TEXT: Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 1 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  EDITOR'S NOTE: As is the case with early editions of many of Verne's 
  novels, this English translation of La Jangada is both uncredited and 
  undated. It was published by the A. L. Burt Company of New York in 
  the first decade of the 20th Century. A few minor corrections of 
  typographical and obvious grammatical errors have been made for this 
  electronic text. 
            Robert Raven, Anchorage, Alaska, 2000 
  Contents
  PART 1. THE GIANT RAFT 
  CHAPTER I. A CAPTAIN OF THE WOODS 
  CHAPTER II. ROBBER AND ROBBED 
  CHAPTER III. THE GARRAL FAMILY 
  CHAPTER IV. HESITATION 
  CHAPTER V. THE AMAZON 
  CHAPTER VI. A FOREST ON THE GROUND 
  CHAPTER VII. FOLLOWING A LIANA 
  CHAPTER VIII. THE JANGADA 
  CHAPTER IX. THE EVENING OF THE FIFTH OF JUNE 
  CHAPTER X. FROM IQUITOS TO PEVAS 
  CHAPTER XI. FROM PEVAS TO THE FRONTIER 
  CHAPTER XII. FRAGOSO AT WORK 
  CHAPTER XIII. TORRES 
  CHAPTER XIV. STILL DESCENDING 
  CHAPTER XV. THE CONTINUED DESCENT 
  CHAPTER XVI. EGA 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 1 
  CHAPTER XVII. AN ATTACK 
  CHAPTER XVIII. THE ARRIVAL DINNER 
  CHAPTER XIX. ANCIENT HISTORY 
  CHAPTER XX. BETWEEN THE TWO MEN 
  PART II. THE CRYPTOGRAM 
  CHAPTER I. MANAOS 
  CHAPTER II. THE FIRST MOMENTS 
  CHAPTER III. RETROSPECTIVE 
  CHAPTER IV. MORAL PROOFS 
  CHAPTER V. MATERIAL PROOFS 
  CHAPTER VI. THE LAST BLOW 
  CHAPTER VII. RESOLUTIONS 
  CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST SEARCH 
  CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND ATTEMPT 
  CHAPTER X. A CANNON SHOT 
  CHAPTER XI. THE CONTENTS OF THE CASE 
  CHAPTER XII. THE DOCUMENT 
  CHAPTER XIII. IS IT A MATTER OF FIGURES? 
  CHAPTER XIV. CHANCE! 
  CHAPTER XV. THE LAST EFFORTS 
  CHAPTER XVI. PREPARATIONS 
  CHAPTER XVII. THE LAST NIGHT 
  CHAPTER XVIII. FRAGOSO 
  CHAPTER XIX. THE CRIME OF TIJUCO 
  CHAPTER XX. THE LOWER AMAZON 
  PART I
  THE GIANT RAFT 
  CHAPTER I 
  A CAPTAIN OF THE WOODS 
  "P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u g I o c y t d x 
  v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o x p h e t o z l s l e t n p 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 1 
  m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z 
  m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r 
  g c r o h e p q x u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q 
  k y u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q r y m v k 
  l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d." 
  THE MAN who held in his hand the document of which this strange 
  assemblage of letters formed the concluding paragraph remained for 
  some moments lost in thought. 
  It contained about a hundred of these lines, with the letters at even 
  distances, and undivided into words. It seemed to have been written 
  many years before, and time had already laid his tawny finger on the 
  sheet of good stout paper which was covered with the hieroglyphics. 
  On what principle had these letters been arranged? He who held the 
  paper was alone able to tell. With such cipher language it is as with the 
  locks of some of our iron safes--in either case the protection is the same. 
  The combinations which they lead to can be counted by millions, and no 
  calculator's life would suffice to express them. Some particular "word" 
  has to be known before the lock of the safe will act, and some "cipher" 
  is necessary before that cryptogram can be read. 
  He who had just reperused the document was but a simple "captain of 
  the woods." Under the name of "Capitaes do Mato" are known in Brazil 
  those individuals who are engaged in the recapture of fugitive slaves. 
  The institution dates from 1722. At that period anti-slavery ideas had 
  entered the minds of a few philanthropists, and more than a century 
  had to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and applied them. 
  That freedom was a right, that the very first of the natural rights of man 
  was to be free and to belong only to himself, would seem to be self-
  evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass before the glorious 
  thought was generally accepted, and the nations of the earth had the 
  courage to proclaim it. 
  In 1852, the year in which our story opens, there were still slaves in 
  Brazil, and as a natural consequence, captains of the woods to pursue 
  them. For certain reasons of political economy the hour of general 
  emancipation had been delayed, but the black had at this date the right 
  to ransom himself, the children which were born to him were born free. 
  The day was not far distant when the magnificent country, into which 
  could be put three-quarters of the continent of Europe, would no longer 
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  count a single slave among its ten millions of inhabitants. 
  The occupation of the captains of the woods was doomed, and at the 
  period we speak of the advantages obtainable from the capture of 
  fugitives were rapidly diminishing. While, however, the calling 
  continued sufficiently profitable, the captains of the woods formed a 
  peculiar class of adventurers, principally composed of freedmen and 
  deserters--of not very enviable reputation. The slave hunters in fact 
  belonged to the dregs of society, and we shall not be far wrong in 
  assuming that the man with the cryptogram was a fitting comrade for 
  his fellow "capitaes do mato." Torres--for that was his name--unlike the 
  majority of his companions, was neither half-breed, Indian, nor negro. 
  He was a white of Brazilian origin, and had received a better education 
  than befitted his present condition. One of those unclassed men who are 
  found so frequently in the distant countries of the New World, at a time 
  when the Brazilian law still excluded mulattoes and others of mixed 
  blood from certain employments, it was evident that if such exclusion 
  had affected him, it had done so on account of his worthless character, 
  and not because of his birth. 
  Torres at the present moment was not, however, in Brazil. He had just 
  passed the frontier, and was wandering in the forests of Peru, from 
  which issue the waters of the Upper Amazon. 
  He was a man of about thirty years of age, on whom the fatigues of a 
  precarious existence seemed, thanks to an exceptional temperament and 
  an iron constitution, to have had no effect. Of middle height, broad 
  shoulders, regular features, and decided gait, his face was tanned with 
  the scorching air of the tropics. He had a thick black beard, and eyes 
  lost under contracting eyebrows, giving that swift but hard glance so 
  characteristic of insolent natures. Clothed as backwoodsmen are 
  generally clothed, not over elaborately, his garments bore witness to 
  long and roughish wear. On his head, stuck jauntily on one side, was a 
  leather hat with a large brim. Trousers he had of coarse wool, which 
  were tucked into the tops of the thick, heavy boots which formed the 
  most substantial part of his attire, and over all, and hiding all, was a 
  faded yellowish poncho. 
  But if Torres was a captain of the woods it was evident that he was not 
  now employed in that capacity, his means of attack and defense being 
  obviously insufficient for any one engaged in the pursuit of the blacks. 
  No firearms--neither gun nor revolver. In his belt only one of those 
  weapons, more sword than hunting-knife, called a "manchetta," and in 
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  addition he had an "enchada," which is a sort of hoe, specially employed 
  in the pursuit of the tatous and agoutis which abound in the forests of 
  the Upper Amazon, where there is generally little to fear from wild 
  beasts. 
  On the 4th of May, 1852, it happened, then, that our adventurer was 
  deeply absorbed in the reading of the document on which his eyes were 
  fixed, and, accustomed as he was to live in the forests of South America, 
  he was perfectly indifferent to their splendors. Nothing could distract 
  his attention; neither the constant cry of the howling monkeys, which St. 
  Hillaire has graphically compared to the ax of the woodman as he 
  strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle of the rings of the 
  rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is true, but one of the most 
  venomous); neither the bawling voice of the horned toad, the most 
  hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and sonorous croak of the 
  bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal the bull in size, can 
  surpass him in noise. 
  Torres heard nothing of all these sounds, which form, as it were, the 
  complex voice of the forests of the New World. Reclining at the foot of a 
  magnificent tree, he did not even admire the lofty boughs of that "pao 
  ferro," or iron wood, with its somber bark, hard as the metal which it 
  replaces in the weapon and utensil of the Indian savage. No. Lost in 
  thought, the captain of the woods turned the curious paper again and 
  again between his fingers. With the cipher, of which he had the secret, 
  he assigned to each letter its true value. He read, he verified the sense of 
  those lines, unintelligible to all but him, and then he smiled--and a most 
  unpleasant smile it was. 
  Then he murmured some phrases in an undertone which none in the 
  solitude of the Peruvian forests could hear, and which no one, had he 
  been anywhere else, would have heard. 
  "Yes," said he, at length, "here are a hundred lines very neatly written, 
  which, for some one that I know, have an importance that is undoubted. 
  That somebody is rich. It is a question of life or death for him, and 
  looked at in every way it will cost him something." And, scrutinizing the 
  paper with greedy eyes, "At a conto [1] only for each word of this last 
  sentence it will amount to a considerable sum, and it is this sentence 
  which fixes the price. It sums up the entire document. It gives their true 
  names to true personages; but before trying to understand it I ought to 
  begin by counting the number of words it contains, and even when this 
  is done its true meaning may be missed." 
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  In saying this Torres began to count mentally. 
  "There are fifty-eight words, and that makes fifty-eight contos. With 
  nothing but that one could live in Brazil, in America, wherever one 
  wished, and even live without doing anything! And what would it be, 
  then, if all the words of this document were paid for at the same price? 
  It would be necessary to count by hundreds of contos. Ah! there is quite 
  a fortune here for me to realize if I am not the greatest of duffers!" 
  It seemed as though the hands of Torres felt the enormous sum, and 
  were already closing over the rolls of gold. Suddenly his thoughts took 
  another turn. 
  "At length," he cried, "I see land; and I do not regret the voyage which 
  has led me from the coast of the Atlantic to the Upper Amazon. But this 
  man may quit America and go beyond the seas, and then how can I 
  touch him? But no! he is there, and if I climb to the top of this tree I can 
  see the roof under which he lives with his family!" Then seizing the 
  paper and shaking it with terrible meaning: "Before to-morrow I will 
  be in his presence; before to-morrow he will know that his honor and 
  his life are contained in these lines. And when he wishes to see the 
  cipher which permits him to read them, he--well, he will pay for it. He 
  will pay, if I wish it, with all his fortune, as he ought to pay with all his 
  blood! Ah! My worthy comrade, who gave me this cipher, who told me 
  where I could find his old colleague, and the name under which he has 
  been hiding himself for so many years, hardly suspects that he has made 
  my fortune!" 
  For the last time Torres glanced over the yellow paper, and then, after 
  carefully folding it, put it away into a little copper box which he used for 
  a purse. This box was about as big as a cigar case, and if what was in it 
  was all Torres possessed he would nowhere have been considered a 
  wealthy man. He had a few of all the coins of the neighboring States--ten 
  double-condors in gold of the United States of Colombia, worth about a 
  hundred francs; Brazilian reis, worth about as much; golden sols of 
  Peru, worth, say, double; some Chilian escudos, worth fifty francs or 
  more, and some smaller coins; but the lot would not amount to more 
  than five hundred francs, and Torres would have been somewhat 
  embarrassed had he been asked how or where he had got them. One 
  thing was certain, that for some months, after having suddenly 
  abandoned the trade of the slave hunter, which he carried on in the 
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  province of Para, Torres had ascended the basin of the Amazon, crossed 
  the Brazilian frontier, and come into Peruvian territory. To such a man 
  the necessaries of life were but few; expenses he had none--nothing for 
  his lodging, nothing for his clothes. The forest provided his food, which 
  in the backwoods cost him naught. A few reis were enough for his 
  tobacco, which he bought at the mission stations or in the villages, and 
  for a trifle more he filled his flask with liquor. With little he could go 
  far. 
