Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon

conditions as agreeable as possible. Not only were the fazender and his family to start on a voyage

he preparations for the expedition he regained his former activity. His people rejoiced exceedingly at seeing him again at work. His moral self reacted against his physical self, and Joam again beca

t were to precede his depar

essels, which companies were only then thinking of putting into the river. The service was worked by individuals

e to carry from one to a dozen paddlers, and of three or four tons burden: "egariteas," constructed on a larger scale, of broader design, and leaving on each side a gangway for the ro

otilla of the Amazon, and were only suited for

were rowed by four long paddles not at all easy to work against the stream; or "cobertas," of twenty tons burden, a kind of junk with a poop behind and a ca

the voyage by carrying a huge convoy of goods into Para. From this point of view there was no necessity to descend the river in a hurry. And the d

xtreme, he was going to take with him a numerous following and abandon hi

rom the bank and carried down the Amazon with all that composed the family of the

magnificent forests which, in the central distric

h in the most precious and diverse species adapted for joinery, cabinet work, s

l felled some hundreds of trees from his stock and formed immense rafts of floating wood, of joists, beams, and slightly squared trunks, which

ito all the detail of the trading part of the business. But there was no time to lose. The beginning of June was the best season to

alf-mile square of the forest which was situated at the junction of the Nanay and the Amazon-that is to say, the whole river side of

r than a hundred egariteas or vigilingas coupled together, that Joam Garr

nha, clapping her hands, when

that way we shall reach Bel

ave some hunting in the forests wh

Manoel; "could we not hit upon some

the interested observation of the young

an Indian who was the princ

im, "the jangada must be b

work this ve

ssacres would perhaps have groaned to see giants many hundred years old fall in a few hours beneath the axes of the woodmen; but there was such a quantity on the banks of

x they had armed themselves with a felling-sword, that indispensable tool of every one who desires to penetrate the Amazonian forests, a large blade slightly curved, wide and flat, and two or three feet long, and strongly

nks were divested of their clothing of creepers, cacti, ferns, mosses, and bromelias. They w

nches, sawing off the heavier boughs and cutting down the topmost limbs, which had to be cleared away on the spot. Very soon there remained only a doomed fores

which supports a horizontal parasol; and "bombax" of superb stature, with its straight and smooth white stem. Among these magnificent specimens of the Amazonian flora there fell many "quatibos" whose rosy canopies towered above the neighboring trees, whose fruits are like little cups with rows of chestnuts ranged within, and whose wood of clear violet is specially in demand for ship-building. And besides there was the ironwood; and more particularly the "ibiriratea," nearly black in its skin, and so close grained that of it the Indian

n the demolition of a forest which it would take twenty or thirty years to replace. Not a stick of young or old wood was left to mark the boundary of a future clearing, not even an angle to mark the limit of

to be cleared, plowed, planted, and sown, and the following year fields of manioc, coffee-shrubs,

f the Amazon, at the spot where the immense jangada was to be built-which, with the different habitations for the accommodation of the crew, would become a veritab

From the clearing to the bank of the fazenda he had formed a large mound on which the

the departure, though the old negress could not be made to

hat you never saw before,"

n what I see now?" was C

etails to look after for settling in the other country in which the young mulatto was to live with the mistress to whom she was so devotedly attached. Minha was a trifle sorrowful, but the joyous Lina

. He commenced his apprenticeship to the trade of a fazender, which would probably one da

as busy as possible, and the clearing, to which Benito fetched him rather oftener than he