in these fertile
countries, where a herd doubles in four years, and where ten per cent.
interest is earned by nothing more than the skins and the hides of
the animals killed for the consumption of those who raise them! A few
"sitios,"
or manioc and coffee plantations, were started in parts of
the woods which were cleared. Fields of sugar-canes soon required the
construction of a mill to crush the sacchariferous stalks destined to be
used hereafter in the manufacture of molasses, tafia, and rum. In short,
ten years after the arrival of Joam Garral at the farm at Iquitos
the fazenda had become one of the richest establishments on the Upper
Amazon. Thanks to the good management exercised by the young clerk
over the works at home and the business abroad, its prosperity daily
increased.

The Portuguese did not wait so long to acknowledge what he owed to Joam
Garral. In order to recompense him in proportion to his merits he had
from the first given him an interest in the profits of his business,
and four years after his arrival he had made him a partner on the same
footing as himself, and with equal shares.

But there was more that he had in store for him. Yaquita, his daughter,
had, in this silent young man, so gentle to others, so stern to himself,
recognized the sterling qualities which her father had done. She was in
love with him, but though on his side Joam had not remained insensible
to the merits and the beauty of this excellent girl, he was too proud
and reserved to dream of asking her to marry him.

A serious incident hastened the solution.

Magalhaës was one day superintending a clearance and was mortally
wounded by the fall of a tree. Carried home helpless to the farm, and
feeling himself lost, he raised up Yaquita, who was weeping by his side,
took her hand, and put it into that of Joam Garral, making him swear to
take her for his wife.

"You have made my fortune," he said, "and I shall not die in peace
unless by this union I know that the fortune of my daughter is assured."

"I can continue her devoted servant, her brother, her protector, without
being her husband," Joam Garral had at first replied. "I owe you all,
Magalhaës. I will never forget it, but the price you would pay for my
endeavors is out of all proportion to what they are worth."

The old man insisted. Death would not allow him to wait; he demanded the
promise, and it was made to him.

Yaquita was then twenty-two years old, Joam was twenty-six. They
loved each other and they were married some hours before the death of
Magalhaës, who had just strength left to bless their union.

It was under these circumstances that in 1830 Joam Garral became the
new fazender of Iquitos, to the immense satisfaction of all those who
composed the staff of the farm.

The prosperity of the settlement could not do otherwise than grow when
these two minds were thus united.

A year after her marriage Yaquita presented her husband with a son, and,
two years after, a daughter. Benito and Minha, the grandchildren of the
old Portuguese, became worthy of their grandfather, children worthy of
Joam and Yaquita.

The daughter grew to be one of the most charming of girls. She never
left the fazenda. Brought up in pure and healthy surroundings, in the
midst of the beauteous nature of the tropics, the education given to her
by her mother, and the instruction received by her from her father, were
ample. What more could she have learned in a convent at Manaos or Belem?
Where would she have found better examples of the domestic virtues?
Would her mind and feelings have been more delicately formed away from
her home? If it was ordained that she was not to succeed her mother in
the management of the fazenda, she was equal to any other position to
which she might be called.

With Benito it was another thing. His father very wisely wished him to
receive as solid and complete an education as could then be obtained
in the large towns of Brazil. There was nothing which the rich fazender
refused his son. Benito was possessed of a cheerful disposition, an
active mind, a lively intelligence, and qualities of heart equal to
those of his head. At the age of twelve he was sent into Para, to Belem,
and there, under the direction of excellent professors, he acquired
the elements of an education which could not but eventually make him a
distinguished man. Nothing in literature, in the sciences, in the arts,
was a stranger to him. He studied as if the fortune of his father would
not allow him to remain idle. He was not among such as imagine that
riches exempt men from work—he was one of those noble characters,
resolute and just, who believe that nothing should diminish our natural
obligation in this respect if we wish to be worthy of the name of men.

During the first years of his residence at Belem, Benito had made the
acquaintance of Manoel Valdez. This young man, the son of a merchant in
Para, was pursuing his studies in the same institution as Benito. The
conformity of their characters and their tastes proved no barrier to
their uniting in the closest of friendships, and they became inseparable
companions.

Manoel, born in 1832, was one year older than Benito. He had only a
mother, and she lived on the modest fortune which her husband had left
her. When Manoel's preliminary studies were finished, he had taken
up the subject of medicine. He had a passionate taste for that noble
profession, and his intention was to enter the army, toward which he
felt himself attracted.