  When he had pushed the paper into the metal box, of which the lid shut 
  tightly with a snap, Torres, instead of putting it into the pocket of his 
  under-vest, thought to be extra careful, and placed it near him in a 
  hollow of a root of the tree beneath which he was sitting. This 
  proceeding, as it turned out, might have cost him dear. 
  It was very warm; the air was oppressive. If the church of the nearest 
  village had possessed a clock, the clock would have struck two, and, 
  coming with the wind, Torres would have heard it, for it was not more 
  than a couple of miles off. But he cared not as to time. Accustomed to 
  regulate his proceedings by the height of the sun, calculated with more 
  or less accuracy, he could scarcely be supposed to conduct himself with 
  military precision. He breakfasted or dined when he pleased or when he 
  could; he slept when and where sleep overtook him. If his table was not 
  always spread, his bed was always ready at the foot of some tree in the 
  open forest. And in other respects Torres was not difficult to please. He 
  had traveled during most of the morning, and having already eaten a 
  little, he began to feel the want of a snooze. Two or three hours' rest 
  would, he thought, put him in a state to continue his road, and so he laid 
  himself down on the grass as comfortably as he could, and waited for 
  sleep beneath the ironwood-tree. 
  Torres was not one of those people who drop off to sleep without certain 
  preliminaries. HE was in the habit of drinking a drop or two of strong 
  liquor, and of then smoking a pipe; the spirits, he said, overexcited the 
  brain, and the tobacco smoke agreeably mingled with the general 
  haziness of his reverie. 
  Torres commenced, then, by applying to his lips a flask which he 
  carried at his side; it contained the liquor generally known under the 
  name of "chica" in Peru, and more particularly under that of 
  "caysuma" in the Upper Amazon, to which fermented distillation of the 
  root of the sweet manioc the captain had added a good dose of "tafia" or 
  native rum. 
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  When Torres had drunk a little of this mixture he shook the flask, and 
  discovered, not without regret, that it was nearly empty. 
  "Must get some more," he said very quietly. 
  Then taking out a short wooden pipe, he filled it with the coarse and 
  bitter tobacco of Brazil, of which the leaves belong to that old "petun" 
  introduced into France by Nicot, to whom we owe the popularization of 
  the most productive and widespread of the solanaceae. 
  This native tobacco had little in common with the fine qualities of our 
  present manufacturers; but Torres was not more difficult to please in 
  this matter than in others, and so, having filled his pipe, he struck a 
  match and applied the flame to a piece of that stick substance which is 
  the secretion of certain of the hymenoptera, and is known as "ants' 
  amadou." With the amadou he lighted up, and after about a dozen 
  whiffs his eyes closed, his pipe escaped from his fingers, and he fell 
  asleep. 
  [1] One thousand reis are equal to three francs, and a conto of reis is 
  worth three thousand francs. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 2 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER II
  ROBBER AND ROBBED 
  TORRES SLEPT for about half an hour, and then there was a noise 
  among the trees--a sound of light footsteps, as though some visitor was 
  walking with naked feet, and taking all the precaution he could lest he 
  should be heard. To have put himself on guard against any suspicious 
  approach would have been the first care of our adventurer had his eyes 
  been open at the time. But he had not then awoke, and what advanced 
  was able to arrive in his presence, at ten paces from the tree, without 
  being perceived. 
  It was not a man at all, it was a "guariba." 
  ?Of all the prehensile-tailed monkeys which haunt the forests of the 
  Upper Amazon--graceful sahuis, horned sapajous, gray-coated monos, 
  sagouins which seem to wear a mask on their grimacing faces--the 
  guariba is without doubt the most eccentric. Of sociable disposition, and 
  not very savage, differing therein very greatly from the mucura, who is 
  as ferocious as he is foul, he delights in company, and generally travels 
  in troops. It was he whose presence had been signaled from afar by the 
  monotonous concert of voices, so like the psalm-singing of some church 
  choir. But if nature has not made him vicious, it is none the less 
  necessary to attack him with caution, and under any circumstances a 
  sleeping traveler ought not to leave himself exposed, lest a guariba 
  should surprise him when he is not in a position to defend himself. 
  This monkey, which is also known in Brazil as the "barbado," was of 
  large size. The suppleness and stoutness of his limbs proclaimed him a 
  powerful creature, as fit to fight on the ground as to leap from branch 
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  to branch at the tops of the giants of the forest. 
  He advanced then cautiously, and with short steps. He glanced to the 
  right and to the left, and rapidly swung his tail. To these representatives 
  of the monkey tribe nature has not been content to give four hands--she 
  has shown herself more generous, and added a fifth, for the extremity of 
  their caudal appendage possesses a perfect power of prehension. 
  The guariba noiselessly approached, brandishing a study cudgel, which, 
  wielded by his muscular arm, would have proved a formidable weapon. 
  For some minutes he had seen the man at the foot of the tree, but the 
  sleeper did not move, and this doubtless induced him to come and look 
  at him a little nearer. He came forward then, not without hesitation, and 
  stopped at last about three paces off. 
  On his bearded face was pictured a grin, which showed his sharp-edged 
  teeth, white as ivory, and the cudgel began to move about in a way that 
  was not very reassuring for the captain of the woods. 
  Unmistakably the sight of Torres did not inspire the guariba with 
  friendly thoughts. Had he then particular reasons for wishing evil to this 
  defenseless specimen of the human race which chance had delivered 
  over to him? Perhaps! We know how certain animals retain the memory 
  of the bad treatment they have received, and it is possible that against 
  backwoodsmen in general he bore some special grudge. 
  In fact Indians especially make more fuss about the monkey than any 
  other kind of game, and, no matter to what species it belongs, follow its 
  chase with the ardor of Nimrods, not only for the pleasure of hunting it, 
  but for the pleasure of eating it. 
  Whatever it was, the guariba did not seen disinclined to change 
  characters this time, and if he did not quite forget that nature had made 
  him but a simple herbivore, and longed to devour the captain of the 
  woods, he seemed at least to have made up his mind to get rid of one of 
  his natural enemies. 
  After looking at him for some minutes the guariba began to move round 
  the tree. He stepped slowly, holding his breath, and getting nearer and 
  nearer. His attitude was threatening, his countenance ferocious. Nothing 
  could have seemed easier to him than to have crushed this motionless 
  man at a single blow, and assuredly at that moment the life of Torres 
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  hung by a thread. 
  In truth, the guariba stopped a second time close up to the tree, placed 
  himself at the side, so as to command the head of the sleeper, and lifted 
  his stick to give the blow. 
  But if Torres had been imprudent in putting near him in the crevice of 
  the root the little case which contained his document and his fortune, it 
  was this imprudence which saved his life. 
  A sunbeam shooting between the branches just glinted on the case, the 
  polished metal of which lighted up like a looking-glass. The monkey, 
  with the frivolity peculiar to his species, instantly had his attention 
  distracted. His ideas, if such an animal could have ideas, took another 
  direction. He stopped, caught hold of the case, jumped back a pace or 
  two, and, raising it to the level of his eyes, looked at it not without 
  surprise as he moved it about and used it like a mirror. He was if 
  anything still more astonished when he heard the rattle of the gold 
  pieces it contained. The music enchanted him. It was like a rattle in the 
  hands of a child. He carried it to his mouth, and his teeth grated against 
  the metal, but made no impression on it. 
  Doubtless the guariba thought he had found some fruit of a new kind, a 
  sort of huge almost brilliant all over, and with a kernel playing freely in 
  its shell. But if he soon discovered his mistake he did not consider it a 
  reason for throwing the case away; on the contrary, he grasped it more 
  tightly in his left hand, and dropped the cudgel, which broke off a dry 
  twig in its fall. 
  At this noise Torres woke, and with the quickness of those who are 
  always on the watch, with whom there is no transition from the sleeping 
  to the waking state, was immediately on his legs. 
  In an instant Torres had recognized with whom he had to deal. 
  "A guariba!" he cried. 
  And his hand seizing his manchetta, he put himself into a posture of 
  defense. 
  The monkey, alarmed, jumped back at once, and not so brave before a 
  waking man as a sleeping one, performed a rapid caper, and glided 
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  under the trees. 
  "It was time!" said Torres; "the rogue would have settled me without 
  any ceremony!" 
  Of a sudden, between the hands of the monkey, who had stopped at 
  about twenty paces, and was watching him with violent grimaces, as if 
  he would like to snap his fingers at him, he caught sight of his precious 
  case. 
  "The beggar!" he said. "If he has not killed me, he has done what is 
  almost as bad. He has robbed me!" 
  The thought that the case held his money was not however, what then 
  concerned him. But that which made him jump was the recollection that 
  it contained the precious document, the loss of which was irreparable, 
  as it carried with it that of all his hopes. 
  "Botheration!" said he. 
  And at the moment, cost what it might to recapture his case, Torres 
  threw himself in pursuit of the guariba. 
  He knew that to reach such an active animal was not easy. On the 
  ground he could get away too fast, in the branches he could get away too 
  far. A well-aimed gunshot could alone stop him as he ran or climbed, 
  but Torres possessed no firearm. His sword-knife and hoe were useless 
  unless he could get near enough to hit him. 
  It soon became evident that the monkey could not be reached unless by 
  surprise. Hence Torres found it necessary to employ cunning in dealing 
  with the mischievous animal. To stop, to hide himself behind some tree 
  trunk, to disappear under a bush, might induce the guariba to pull up 
  and retrace his steps, and there was nothing else for Torres to try. This 
  was what he did, and the pursuit commenced under these conditions; 
  but when the captain of the woods disappeared, the monkey patiently 
  waited until he came into sight again, and at this game Torres fatigued 
  himself without result. 
  "Confound the guariba!" he shouted at length. "There will be no end to 
  this, and he will lead me back to the Brazilian frontier. If only he would 
  let go of my case! But no! The jingling of the money amuses him. Oh, 
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  you thief! If I could only get hold of you!" 
  And Torres recommenced the pursuit, and the monkey scuttled off with 
  renewed vigor. 
  An hour passed in this way without any result. Torres showed a 
  persistency which was quite natural. How without this document could 
  he get his money? 
  And then anger seized him. He swore, he stamped, he threatened the 
  guariba. That annoying animal only responded by a chuckling which 
  was enough to put him beside himself. 
  And then Torres gave himself up to the chase. He ran at top speed, 
  entangling himself in the high undergrowth, among those thick 
  brambles and interlacing creepers, across which the guariba passed like 
  a steeplechaser. Big roots hidden beneath the grass lay often in the way. 
  He stumbled over them and again started in pursuit. At length, to his 
  astonishment, he found himself shouting: 
  "Come here! come here! you robber!" as if he could make him 
  understand him. 
  His strength gave out, breath failed him, and he was obliged to stop. 
  "Confound it!" said he, "when I am after runaway slaves across the 
  jungle they never give me such trouble as this! But I will have you, you 
  wretched monkey! I will go, yes, I will go as far as my legs will carry me, 
  and we shall see!" 
  The guariba had remained motionless when he saw that the adventurer 
  had ceased to pursue him. He rested also, for he had nearly reached that 
  degree of exhaustion which had forbidden all movement on the part of 
  Torres. 
  He remained like this during ten minutes, nibbling away at two or three 
  roots, which he picked off the ground, and from time to time he rattled 
  the case at his ear. 
  Torres, driven to distraction, picked up the stones within his reach, and 
  threw them at him, but did no harm at such a distance. 
  But he hesitated to make a fresh start. On one hand, to keep on in chase 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 2 
  of the monkey with so little chance of reaching him was madness. On 
  the other, to accept as definite this accidental interruption to all his 
  plans, to be not only conquered, but cheated and hoaxed by a dumb 
  animal, was maddening. And in the meantime Torres had begun to 
  think that when the night came the robber would disappear without 
  trouble, and he, the robbed one, would find a difficulty in retracing his 
  way through the dense forest. In fact, the pursuit had taken him many 
  miles from the bank of the river, and he would even now find it difficult 
  to return to it. 
  Torres hesitated; he tried to resume his thoughts with coolness, and 
  finally, after giving vent to a last imprecation, he was about to abandon 
  all idea of regaining possession of his case, when once more, in spite of 
  himself, there flashed across him the thought of his document, the 
  remembrance of all that scaffolding on which his future hopes 
  depended, on which he had counted so much; and he resolved to make 
  another effort. 
  Then he got up. 
  The guariba got up too. 
  He made several steps in advance. 
  The monkey made as many in the rear, but this time, instead of 
  plunging more deeply into the forest, he stopped at the foot of an 
  enormous ficus--the tree of which the different kinds are so numerous 
  all over the Upper Amazon basin. 
  To seize the trunk with his four hands, to climb with the agility of a 
  clown who is acting the monkey, to hook on with his prehensile tail to 
  the first branches, which stretched away horizontally at forty feet from 
  the ground, and to hoist himself to the top of the tree, to the point where 
  the higher branches just bent beneath its weight, was only sport to the 
  active guariba, and the work of but a few seconds. 
  Up there, installed at his ease, he resumed his interrupted repast, and 
  gathered the fruits which were within his reach. Torres, like him, was 
  much in want of something to eat and drink, but it was impossible! His 
  pouch was flat, his flask was empty. 
  However, instead of retracing his steps he directed them toward the 
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  tree, although the position taken up by the monkey was still more 
  unfavorable for him. He could not dream for one instant of climbing the 
  ficus, which the thief would have quickly abandoned for another. 
  And all the time the miserable case rattled at his ear. 
  Then in his fury, in his folly, Torres apostrophized the guariba. It would 
  be impossible for us to tell the series of invectives in which he indulged. 
  Not only did he call him a half-breed, which is the greatest of insults in 
  the mouth of a Brazilian of white descent, but "curiboca"--that is to say, 
  half-breed negro and Indian, and of all the insults that one man can 
  hurl at another in this equatorial latitude "curiboca" is the cruelest. 
  But the monkey, who was only a humble quadruman, was simply 
  amused at what would have revolted a representative of humanity. 
  Then Torres began to throw stones at him again, and bits of roots and 
  everything he could get hold of that would do for a missile. Had he the 
  hope to seriously hurt the monkey? No! he no longer knew what he was 
  about. To tell the truth, anger at his powerlessness had deprived him of 
  his wits. Perhaps he hoped that in one of the movements which the 
  guariba would make in passing from branch ot branch the case might 
  escape him, perhaps he thought that if he continued to worry the 
  monkey he might throw it at his head. But no! the monkey did not part 
  with the case, and, holding it with one hand, he had still three left with 
  which to move. 
  Torres, in despair, was just about to abandon the chase for good, and to 
  return toward the Amazon, when he heard the sound of voices. Yes! the 
  sound of human voices. 
  Those were speaking at about twenty paces to the right of him. 
  The first care of Torres was to hide himself in a dense thicket. Like a 
  prudent man, he did not wish to show himself without at least knowing 
  with whom he might have to deal. Panting, puzzled, his ears on the 
  stretch, he waited, when suddenly the sharp report of a gun rang 
  through the woods. 
  A cry followed, and the monkey, mortally wounded, fell heavily on the 
  ground, still holding Torres' case. 
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  "By Jove!" he muttered, "that bullet came at the right time!" 
  And then, without fearing to be seen, he came out of the thicket, and 
  two young gentlemen appeared from under the trees. 
  They were Brazilians clothed as hunters, with leather boots, light palm-
  leaf hats, waistcoats, or rather tunics, buckled in at the waist, and more 
  convenient than the national poncho. By their features and their 
  complexion they were at once recognizable as of Portuguese descent. 
  Each of them was armed with one of those long guns of Spanish make 
  which slightly remind us of the arms of the Arabs, guns of long range 
  and considerable precision, which the dwellers in the forest of the upper 
  Amazon handle with success. 
  What had just happened was a proof of this. At an angular distance of 
  more than eighty paces the quadruman had been shot full in the head. 
  The two young men carried in addition, in their belts, a sort of dagger-
  knife, which is known in Brazil as a "foca," and which hunters do not 
  hesitate to use when attacking the ounce and other wild animals which, 
  if not very formidable, are pretty numerous in these forests. 
  Torres had obviously little to fear from this meeting, and so he went on 
  running toward the monkey's corpse. 
  But the young men, who were taking the same direction, had less 
  ground to cover, and coming forward a few paces, found themselves 
  face to face with Torres. 
  The latter had recovered his presence of mind. 
  "Many thanks, gentlemen," said he gayly, as he raised the brim of his 
  hat; "in killing this wretched animal you have just done me a great 
  service!" 
  The hunters looked at him inquiringly, not knowing what value to 
  attach to his thanks. 
  Torres explained matters in a few words. 
  "You thought you had killed a monkey," said he, "but as it happens you 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 2 
  have killed a thief!" 
  "If we have been of use to you," said the youngest of the two, "it was by 
  accident, but we are none the less pleased to find that we have done 
  some good." 
  And taking several steps to the rear, he bent over the guariba, and, not 
  without an effort, withdrew the case from his stiffened hand. 
  "Doubtless that, sir, is what belongs to you?" 
  "The very thing," said Torres briskly, catching hold of the case and 
  failing to repress a huge sigh of relief. 
  "Whom ought I to thank, gentlemen," said he, "for the service you have 
  rendered me?" 
  "My friend, Manoel, assistant surgeon, Brazilian army," replied the 
  young man. 
  "If it was I who shot the monkey, Benito," said Manoel, "it was you that 
  pointed him out to me." 
  "In that case, sirs," replied Torres, "I am under an obligation to you 
  both, as well to you, Mr. Manoel, as to you, Mr. ----" 
  "Benito Garral," replied Manoel. 
  The captain of the woods required great command over himself to avoid 
  giving a jump when he heard this name, and more especially when the 
  young man obligingly continued: 
  "My father, Joam Garral, has his farm about three miles from here. If 
  you would like, Mr. ----" 
  "Torres," replied the adventurer. 
  "If you would like to accompany us there, Mr. Torres, you will be 
  hospitably received." 
  "I do not know that I can," said Torres, who, surprised by this 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 2 
  unexpected meeting, hesitated to make a start. "I fear in truth that I am 
  not able to accept your offer. The occurrence I have just related to you 
  has caused me to lose time. It is necessary for me to return at once to the 
  Amazon--as I purpose descending thence to Para." 
  "Very well, Mr. Torres," replied Benito, "it is not unlikely that we shall 
  see you again in our travels, for before a month has passed my father 
  and all his family will have taken the same road as you." 
  "Ah!" said Torres sharply, "your father is thinking of recrossing the 
  Brazilian frontier?" 
  "Yes, for a voyage of some months," replied Benito. "At least we hope 
  to make him decide so. Don't we, Manoel?" 
  Manoel nodded affirmatively. 
  "Well, gentlemen," replied Torres, "it is very probable that we shall 
  meet again on the road. But I cannot, much to my regret, accept your 
  offer now. I thank you, nevertheless, and I consider myself as twice your 
  debtor." 
  And having said so, Torres saluted the young men, who in turn saluted 
  him, and set out on their way to the farm. 
  As for Torres he looked after them as they got further and further 
  away, and when he had lost sight of them-- 
  "Ah! he is about to recross the frontier!" said he, with a deep voice. 
  "Let him recross it! and he will be still more at my mercy! Pleasant 
  journey to you, Joam Garral!" 
  And having uttered these words the captain of the woods, making for 
  the south so as to regain the left bank of the river by the shortest road, 
  disappeared into the dense forest. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 2 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 3 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER III
  THE GARRAL FAMILY 
  THE VILLAGE of Iquitos is situated on the left bank of the Amazon, 
  near the seventy-fourth meridian, on that portion of the great river 
  which still bears the name of the Mar&acitc;non, and of which the bed 
  separates Peru from the republic of Ecuador. It is about fifty-five 
  leagues to the west of the Brazilian frontier. 
  Iquitos, like every other collection of huts, hamlet, or village met with in 
  the basin of the Upper Amazon, was founded by the missionaries. Up to 
  the seventeenth year of the century the Iquito Indians, who then formed 
  the entire population, were settled in the interior of the province at some 
  distance from the river. But one day the springs in their territory all 
  dried up under the influence of a volcanic eruption, and they were 
  obliged to come and take up their abode on the left of the Marânon. The 
  race soon altered through the alliances which were entered into with the 
  riverine Indians, Ticunas, or Omaguas, mixed descent with a few 
  Spaniards, and to-day Iquitos has a population of two or three families 
  of half-breeds. 
  The village is most picturesquely grouped on a kind of esplanade, and 
  runs along at about sixty feet from the river. It consists of some forty 
  miserable huts, whose thatched roofs only just render them worthy of 
  the name of cottages. A stairway made of crossed trunks of trees leads 
  up to the village, which lies hidden from the traveler's eyes until the 
  steps have been ascended. Once at the top he finds himself before an 
  inclosure admitting of slight defense, and consisting of many different 
  shrubs and arborescent plants, attached to each other by festoons of 
  lianas, which here and there have made their way abgove the summits 
  of the graceful palms and banana-trees. 
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  At the time we speak of the Indians of Iquitos went about in almost a 
  state of nudity. The Spaniards and half-breeds alone were clothed, and 
  much as they scorned their indigenous fellow-citizens, wore only a 
  simple shirt, light cotton trousers, and a straw hat. All lived cheerlessly 
  enough in the village, mixing little together, and if they did meet 
  occasionally, it was only at such times as the bell of the mission called 
  them tot he dilapidated cottage which served them for a church. 
  But if existence in the village of Iquitos, as in most of the hamlets of the 
  Upper Amazon, was almost in a rudimentary stage, it was only 
  necessary to journey a league further down the river to find on the same 
  bank a wealthy settlement, with all the elements of comfortable life. 
  This was the farm of Joam Garral, toward which our two young friends 
  returned after their meeting with the captain of the woods. 
  There, on a bend of the stream, at the junction of the River Nanay, 
  which is here about five hundred feet across, there had been established 
  for many years this farm, homestead, or, to use the expression of the 
  country, "fazenda," then in the height of its prosperity. The Nanay with 
  its left bank bounded it to the north for about a mile, and for nearly the 
  same distance to the east it ran along the bank of the larger river. To the 
  west some small rivulets, tributaries of the Nanay, and some lagoons of 
  small extent, separated it from the savannah and the fields devoted to 
  the pasturage of the cattle. 
  It was here that Joam Garral, in 1826, twenty-six years before the date 
  when our story opens, was received by the proprietor of the fazenda. 
  This Portuguese, whose name was Magalhaës, followed the trade of 
  timber-felling, and his settlement, then recently formed, extended for 
  about half a mile along the bank of the river. 