At the time that we saw him with his friend Benito, Manoel Valdez had
already obtained his first step, and he had come away on leave for some
months to the fazenda, where he was accustomed to pass his holidays.
Well-built, and of distinguished bearing, with a certain native pride
which became him well, the young man was treated by Joam and Yaquita as
another son. But if this quality of son made him the brother of Benito,
the title was scarcely appreciated by him when Minha was concerned, for
he soon became attached to the young girl by a bond more intimate than
could exist between brother and sister.

In the year 1852—of which four months had already passed before
the commencement of this history—Joam Garral attained the age of
forty-eight years. In that sultry climate, which wears men away so
quickly, he had known how, by sobriety, self-denial, suitable living,
and constant work, to remain untouched where others had prematurely
succumbed. His hair, which he wore short, and his beard, which was
full, had already grown gray, and gave him the look of a Puritan. The
proverbial honesty of the Brazilian merchants and fazenders showed
itself in his features, of which straightforwardness was the leading
characteristic. His calm temperament seemed to indicate an interior
fire, kept well under control. The fearlessness of his look denoted a
deep-rooted strength, to which, when danger threatened, he could never
appeal in vain.

But, notwithstanding one could not help remarking about this quiet man
of vigorous health, with whom all things had succeeded in life, a depth
of sadness which even the tenderness of Yaquita had not been able to
subdue.

Respected by all, placed in all the conditions that would seem necessary
to happiness, why was not this just man more cheerful and less reserved?
Why did he seem to be happy for others and not for himself? Was this
disposition attributable to some secret grief? Herein was a constant
source of anxiety to his wife.

Yaquita was now forty-four. In that tropical country where women are
already old at thirty she had learned the secret of resisting the
climate's destructive influences, and her features, a little sharpened
but still beautiful, retained the haughty outline of the Portuguese
type, in which nobility of face unites so naturally with dignity of
mind.

Benito and Minha responded with an affection unbounded and unceasing for
the love which their parents bore them.

Benito was now aged twenty-one, and quick, brave, and sympathetic,
contrasted outwardly with his friend Manoel, who was more serious and
reflective. It was a great treat for Benito, after quite a year passed
at Belem, so far from the fazenda, to return with his young friend to
his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to
find himself, enthusiastic hunter as he was, in the midst of these
superb forests of the Upper Amazon, some of whose secrets remained after
so many centuries still unsolved by man.

Minha was twenty years old. A lovely girl, brunette, and with large blue
eyes, eyes which seemed to open into her very soul; of middle height,
good figure, and winning grace, in every way the very image of Yaquita.
A little more serious than her brother, affable, good-natured, and
charitable, she was beloved by all. On this subject you could fearlessly
interrogate the humblest servants of the fazenda. It was unnecessary to
ask her brother's friend, Manoel Valdez, what he thought of her. He was
too much interested in the question to have replied without a certain
amount of partiality.

This sketch of the Garral family would not be complete, and would lack
some of its features, were we not to mention the numerous staff of the
fazenda.

In the first place, then, it behooves us to name an old negress, of some
sixty years, called Cybele, free through the will of her master, a slave
through her affection for him and his, and who had been the nurse
of Yaquita. She was one of the family. She thee-ed and thou-ed both
daughter and mother. The whole of this good creature's life was passed
in these fields, in the middle of these forests, on that bank of the
river which bounded the horizon of the farm. Coming as a child to
Iquitos in the slave-trading times, she had never quitted the village;
she was married there, and early a widow, had lost her only son, and
remained in the service of Magalhaës. Of the Amazon she knew no more
than what flowed before her eyes.

With her, and more specially attached to the service of Minha, was a
pretty, laughing mulatto, of the same age as her mistress, to whom
she was completely devoted. She was called Lina. One of those gentle
creatures, a little spoiled, perhaps, to whom a good deal of familiarity
is allowed, but who in return adore their mistresses. Quick, restless,
coaxing, and lazy, she could do what she pleased in the house.

As for servants they were of two kinds—Indians, of whom there were
about a hundred, employed always for the works of the fazenda, and
blacks to about double the number, who were not yet free, but whose
children were not born slaves. Joam Garral had herein preceded the
Brazilian government. In this country, moreover, the negroes coming
from Benguela, the Congo, or the Gold Coast were always treated with
kindness, and it was not at the fazenda of Iquitos that one would look
for those sad examples of cruelty which were so frequent on foreign
plantations.

MANOEL WAS in love with the sister of his friend Benito, and she was
in love with him. Each was sensible of the other's worth, and each was
worthy of the other.

When he was no longer able to mistake the state of his feelings toward
Minha, Manoel had opened his heart to Benito.

"Manoel, my friend," had immediately answered the enthusiastic young
fellow, "you could not do better than wish to marry my sister. Leave
it to me! I will commence by speaking to the mother, and I think I can
promise that you will not have to wait long for her consent."