  There, hospitable as he was, like all the Portuguese of the old race, 
  Magalhaës lived with his daughter Yaquita, who after the death of her 
  mother had taken charge of his household. Magalhaës was an excellent 
  worker, inured to fatigue, but lacking education. If he understood the 
  management of the few slaves whom he owned, and the dozen Indians 
  whom he hired, he showed himself much less apt in the various external 
  requirements of his trade. In truth, the establishment at Iquitos was not 
  prospering, and the affairs of the Portuguese were getting somewhat 
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  embarrassed. 
  It was under these circumstances that Joam Garral, then twenty-two 
  years old, found himself one day in the presence of Magalhaës. He had 
  arrived in the country at the limit both of his strength and his resources. 
  Magalhaës had found him half-dead with hunger and fatigue in the 
  neighboring forest. The Portuguese had an excellent heart; he did not 
  ask the unknown where he came from, but what he wanted. The noble, 
  high-spirited look which Joam Garral bore in spite of his exhaustion 
  had touched him. He received him, restored him, and, for several days 
  to begin with, offered him a hospitality which lasted for his life. 
  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 
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  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. 
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  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 t hose who 
  composed the staff of the farm. 
  The prosperity of the settlement could not do otherwise than grow then 
  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 
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  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 say 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 P:ara, 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. 
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  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 cliimate, 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. 
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  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. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 3 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 4 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER IV
  HESITATION 
  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." 
  Half an hour afterward he had done so. 
  Benito had nothing to tell his mother which she did not know; Yaquita 
  had already divined the young people's secret. 
  Before ten minutes had elapsed Benito was in the presence of Minha. 
  They had but to agree; there was no need for much eloquence. At the 
  first words the head of the gentle girl was laid on her brother's 
  shoulder, and the confession, "I am so happy!" was whispered from her 
  heart. 
  The answer almost came before the question; that was obvious. Benito 
  did not ask for more. 
  There could be little doubt as to Joam Garral's consent. But if Yaquita 
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  and her children did not at once speak to him about the marriage, it was 
  because they wished at the same time to touch on a question which 
  might be more difficult to solve. That question was, Where should the 
  wedding take place? 
  Where should it be celebrated? In the humble cottage which served for 
  the village church? Why not? Joam and Yaquita had there received the 
  nuptial benediction of the Padre Passanha, who was then the curate of 
  Iquitos parish. At that time, as now, there was no distinction in Brazil 
  between the civil and religious acts, and the registers of the mission 
  were sufficient testimony to a ceremony which no officer of the civil 
  power was intrusted to attend to. 
  Joam Garral would probably wish the marriage to take place at Iquitos, 
  with grand ceremonies and the attendance of the whole staff of the 
  fazenda, but if such was to be his idea he would have to withstand a 
  vigorous attack concerning it. 
  "Manoel," Minha said to her betrothed, "if I was consulted in the 
  matter we should not be married here, but at Para. Madame Valdez is 
  an invalid; she cannot visit Iquitos, and I should not like to become her 
  daughter without knowing and being known by her. My mother agrees 
  with me in thinking so. We should like to persuade my father to take us 
  to Belem. Do you not think so?" 
  To this proposition Manoel had replied by pressing Minha's hand. He 
  also had a great wish for his mother to be present at his marriage. 
  Benito had approved the scheme without hesitation, and it was only 
  necessary to persuade Joam Garral. And hence on this day the young 
  men had gone out hunting in the woods, so as to leave Yaquita alone 
  with her husband. 
  In the afternoon these two were in the large room of the house. Joam 
  Garral, who had just come in, was half-reclining on a couch of plaited 
  bamboos, when Yaquita, a little anxious, came and seated herself beside 
  him. 
  To tell Joam of the feelings which Manoel entertained toward his 
  daughter was not what troubled her. The happiness of Minha could not 
  but be assured by the marriage, and Joam would be glad to welcome to 
  his arms the new son whose sterling qualities he recognized and 
  appreciated. But to persuade her husband to leave the fazenda Yaquita 
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  felt to be a very serious matter. 
  In fact, since Joam Garral, then a young man, had arrived in the 
  country, he had never left it for a day. Though the sight of the Amazon, 
  with its waters gently flowing to the east, invited him to follow its 
  course; though Joam every year sent rafts of wood to Manaos, to Belem, 
  and the seacoast of Para; though he had seen each year Benito leave 
  after his holidays to return to his studies, yet the thought seemed never 
  to have occurred to him to go with him. 
  The products of the farm, of the forest, and of the fields, the fazender 
  sold on the spot. He had not wish, either with thought or look, to go 
  beyond the horizon which bounded his Eden. 
  From this it followed that for twenty-five years Joam Garral had never 
  crossed the Brazilian frontier, his wife and daughter had never set foot 
  on Brazilian soil. The longing to see something of that beautiful country 
  of which Benito was often talking was not wanting, nevertheless. Two or 
  three times Yaquita had sounded her husband in the matter. But she 
  had noticed that the thought of leaving the fazenda, if only for a few 
  weeks, brought an increase of sadness to his face. His eyes would close, 
  and in a tone of mild reproach he would answer: 
  "Why leave our home? Are we not comfortable here?" 
  And Yaquita, in the presence of the man whose active kindness and 
  unchangeable tenderness rendered her so happy, had not the courage to 
  persist. 
  This time, however, there was a serious reason to make it worth while. 
  The marriage of Minha afforded an excellent opportunity, it being so 
  natural for them to accompany her to Belem, where she was going to 
  live with her husband. She would there see and learn to love the mother 
  of Manoel Valdez. How could Joam Garral hesitate in the face of so 
  praiseworthy a desire? Why, on the other hand, did he not participate 
  in this desire to become acquainted with her who was to be the second 
  mother of his child? 
  Yaquita took her husband's hand, and with that gentle voice which had 
  been to him all the music of his life: 
  "Joam," she said, "I am going to talk to you about something which we 
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  ardently wish, and which will make you as happy as we are." 
  "What is it about, Yaquita?" asked Joam. 
  "Manoel loves your daughter, he is loved by her, and in this union they 
  will find the happiness----" 
  At the first words of Yaquita Joam Garral had risen, without being able 
  to control a sudden start. His eyes were immediately cast down, and he 
  seemed to designedly avoid the look of his wife. 
  "What is the matter with you?" asked she. 
  "Minha? To get married!" murmured Joam. 
  "My dear," said Yaquita, feeling somewhat hurt, "have you any 
  objection to make to the marriage? Have you not for some time noticed 
  the feelings which Manoel has entertained toward our daughter?" 
  "Yes; and a year since----" 
  And Joam sat down without finishing his thoughts. By an effort of his 
  will he had again become master of himself. The unaccountable 
  impression which had been made upon him disappeared. Gradually his 
  eyes returned to meet those of Yaquita, and he remained thoughtfully 
  looking at her. 
  Yaquita took his hand. 
  "Joam," she said, "have I been deceived? Had you no idea that this 
  marriage would one day take place, and that it would give her every 
  chance of happiness?" 
  "Yes," answered Joam. "All! Certainly. But, Yaquita, this wedding--
  this wedding that we are both thinking of--when is it coming off? 
  Shortly?" 
  "It will come off when you choose, Joam." 
  "And it will take place here--at Iquitos?" 
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  This question obliged Yaquita to enter on the other matter which she 
  had at heart. She did not do so, however, without some hesitation, which 
  was quite intelligible. 
  "Joam," said she, after a moment's silence, "listen to me. Regarding this 
  wedding, I have got a proposal which I hope you will approve of. Two or 
  three times during the last twenty years I have asked you to take me and 
  my daughter to the provinces of the Lower Amazon, and to Para, where 
  we have never been. The cares of the fazenda, the works which have 
  required your presence, have not allowed you to grant our request. To 
  absent yourself even for a few days would then have injured your 
  business. But now everything has been successful beyond your dreams, 
  and if the hour of repose has not yet come for you, you can at least for a 
  few weeks get away from your work." 
  Joam Garral did not answer, but Yaquita felt his hand tremble in hers, 
  as though under the shock of some sorrowful recollection. At the same 
  time a half-smile came to her husband's lips--a mute invitation for her 
  to finish what she had begun. 
  "Joam," she continued, "here is an occasion which we shall never see 
  again in this life. Minha is going to be married away from us, and is 
  going to leave us! It is the first sorrow which our daughter has caused 
  us, and my heart quails when I think of the separation which is so near! 
  But I should be content if I could accompany her to Belem! Does it not 
  seem right to you, even in other respects that we should know her 
  husband's mother, who is to replace me, and to whom we are about to 
  entrust her? Added to this, Minha does not wish to grieve Madame 
  Valdez by getting married at a distance from her. When we were 
  married, Joam, if your mother had been alive, would you not have liked 
  her to be present at your wedding?" 
  At these words of Yaquita Joam made a movement which he could not 
  repress. 
  "My dear," continued Yaquita, "with Minha, with our two sons, Benito 
  and Manoel, with you, how I should like to see Brazil, and to journey 
  down this splendid river, even to the provinces on the seacoast through 
  which it runs! It seems to me that the separation would be so much less 
  cruel! As we came back we should revisit our daughter in her house 
  with her second mother. I would not think of her as gone I knew not 
  where. I would fancy myself much less a stranger to the doings of her 
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  life." 
  This time Joam had fixed his eyes on his wife and looked at her for some 
  time without saying anything. 
  What ailed him? Why this hesitation to grant a request which was so 
  just in itself--to say "Yes," when it would give such pleasure to all who 
  belonged to him? His business affairs could not afford a sufficient 
  reason. A few weeks of absence would not compromise matters to such a 
  degree. Hi manager would be able to take his place without any hitch in 
  the fazenda. And yet all this time he hesitated. 
  Yaquita had taken both her husband's hands in hers, and pressed them 
  tenderly. 
  "Joam," she said, "it is not a mere whim that I am asking you to grant. 
  No! For a long time I have thought over the proposition I have just 
  made to you; and if you consent, it will be the realization of my most 
  cherished desire. Our children know why I am now talking to you. 
  Minha, Benito, Manoel, all ask this favor, that we should accompany 
  them. We would all rather have the wedding at Belem than at Iquitos. It 
  will be better for your daughter, for her establishment, for the position 
  which she will take at Belem, that she should arrive with her people, 
  and appear less of a stranger in the town in which she will spend most of 
  her life." 
  Joam Garral leaned on his elbows. For a moment he hid his face in his 
  hands, like a man who had to collect his thoughts before he made 
  answer. There was evidently some hesitation which he was anxious to 
  overcome, even some trouble which his wife felt but could not explain. A 
  secret battle was being fought under that thoughtful brow. Yaquita got 
  anxious, and almost reproached herself for raising the question. 
  Anyhow, she was resigned to what Joam should decide. If the expedition 
  would cost too much, she would silence her wishes; she would never 
  more speak of leaving the fazenda, and never ask the reason for the 
  inexplicable refusal. 
  Some minutes passed. Joam Garral rose. He went to the door, and did 
  not return. Then he seemed to give a last look on that glorious nature, 
  on that corner of the world where for twenty years of his life he had met 
  with all his happiness. 
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  Then with slow steps he returned to his wife. His face bore a new 
  expression, that of a man who had taken a last decision, and with whom 
  irresolution had ceased. 
  "You are right," he said, in a firm voice. "The journey is necessary. 
  When shall we start?" 
  "Ah! Joam! my Joam!" cried Yaquita, in her joy. "Thank you for me! 
  Thank you for them!" 
  And tears of affection came to her eyes as her husband clasped her to 
  his heart. 
  At this moment happy voices were heard outside at the door of the 
  house. 
  Manoel and Benito appeared an instant after at the threshold, almost at 
  the same moment as Minha entered the room. 
  "Children! your father consents!" cried Yaquita. "We are going to 
  Belem!" 
  With a grave face, and without speaking a word, Joam Garral received 
  the congratulations of his son and the kisses of his daughter. 
  "And what date, father," asked Benito, "have you fixed for the 
  wedding?" 
  "Date?" answered Joam. "Date? We shall see. We will fix it at Belem." 
  "I am so happy! I am so happy!" repeated Minha, as she had done on 
  the day when she had first known of Manoel's request. "We shall now 
  see the Amazon in all its glory throughout its course through the 
  provinces of Brazil! Thanks, father!" 
  And the young enthusiast, whose imagination was already stirred, 
  continued to her brother and to Manoel: 
  "Let us be off to the library! Let us get hold of every book and every 
  map that we can find which will tell us anything about this magnificent 
  river system! Don't let us travel like blind folks! I want to see everything 
  and know everything about this king of the rivers of the earth!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 4 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
  | Top | Next Chapter | Title Page | Litrix Reading Room | Authors | Titles |
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 5 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER V
  THE AMAZON 
  "THE LARGEST river in the whole world!" said Benito to Manoel 
  Valdez, on the morrow. 
  They were sitting on the bank which formed the southern boundary of 
  the fazenda, and looking at the liquid molecules passing slowly by, 
  which, coming from the enormous range of the Andes, were on their 
  road to lose themselves in the Atlantic Ocean eight hundred leagues 
  away. 
  "And the river which carries to the sea the largest volume of water," 
  replied Manoel. 
  "A volume so considerable," added Benito, "that it freshens the sea 
  water for an immense distance from its mouth, and the force of whose 
  current is felt by ships at eight leagues from the coast." 
  "A river whose course is developed over more than thirty degrees of 
  latitude." 
  "And in a basin which from south to north does not comprise less than 
  twenty-five degrees." 
  "A basin!" exclaimed Benito. "Can you call it a basin, the vast plain 
  through which it runs, the savannah which on all sides stretches out of 
  sight, without a hill to give a gradient, without a mountain to bound the 
  horizon?" 
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  "And along its whole extent," continued Manoel, "like the thousand 
  tentacles of some gigantic polyp, two hundred tributaries, flowing from 
  north or south, themselves fed by smaller affluents without number, by 
  the side of which the large rivers of Europe are but petty streamlets." 
  "And in its course five hundred and sixty islands, without counting 
  islets, drifting or stationary, forming a kind of archipelago, and yielding 
  of themselves the wealth of a kingdom!" 
  "And along its flanks canals, lagoons, and lakes, such as cannot be met 
  with even in Switzerland, Lombardy, Scotland, or Canada." 
  "A river which, fed by its myriad tributaries, discharges into the 
  Atlantic over two hundred and fifty millions of cubic meters of water 
  every hour." 
  "A river whose course serves as the boundary of two republics, and 
  sweeps majestically across the largest empire of South America, as if it 
  were, in very truth, the Pacific Ocean itself flowing out along its own 
  canal into the Atlantic." 
  "And what a mouth! An arm of the sea in which one island, Marajo, has 
  a circumference of more than five hundred leagues!" 
  "And whose waters the ocean does not pond back without raising in a 
  strife which is phenomenal, a tide-race, or 'pororoca,' to which the ebbs, 
  the bores, and the eddies of other rivers are but tiny ripples fanned up 
  by the breeze." 
  "A river which three names are scarcely enough to distinguish, and 
  which ships of heavy tonnage, without any change in their cargoes, can 
  ascend for more than three thousand miles from its mouth." 
  "A river which, by itself, its affluents, and subsidiary streams, opens a 
  navigable commercial route across the whole of the south of the 
  continent, passing from the Magdalena to the Ortequazza, from the 
  Ortequazza to the Caqueta, from the Caqueta to the Putumayo, from 
  the Putumayo to the Amazon! Four thousand miles of waterway, which 
  only require a few canals to make the network of navigation complete!" 
  "In short, the biggest and most admirable river system which we have 
  in the world." 
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  The two young men were speaking in a kind of frenzy of their 
  incomparable river. They were themselves children of this great 
  Amazon, whose affluents, well worthy of itself, from the highways which 
  penetrate Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, New Grenada, Venezuela, and the 
  four Guianas--English, French, Dutch and Brazilian. 
  What nations, what races, has it seen whose origin is lost in the far-
  distant past! It is one of the largest rivers of the globe. Its true source 
  still baffles our explorers. Numbers of States still claim the honor of 
  giving it birth. The Amazon was not likely to escape the inevitable fate, 
  and Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia have for years disputed as to the 
  honor of its glorious paternity. 
  To-day, however, there seems to be little doubt but that the Amazon 
  rises in Peru, in the district of Huaraco, in the department of Tarma, 
  and that it starts from the Lake of Lauricocha, which is situated 
  between the eleventh and twelfth degree of south latitude. 
  Those who make the river rise in Bolivia, and descend form the 
  mountains of Titicaca, have to prove that the true Amazon is the 
  Ucayali, which is formed by the junction of the Paro and the Apurimac--
  an assertion which is now generally rejected. 
  At its departure from Lake Lauricocha the youthful river starts toward 
  the northeast for a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, and does 
  not strike to the west until it has received an important tributary--the 
  Panta. It is called the Marañon in its journey through Colombia and 
  Peru up to the Brazilian frontier--or, rather, the Maranhao, for 
  Marañon is only the French rendering of the Portuguese name. 
  From the frontier of Brazil to Manaos, where the superb Rio Negro 
  joins it, it takes the name of the Solimaës, or Solimoens, from the name 
  of the Indian tribe Solimao, of which survivors are still found in the 
  neighboring provinces. And, finally, from Manaos to the sea it is the 
  Amasenas, or river of the Amazons, a name given it by the old 
  Spaniards, the descendants of the adventurous Orellana, whose vague 
  but enthusiastic stories went to show that there existed a tribe of female 
  warriors on the Rio Nhamunda, one of the middle-sized affluents of the 
  great river. 
  From its commencement the Amazon is recognizable as destined to 
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  become a magnificent stream. There are neither rapids nor obstacles of 
  any sort until it reaches a defile where its course is slightly narrowed 
  between two picturesque and unequal precipices. No falls are met with 
  until this point is reached, where it curves to the eastward, and passes 
  through the intermediary chain of the Andes. Hereabouts are a few 
  waterfalls, were it not for which the river would be navigable from its 
  mouth to its source. As it is, however, according the Humboldt, the 
  Amazon is free for five-sixths of its length. 
  And from its first starting there is no lack of tributaries, which are 
  themselves fed by subsidiary streams. There is the Chinchipa, coming 
  from the northeast, on its left. On its right it is joined by the 
  Chachapoyas, coming from the northeast. On the left we have the 
  Marona and the Pastuca; and the Guallaga comes in from the right near 
  the mission station of Laguna. On the left there comes the Chambyra 
  and the Tigré, flowing from the northeast; and on the right the 
  Huallaga, which joins the main stream twenty-eight hundred miles from 
  the Atlantic, and can be ascended by steamboats for over two hundred 
  miles into the very heart of Peru. To the right, again, near the mission of 
  San Joachim d'Omaguas, just where the upper basin terminates, and 
  after flowing majestically across the pampas of Sacramento, it receives 
  the magnificent Ucayali, the great artery which, fed by numerous 
  affluents, descends from Lake Chucuito, in the northeast of Arica. 
  Such are the principal branches above the village of Iquitos. Down the 
  stream the tributaries become so considerable that the beds of most 
  European rivers would fail to contain them. But the mouths of these 
  auxiliary waters Joam Garral and his people will pass as they journey 
  down the Amazon. 
  To the beauties of this unrivaled river, which waters the finest country 
  in the world, and keeps along its whole course at a few degrees to the 
  south of the equator, there is to be added another quality, possessed by 
  neither the Nile, the Mississippi, nor the Livingstone--or, in other words, 
  the old Congo-Zaira-Lualaba--and that is (although some ill-informed 
  travelers have stated to the contrary) that the Amazon crosses a most 
  healthy part of South America. Its basin is constantly swept by westerly 
  winds. It is not a narrow valley surrounded by high mountains which 
  border its banks, but a huge plain, measuring three hundred and fifty 
  leagues from north ot south, scarcely varied with a few knolls, whose 
  whole extent the atmospheric currents can traverse unchecked. 
  Professor Agassiz very properly protested against the pretended 
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  unhealthiness o the climate of a country which is destined to become one 
  of the most active of the world's producers. According to him, "a soft 
  and gentle breeze is constantly observable, and produces an 
  evaporation, thanks to which the temperature is kept down, and the sun 
  does not give out heat unchecked. The constancy of this refreshing 
  breeze renders the climate of the river Amazon agreeable, and even 
  delightful." 
  The Abbé Durand has likewise testified that if the temperature does not 
  drop below 25 degrees Centigrade, it never rises above 33 degrees, and 
  this gives for the year a mean temperature of from 28 degrees to 29 
  degrees, with a range of only 8 degrees. 
  After such statements we are safe in affirming that the basin of the 
  Amazon has none of the burning heats of countries like Asia and Africa, 
  which are crossed by the same parallels. 
  The vast plain which serves for its valley is accessible over its whole 
  extent to the generous breezes which come from off the Atlantic. 
  And the provinces to which the river has given its name have 
  acknowledged right to call themselves the healthiest of a country which 
  is one of the finest on the earth. 
  And how can we say that the hydrographical system of the Amazon is 
  not known? 
  In the sixteenth century Orellana, the lieutenant of one of the brothers 
  Pizarro, descended the Rio Negro, arrived on the main river in 1540, 
  ventured without a guide across the unknown district, and, after 
  eighteen months of a navigation of which is record is most marvelous, 
  reached the mouth. 
  In 1636 and 1637 the Portuguese Pedro Texeira ascended the Amazon 
  to Napo, with a fleet of forty-seven pirogues. 
  In 1743 La Condamine, after having measured an arc of the meridian at 
  the equator, left his companions Bouguer and Godin des Odonais, 
  embarked on the Chinchipe, descended it to its junction with the 
  Marañon, reached the mouth at Napo on the 31st of July, just in time to 
  observe an emersion of the first satellite of Jupiter--which allowed this 
  Humboldt of the eighteenth century" to accurately determine the 
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  latitude and longitude of the spot--visited the villages on both banks, 
  and on the 6th of September arrived in front of the fort of Para. This 
  immense journey had important results--not only was the course of the 
  Amazon made out in scientific fashion, but it seemed almost certain that 
  it communicated with the Orinoco. 
  Fifty-five years later Humboldt and Bonpland completed the valuable 
  work of La Condamine, and drew up the map of the Manañon as far as 
  Napo. 
  Since this period the Amazon itself and all its principal tributaries have 
  been frequently visited. 
  In 1827 Lister-Maw, in 1834 and 1835 Smyth, in 1844 the French 
  lieutenant in command of the "Boulonnaise," the Brazilian Valdez in 
  1840, the French "Paul Marcoy" from 1848 to 1860, the whimsical 
  painter Biard in 1859, Professor Agassiz in 1865 and 1866, in 1967 the 
  Brazilian engineer Franz Keller-Linzenger, and lastly, in 1879 Doctor 
  Crevaux, have explored the course of the river, ascended many of its 
  tributaries, and ascertained the navigability of its principal affluents. 
  But what has won the greatest honor for the Brazilian government is 
  that on the 31st of July, 1857, after numerous frontier disputes between 
  France and Brazil, about the Guiana boundary, the course of the 
  Amazon was declared to be free and open to all flags; and, to make 
  practice harmonize with theory, Brazil entered into negotiations with 
  the neighboring powers for the exploration of every river-road in the 
  basin of the Amazon. 
  To-day lines of well-found steamboats, which correspond direct with 
  Liverpool, are plying on the river from its mouth up to Manaos; others 
  ascend to Iquitos; others by way of the Tapajoz, the Madeira, the Rio 
  Negro, or the Purus, make their way into the center of Peru and Bolivia. 
  One can easily imagine the progress which commerce will one day make 
  in this immense and wealthy area, which is without a rival in the world. 
  But to this medal of the future there is a reverse. No progress can be 
  accomplished without detriment to the indigenous races. 
  In face, on the Upper Amazon many Indian tribes have already 
  disappeared, among others the Curicicurus and the Sorimaos. On the 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 5 
  Putumayo, if a few Yuris are still met with, the Yahuas have abandoned 
  the district to take refuge among some of the distant tributaries, and the 
  Maoos have quitted its banks to wander in their diminished numbers 
  among the forests of Japura. 
  The Tunantins is almost depopulated, and there are only a few families 
  of wandering Indians at the mouth of the Jurua. The Teffé is almost 
  deserted, and near the sources of the Japur there remained but the 
  fragments of the great nation of the Umaüa. The Coari is forsaken. 
  There are but few Muras Indians on the banks of the Purus. Of the 
  ancient Manaos one can count but a wandering party or two. On the 
  banks of the Rio Negro there are only a few half-breeds, Portuguese and 
  natives, where a few years ago twenty-four different nations had their 
  homes. 
  Such is the law of progress. The Indians will disappear. Before the 
  Anglo-Saxon race Australians and Tasmanians have vanished. Before 
  the conquerors of the Far West the North American Indians have been 
  wiped out. One day perhaps the Arabs will be annihilated by the 
  colonization of the French. 
  But we must return to 1852. The means of communication, so numerous 
  now, did not then exist, and the journey of Joam Garral would require 
  not less than four months, owing to the conditions under which it was 
  made. 
  Hence this observation of Benito, while the two friends were watching 
  the river as it gently flowed at their feet: 
  "Manoel, my friend, if there is very little interval between our arrival at 
  Belem and the moment of our separation, the time will appear to you to 
  be very short." 
  "Yes, Benito," said Manoel, "and very long as well, for Minha cannot 
  by my wife until the end of the voyage." 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 5 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 6 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER VI
  A FOREST ON THE GROUND 
  THE GARRAL family were in high glee. The magnificent journey on 
  the Amazon was to be undertaken under conditions as agreeable as 
  possible. Not only were the fazender and his family to start on a voyage 
  for several months, but, as we shall see, he was to be accompanied by a 
  part of the staff of the farm. 
  In beholding every one happy around him, Joam forgot the anxieties 
  which appeared to trouble his life. From the day his decision was taken 
  he had been another man, and when he busied himself about the 
  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 became the active, 
  energetic man of his earlier years, and moved about once more as 
  though he had spent his life in the open air, under the invigorating 
  influences of forests, fields, and running waters. 
  Moreover, the few weeks that were to precede his departure had been 
  well employed. 
  At this period, as we have just remarked, the course of the Amazon was 
  not yet furrowed by the numberless steam vessels, which companies 
  were only then thinking of putting into the river. The service was 
  worked by individuals on their own account alone, and often the boats 
  were only employed in the business of the riverside establishments. 
  These boats were either "ubas," canoes made from the trunk of a tree, 
  hollowed out by fire, and finished with the ax, pointed and light in front, 
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  and heavy and broad in the stern, able 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 rowers: or "jangada," rafts of no particular shape, propelled by a 
  triangular sail, and surmounted by a cabin of mud and straw, which 
  served the Indian and his family for a floating home. 
  These three kinds of craft formed the lesser flotilla of the Amazon, and 
  were only suited for a moderate traffic of passengers or merchandise. 
  Larger vessels, however, existed, either "vigilingas," ranging from eight 
  up to ten tons, with three masts rigged with red sails, and which in calm 
  weather 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 cabin down below, with two masts and square sails 
  of unequal size, and propelled, when the wind fell, by six long sweeps 
  which Indians worked from a forecastle. 
  But neither of these vessels satisfied Joam Garral. From the moment 
  that he had resolved to descend the Amazon he had thought of making 
  the most of 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 determination to which he had come pleased every one, 
  excepting, perhaps, Manoel, who would for very good reasons have 
  preferred some rapid steamboat. 
  But though the means of transport devised by Joam were primitive in 
  the extreme, he was going to take with him a numerous following and 
  abandon himself to the stream under exceptional conditions of comfort 
  and security. 
  It would be, in truth, as if a part of the fazenda of Iquitos had been cut 
  away from the bank and carried down the Amazon with all that 
  composed the family of the fazender--masters and servants, in their 
  dwellings, their cottages, and their huts. 
  The settlement of Iquitos included a part of those magnificent forests 
  which, in the central districts of South America, are practically 
  inexhaustible. 
  Joam Garral thoroughly understood the management of these woods, 
  which were rich in the most precious and diverse species adapted for 
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  joinery, cabinet work, ship building, and carpentry, and from them he 
  annually drew considerable profits. 
  The river was there in front of him, and could it not be as safely and 
  economically used as a railway if one existed? So every year Joam 
  Garral felled some hundreds of trees from his stock and formed 
  immense rafts of floating wood, of joists, beams, and slightly squared 
  trunks, which were taken to Para in charge of capable pilots who were 
  thoroughly acquainted with the depths of the river and the direction of 
  its currents. 
  This year Joam Garral decided to do as he had done in preceding years. 
  Only, when the raft was made up, he was going to leave to Benito 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 start, for the waters, 
  increased by the floods of the upper basin, would gradually and 
  gradually subside until the month of October. 
  The first steps had thus to be taken without delay, for the raft was to be 
  of unusual proportions. It would be necessary to fell a half-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 the fazenda, to form the 
  enormous mass, for such were the jangadas, or river rafts, which 
  attained the dimensions of a small island. 
  It was in this jangada, safer than any other vessel of the country, larger 
  than a hundred egariteas or vigilingas coupled together, that Joam 
  Garral proposed to embark with his family, his servants, and his 
  merchandise. 
  "Excellent idea!" had cried Minha, clapping her hands, when she 
  learned her father's scheme. 
  "Yes," said Yaquita, "and in that way we shall reach Belem without 
  danger or fatigue." 
  "And during the stoppages we can have some hunting in the forests 
  which line the banks," added Benito. 
  "Won't it take rather long?" observed Manoel; "could we not hit upon 
  some quicker way of descending the Amazon?" 
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  It would take some time, obviously, but the interested observation of the 
  young doctor received no attention from any one. 
  Joam Garral then called in an Indian who was the principal manager of 
  the fazenda. 
  "In a month," he said to him, "the jangada must be built and ready to 
  launch." 
  "We'll set to work this very day, sir." 
  It was a heavy task. There were about a hundred Indians and blacks, 
  and during the first fortnight in May they did wonders. Some people 
  unaccustomed to these great tree massacres 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 the river, up stream and down stream, even to the most distant 
  points of the horizon, that the felling of this half-mile of forest would 
  scarcely leave an appreciable void. 
  The superintendent of the men, after receiving the instructions of Joam 
  Garral, had first cleared the ground of the creepers, brushwood, weeds, 
  and arborescent plants which obstructed it. Before taking to the saw 
  and the ax 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 handled, which the natives wield with consummate 
  address. In a few hours, with the help of the felling-sword, they had 
  cleared the ground, cut down the underwood, and opened large gaps 
  into the densest portions of the wood. 
  In this way the work progressed. The ground was cleared in front of the 
  woodmen. The old trunks were divested of their clothing of creepers, 
  cacti, ferns, mosses, and bromelias. They were stripped naked to the 
  bark, until such time as the bark itself was stripped from off them. 
  Then the whole of the workers, before whom fled an innumerable crowd 
  of monkeys who were hardly their superiors in agility, slung themselves 
  into the upper branches, 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 forest, with long bare stems, bereft 
  of their crowns, through which the sun luxuriantly rayed on to the 
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  humid soil which perhaps its shots had never before caressed. 
  There was not a single tree which could not be used for some work of 
  skill, either in carpentry or cabinet-work. There, shooting up like 
  columns of ivory ringed with brown, were wax-palms one hundred and 
  twenty feet high, and four feet thick at their base; white chestnuts, 
  which yield the three-cornered nuts; "murichis," unexcelled for 
  building purposes; "barrigudos," measuring a couple of yards at the 
  swelling, which is found at a few feet above the earth, trees with shining 
  russet bark dotted with gray tubercles, each pointed stem of 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 Indians make their battle-axes; 
  "jacarandas," more precious than mahogany; "cæsalpinas," only now 
  found in the depths of the old forests which have escaped the 
  woodman's ax; "sapucaias," one hundred and fifty feet high, buttressed 
  by natural arches, which, starting from three yards from their base, 
  rejoin the tree some thirty feet up the stem, twining themselves round 
  the trunk like the filatures of a twisted column, whose head expands in a 
  bouquet of vegetable fireworks made up of the yellow, purple, and 
  snowy white of the parasitic plants. 
  Three weeks after the work was begun not one was standing of all the 
  trees which had covered the angle of the Amazon and the Nanay. The 
  clearance was complete. Joam Garral had not even had to bestir himself 
  in 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 the 
  denudation. It was indeed a clean sweep; the trees were cut to the level 
  of the earth, to wait the day when their roots would be got out, over 
  which the coming spring would still spread its verdant cloak. 
  This square space, washed on its sides by the waters of the river and its 
  tributary, was destined to be cleared, plowed, planted, and sown, and 
  the following year fields of manioc, coffee-shrubs, sugar-canes, 
  arrowroot, maize, and peanuts would occupy the ground so recently 
  covered by the trees. 
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  The last week of the month had not arrived when the trunks, classified 
  according to their varieties and specific gravity, were symmetrically 
  arranged on the bank of the Amazon, at the spot where the immense 
  jangada was to be guilt--which, with the different habitations for the 
  accommodation of the crew, would become a veritable floating village--
  to wait the time when the waters of the river, swollen by the floods, 
  would raise it and carry it for hundreds of leagues to the Atlantic coast. 
  The whole time the work was going on Joam Garral had been engaged 
  in superintending it. From the clearing to the bank of the fazenda he 
  had formed a large mound on which the portions of the raft were 
  disposed, and to this matter he had attended entirely himself. 
  Yaquita was occupied with Cybele with the preparations for the 
  departure, though the old negress could not be made to understand why 
  they wanted to go or what they hoped to see. 
  "But you will see things that you never saw before," Yaquita kept 
  saying to her. 
  "Will they be better than what I see now?" was Cybele's invariable 
  reply. 
  Minha and her favorite for their part took care of what more 
  particularly concerned them. They were not preparing for a simple 
  voyage; for them it was a permanent departure, and there were a 
  thousand details 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 
  was quite unaffected at leaving Iquitos. Minha Valdez would be the 
  same to her as Minha Garral, and to check her spirits she would have to 
  be separated from her mistress, and that was never thought of. 
  Benito had actively assisted his father in the work, which was on the 
  point of completion. He commenced his apprenticeship to the trade of a 
  fazender, which would probably one day become his own, as he was 
  about to do that of a merchant on their descent of the river. 
  As for Manoel, he divided his time between the house, where Yaquita 
  and her daughter were as busy as possible, and the clearing, to which 
  Benito fetched him rather oftener than he thought convenient, and on 
  the whole the division was very unequal, as may well be imagined. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 6 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER VII
  FOLLOWING A LIANA 
  IT WAS a Sunday, the 26th of May, and the young people had made up 
  their minds to take a holiday. The weather was splendid, the heat being 
  tempered by the refreshing breezes which blew from off the Cordilleras, 
  and everything invited them out for an excursion into the country. 
  Benito and Manoel had offered to accompany Minha through the thick 
  woods which bordered the right bank of the Amazon opposite the 
  fazenda. 
  It was, in a manner, a farewell visit to the charming environs of Iquitos. 
  The young men went equipped for the chase, but as sportsmen who had 
  no intention of going far from their companions in pursuit of any game. 
  Manoel could be trusted for that, and the girls--for Lina could not leave 
  her mistress-went prepared for a walk, an excursion of two or three 
  leagues being not too long to frighten them. 
  Neither Joam Garral nor Yaquita had time to go with them. For one 
  reason the plan of 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 
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  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----" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  "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, 
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  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. 
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  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. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  "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 for 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 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  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. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  "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 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  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 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  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. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  "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." 
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  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. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
  "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 
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  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. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 7 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 8 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER VIII
  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 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 8 
  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 
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  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 
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  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. 
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  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 
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  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. 
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  "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!" 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 8 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 9 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER IX
  THE EVENING OF THE FIFTH OF JUNE 
  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 
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  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--
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  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 
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  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. 
  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 
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  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! 
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  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. 
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  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 
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  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! 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 10 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER X
  FROM IQUITOS TO PEVAS 
  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 
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  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 
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  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----" 
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  "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!" 
  "What is the good of that?" said she. 
  "Yes; what is the good of it?" repeated Benito. "What can be the use of 
  remembering the hundreds of names in the 'Tupi' dialect with which 
  these islands are dressed out? It is enough to know them. The 
  Americans are much more practical with their Mississippi islands; they 
  number then----" 
  "As they number the avenues and streets of their towns," replied 
  Manoel. "Frankly, I don't care much for that numerical system; it 
  conveys nothing to the imagination--Sixty-fourth Island or Sixty-fifth 
  Island, any more than Sixth Street or Third Avenue. Don't you agree 
  with me, Minha?" 
  "Yes, Manoel; though I am of somewhat the same way of thinking as 
  my brother. But even if we do not know their names, the islands of our 
  great river are truly splendid! See how they rest under the shadows of 
  those gigantic palm-trees with their drooping leaves! And the girdle of 
  reeds which encircles them through which a pirogue can with difficulty 
  make its way! And the mangrove trees, whose fantastic roots buttress 
  them to the bank like the claws of some gigantic crab! Yes, the islands 
  are beautiful, but, beautiful as they are, they cannot equal the one we 
  have made our own!" 
  "My little Minha is enthusiastic to-day," said the padre. 
  "Ah, padre! I am so happy to see everybody happy around em!" 
  At this moment the voice of Yaquita was heard calling Minha into the 
  house. 
  The young girl smilingly ran off. 
  "You will have an amiable companion," said the padre. "All the joy of 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 10 
  the house goes away with you, my friend." 
  "Brave little sister!" said Benito, "we shall miss her greatly, and the 
  padre is right. However, if you do not marry her, Manoel--there is still 
  time--she will stay with us." 
  "She will stay with you, Benito," replied Manoel. "Believe me, I have a 
  presentiment that we shall all be reunited!" 
  The first day passed capitally; breakfast, dinner, siesta, walks, all took 
  place as if Joam Garral and his people were still in the comfortable 
  fazenda of Iquitos. 
  During these twenty-four hours the mouths of the rivers Bacali, 
  Chochio, Pucalppa, on the left of the stream, and those of the rivers 
  Itinicari, Maniti, Moyoc, Tucuya, and the islands of this name on the 
  right, were passed without accident. The night, lighted by the moon, 
  allowed them to save a halt, and the giant raft glided peacefully on along 
  the surface of the Amazon. 
  On the morrow, the 7th of June, the jangada breasted the banks of the 
  village of Pucalppa, named also New Oran. Old Oran, situated fifteen 
  leagues down stream on the same left bank of the river, is almost 
  abandoned for the new settlement, whose population consists of Indians 
  belonging to the Mayoruna and Orejone tribes. Nothing can be more 
  picturesque than this village with its ruddy-colored banks, its unfinished 
  church, its cottages, whose chimneys are hidden amid the palms, and its 
  two or three ubas half-stranded on the shore. 
  During the whole of the 7th of June the jangada continued to follow the 
  left bank of the river, passing several unknown tributaries of no 
  importance. For a moment there was a chance of her grounding on the 
  easterly shore of the island of Sinicure; but the pilot, well served by the 
  crew, warded off the danger and remained in the flow of the stream. 
  In the evening they arrived alongside a narrow island, called Napo 
  Island, from the name of the river which here comes in from the north-
  northwest, and mingles its waters with those of the Amazon through a 
  mouth about eight hundred yards across, after having watered the 
  territories of the Coto and Orejone Indians. 
  It was on the morning of the 7th of June that the jangada was abreast 
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  the little island of Mango, which causes the Napo to split into two 
  streams before falling into the Amazon. 
  Several years later a French traveler, Paul Marcoy, went out to examine 
  the color of the waters of this tributary, which has been graphically 
  compared to the cloudy greenish opal of absinthe. At the same time he 
  corrected some of the measurements of La Condamine. But then the 
  mouth of the Napo was sensibly increased by the floods and it was with 
  a good deal of rapidity that its current, coming from the eastern slopes 
  of Cotopaxi, hurried fiercely to mingle itself with the tawny waters of 
  the Amazon. 
  A few Indians had wandered to the mouth of this river. They were 
  robust in build, of tall stature, with shaggy hair, and had their noses 
  pierced with a rod of palm, and the lobes of their ears lengthened to 
  their shoulders by the weight of heavy rings of precious wood. Some 
  women were with them. None of them showed any intention of coming 
  on board. It is asserted that these natives are cannibals; but if that is 
  true--and it is said of many of the riverine tribes--there must have been 
  more evidence for the cannibalism than we get to-day. 
  Some hours later the village of Bella Vista, situated on a somewhat 
  lower bank, appeared, with its cluster of magnificent trees, towering 
  above a few huts roofed with straw, over which there drooped the large 
  leaves of some medium-sized banana-trees, like the waters overflowing 
  from a tazza. 
  Then the pilot, so as to follow a better current, which turned off from 
  the bank, directed the raft toward the right side of the river, which he 
  had not yet approached. The maneuver was not accomplished without 
  certain difficulties, which were successfully overcome after a good many 
  resorts to the demijohn. 
  This allowed them to notice in passing some of those numerous lagoons 
  with black waters, which are distributed along the course of the 
  Amazon, and which often have no communication with the river. One of 
  these, bearing the name of the Lagoon of Oran, is of fair size, and 
  receives the water by a large strait. In the middle of the stream are 
  scattered several islands and two or three islets curiously grouped; and 
  on the opposite bank Benito recognized the site of the ancient Oran, of 
  which they could only see a few uncertain traces. 
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  During two days the jangada traveled sometimes under the left bank, 
  sometimes under the right, according to the condition of the current, 
  without giving the least sign of grounding. 
  The passengers had already become used to this new life. Joam Garral, 
  leaving to his son everything that referred to the commercial side of the 
  expedition, kept himself principally to his room, thinking and writing. 
  What he was writing about he told to nobody, not even Yaquita, and it 
  seemed to have already assumed the importance of a veritable essay. 
  Benito, all observation, chatted with the pilot and acted as manager. 
  Yaquita, her daughter, and Manoel, nearly always formed a group 
  apart, discussing their future projects just as they had walked and done 
  in the park of the fazenda. The life was, in fact, the same. Not quite, 
  perhaps, to Benito, who had not yet found occasion to participate in the 
  pleasures of the chase. If, however, the forests of Iquitos failed him with 
  their wild beasts, agoutis, peccaries, and cabiais, the birds flew in flocks 
  from the banks of the river and fearlessly perched on the jangada. 
  When they were of such quality as to figure fairly on the table, Benito 
  shot them; and, in the interest of all, his sister raised no objection; but if 
  he came across any gray or yellow herons, or red or white ibises, which 
  haunt the sides, he spared them through love for Minha. One single 
  species of grebe, which is uneatable, found no grace in the eyes of the 
  young merchant; this was the "caiarara," as quick to dive as to swim or 
  fly; a bird with a disagreeable cry, but whose down bears a high price in 
  the different markets of the Amazonian basin. 
  At length, after having passed the village of Omaguas and the mouth of 
  the Ambiacu, the jangada arrived at Pevas on the evening of the 11th of 
  June, and was moored to the bank. 
  As it was to remain here for some hours before nightfall, Benito 
  disembarked, taking with him the ever-ready Fragoso, and the two 
  sportsmen started off to beat the thickets in the environs of the little 
  place. An agouti and a cabiai, not to mention a dozen partridges, 
  enriched the larder after this fortunate excursion. At Pevas, where there 
  is a population of two hundred and sixty inhabitants, Benito would 
  perhaps have done some trade with the lay brothers of the mission, who 
  are at the same time wholesale merchants, but these had just sent away 
  some bales of sarsaparilla and arrobas of caoutchouc toward the Lower 
  Amazon, and their stores were empty. 
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  The jangada departed at daybreak, and passed the little archipelago of 
  the Iatio and Cochiquinas islands, after having left the village of the 
  latter name on the right. Several mouths of smaller unnamed affluents 
  showed themselves on the right of the river through the spaces between 
  the islands. 
  Many natives, with shaved heads, tattooed cheeks and foreheads, 
  carrying plates of metal in the lobes of their ears, noses, and lower lips, 
  appeared for an instant on the shore. They were armed with arrows and 
  blow tubes, but made no use of them, and did not even attempt to 
  communicate with the jangada. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 11 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER XI
  FROM PEVAS TO THE FRONTIER 
  DURING THE FEW days which followed nothing occurred worthy of 
  note. The nights were so fine that the long raft went on its way with the 
  stream without even a halt. The two picturesque banks of the river 
  seemed to change like the panoramas of the theaters which unroll from 
  one wing to another. By a kind of optical illusion it appeared as though 
  the raft was motionless between two moving pathways. 
  Benito had no shooting on the banks, for no halt was made, but game 
  was very advantageously replaced by the results of the fishing. 
  A great variety of excellent fish were taken--"pacos," "surubis," 
  "gamitanas," of exquisite flavor, and several of those large rays called 
  "duridaris," with rose-colored stomachs and black backs armed with 
  highly poisonous darts. There were also collected by thousands those 
  "candirus," a kind of small silurus, of which many are microscopic, and 
  which so frequently make a pincushion of the calves of the bather when 
  he imprudently ventures into their haunts. 
  The rich waters of the Amazon were also frequented by many other 
  aquatic animals, which escorted the jangada through its waves for 
  whole hours together. 
  There were the gigantic "pria-rucus," ten and twelve feet long, cuirassed 
  with large scales with scarlet borders, whose flesh was not much 
  appreciated by the natives. Neither did they care to capture many of the 
  graceful dolphins which played about in hundreds, striking with their 
  tails the planks of the raft, gamboling at the bow and stern, and making 
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  the water alive with colored reflections and spurts of spray, which the 
  refracted light converted into so many rainbows. 
  On the 16th of June the jangada, after fortunately clearing several 
  shallows in approaching the banks, arrived near the large island of San 
  Pablo, and the following evening she stopped at the village of 
  Moromoros, which is situated on the left side of the Amazon. Twenty-
  four hours afterward, passing the mouths of the Atacoari or Cocha--or 
  rather the "furo," or canal, which communicates with the lake of 
  Cabello-Cocha on the right bank--she put in at the rising ground of the 
  mission of Cocha. This was the country of the Marahua Indians, whose 
  long floating hair, and mouths opening in the middle of a kind of fan 
  made of the spines of palm-trees, six inches long, give them a cat-like 
  look--their endeavor being, according to Paul Marcoy, to resemble the 
  tiger, whose boldness, strength, and cunning they admire above 
  everything. Several women came with these Marahuas, smoking cigars, 
  but holding the lighted ends in their teeth. All of them, like the king of 
  the Amazonian forests, go about almost naked. 
  The mission of Cocha was then in charge of a Franciscan monk, who 
  was anxious to visit Padre Passanha. 
  Joam Garral received him with a warm welcome, and offered him a seat 
  at the dinner-table. 
  On that day was given a dinner which did honor to the Indian cook. The 
  traditional soup of fragrant herbs; cake, so often made to replace bread 
  in Brazil, composed of the flour of the manioc thoroughly impregnated 
  with the gravy of meat and tomato yelly; poultry with rice, swimming in 
  a sharp sauce made of vinegar and "malagueta;" a dish of spiced herbs, 
  and cold cake sprinkled with cinnamon, formed enough to tempt a poor 
  monk reduced to the ordinary meager fare of his parish. They tried all 
  they could to detain him, and Yaquita and her daughter did their 
  utmost in persuasion. But the Franciscan had to visit on that evening an 
  Indian who was lying ill at Cocha, and he heartily thanked the 
  hospitable family and departed, not without taking a few presents, 
  which would be well received by the neophytes of the mission. 
  For two days Araujo was very busy. The bed of the river gradually 
  enlarged, but the islands became more numerous, and the current, 
  embarrassed by these obstacles, increased in strength. Great care was 
  necessary in passing between the islands of Cabello-Cocha, Tarapote, 
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  and Cacao. Many stoppages had to be made, and occasionally they were 
  obliged to pole off the jangada, which now and then threatened to run 
  aground. Every one assisted in the work, and it was under these difficult 
  circumstances that, on the evening of the 20th of June, they found 
  themselves at Nuestra-Senora-di-Loreto. 
  Loreto is the last Peruvian town situated on the left bank of the river 
  before arriving at the Brazilian frontier. It is only a little village, 
  composed of about twenty houses, grouped on a slightly undulating 
  bank, formed of ocherous earth and clay. 
  It was in 1770 that this mission was founded by the Jesuit missionaries. 
  The Ticuma Indians, who inhabit the territories on the north of the 
  river, are natives with ruddy skins, bushy hair, and striped designs on 
  their faces, making them look like the lacquer on a Chinese table. Both 
  men and women are simply clothed, with cotton bands bound round 
  their things and stomachs. They are now not more than two hundred in 
  number, and on the banks of the Atacoari are found the last traces of a 
  nation which was formerly so powerful under its famous chiefs. 
  At Loreto there also live a few Peruvian soldiers and two or three 
  Portuguese merchants, trading in cotton stuffs, salt fish, and 
  sarsaparilla. 
  Benito went ashore, to buy, if possible, a few bales of this smilax, which 
  is always so much in demand in the markets of the Amazon. Joam 
  Garral, occupied all the time in the work which gave him not a 
  moment's rest, did not stir. Yaquita, her daughter, and Manoel also 
  remained on board. The mosquitoes of Loreto have a deserved 
  reputation for driving away such visitors as do not care to leave much of 
  their blood with the redoubtable diptera. 
  Manoel had a few appropriate words to say about these insects, and 
  they were not of a nature to encourage an inclination to brave their 
  stings. 
  "They say that all the new species which infest the banks of the Amazon 
  collect at the village of Loreto. I believe it, but do not wish to confirm it. 
  There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray mosquito, the 
  hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf mosquito, the 
  trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin, the big black, and 
  the red of the woods; or rather they make take their choice of you for a 
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  little repast, and you will come back hardly recognizable! I fancy these 
  bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian frontier considerably better 
  than the poverty-stricken soldiers we see on the bank." 
  "But if everything is of use in nature," asked Minha, "what is the use of 
  mosquitoes?" 
  "They minister to the happiness of entomologists," replied Manoel; 
  "and I should be much embarrassed to find a better explanation." 
  What Manoel had said of the Loreto mosquitoes was only too true. 
  When Benito had finished his business and returned on board, his face 
  and hands were tattooed with thousands of red points, without counting 
  some chigoes, which, in spite of the leather of his boots, had introduced 
  themselves beneath his toes. 
  "Let us set off this very instant," said Benito, "or these wretched insects 
  will invade us, and the jangada will become uninhabitable!" 
  "And we shall take them into Para," said Manoel, "where there are 
  already quite enough for its own needs." 
  And so, in order not to pass even the night near the banks, the jangada 
  pushed off into the stream. 
  On leaving Loreto the Amazon turns slightly toward the southwest, 
  between the islands of Arava, Cuyari, and Urucutea. The jangada then 
  glided along the black waters of the Cajaru, as they mingled with the 
  white stream of the Amazon. After having passed this tributary on the 
  left, it peacefully arrived during the evening of the 23d of June 
  alongside the large island of Jahuma. 
  The setting of the sun on a clear horizon, free from all haze, announced 
  one of those beautiful tropical nights which are unknown in the 
  temperate zones. A light breeze freshened the air; the moon arose in the 
  constellated depths of the sky, and for several hours took the place of 
  the twilight which is absent from these latitudes. But even during this 
  period the stars shone with unequaled purity. The immense plain 
  seemed to stretch into the infinite like a sea, and at the extremity of the 
  axis, which measures more than two hundred thousand millions of 
  leagues, there appeared on the north the single diamond of the pole star, 
  on the south the four brilliants of the Southern Cross. 
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  The trees on the left bank and on the island of Jahuma stood up in 
  sharp black outline. There were recognizable in the undecided 
  silhouettes the trunks, or rather columns, of "copahus," which spread 
  out in umbrellas, groups of "sandis," from which is extracted the thick 
  and sugared milk, intoxicating as wine itself, and "vignaticos" eighty 
  feet high, whose summits shake at the passage of the lightest currents of 
  air. "What a magnificent sermon are these forests of the Amazon!" has 
  been justly said. Yes; and we might add, "What a magnificent hymn 
  there is in the nights of the tropics!" 
  The birds were giving forth their last evening notes--"bentivis," who 
  hang their nests on the bank-side reeds; "niambus," a kind of partridge, 
  whose song is composed of four notes, in perfect accord; "kamichis," 
  with their plaintive melody; kingfishers, whose call responds like a 
  signal to the last cry of their congeners; "canindes," with their sonorous 
  trumpets; and red macaws, who fold their wings in the foliage of the 
  "jaquetibas," when night comes on to dim their glowing colors. 
  On the jangada every one was at his post, in the attitude of repose. The 
  pilot alone, standing in the bow, showed his tall stature, scarcely defined 
  in the earlier shadows. The watch, with his long pole on his shoulder, 
  reminded one of an encampment of Tartar horsemen. The Brazilian 
  flag hung from the top of the staff in the bow, and the breeze was 
  scarcely strong enough to lift the bunting. 
  At eight o'clock the three first tinklings of the Angelus escaped from the 
  bell of the little chapel. The three tinklings of the second and third 
  verses sounded in their turn, and the salutation was completed in the 
  series of more rapid strokes of the little bell. 
  However, the family after this July day remained sitting under the 
  veranda to breathe the fresh air from the open. 
  It had been so each evening, and while Joam Garral, always silent, was 
  contented to listen, the young people gayly chatted away till bedtime. 
  "Ah! our splendid river! our magnificent Amazon!" exclaimed the 
  young girl, whose enthusiasm for the immense stream never failed. 
  "Unequaled river, in very truth," said Manoel; "and I do not 
  understand all its sublime beauties. We are going down it, however, like 
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  Orellana and La Condamine did so many centuries ago, and I am not at 
  all surprised at their marvelous descriptions." 
  "A little fabulous," replied Benito. 
  "Now, brother," said Minha seriously, "say no evil of our Amazon." 
  "To remind you that it has its legends, my sister, is to say no ill of it." 
  "Yes, that is true; and it has some marvelous ones," replied Minha. 
  "What legends?" asked Manoel. "I dare avow that they have not yet 
  found their way into Para--or rather that, for my part, I am not 
  acquainted with them." 
  "What, then do you learn in the Belem colleges?" laughingly asked 
  Minha. 
  "I begin to perceive that they teach us nothing," replied Manoel. 
  "What, sir!" replied Minha, with a pleasant seriousness, "you do not 
  know, among other fables, that an enormous reptile called the 
  'minhocao,' sometimes visits the Amazon, and that the waters of the 
  river rise or fall according as this serpent plunges in or quites them, so 
  gigantic is he?" 
  "But have you ever seen t his phenomenal minhocao?" 
  "Alas, no!" replied Lina. 
  "What a pity!" Fragoso thought it proper to add. 
  "And the 'Mae d'Aqua,'" continued the girl--"that proud and 
  redoubtable woman whose look fascinates and drages beneath the 
  waters of the river the imprudent ones who gaze a her." 
  "Oh, as for the 'Mae d'Aqua,' she exists!" cried the naïve Lina; "they 
  say that she still walks on the banks, but disappears like a water sprite 
  as soon as you approach her." 
  "Very well, Lina," said Benito; "the first time you see her just let me 
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  know." 
  "So that she may seize you and take you to the bottom of the river? 
  Never, Mr. Benito!" 
  "She believes it!" shouted Minha. 
  "There are people who believe in the trunk of Manaos," said Fragoso, 
  always ready to intervene on behalf of Lina. 
  "The 'trunk of Manaos'?" asked Manoel. "What about the trunk of 
  Manaos?" 
  "Mr. Manoel," answered Fragoso, with comic gravity, "it appears that 
  there is--or rather formerly was--a trunk of 'turuma,' which every year 
  at the same time descended the Rio Negro, stopping several days at 
  Manaos, and going on into Para, halting at every port, where the natives 
  ornamented it with little flags. Arrived at Belem, it came to a halt, 
  turned back on its road, remounted the Amazon to the Rio Negro, and 
  returned to the forest from which it had mysteriously started. One day 
  somebody tried to drag it ashore, but the river rose in anger, and the 
  attempt had to be given up. And on another occasion the captain of a 
  ship harpooned it and tried to tow it along. This time again the river, in 
  anger, broke off the robes, and the trunk mysteriously escaped." 
  "What became of it?" asked the mulatto. 
  "It appears that on its last voyage, Miss Lina," replied Fragoso, "it 
  mistook the way, and instead of going up the Negro it continued in the 
  Amazon, and it has never been seen again." 
  "Oh, if we could only meet it!" said Lina. 
  "If we meet it," answered Benito, "we will put you on it! It will take you 
  back to the mysterious forest, and you will likewise pass into the state of 
  a legendary mind!" 
  "And why not?" asked the mulatto. 
  "So much for your legends," said Manoel; "and I think your river is 
  worthy of them. But it has also its histories, which are worth something 
  more. I know one, and if I were not afraid of grieving you--for it is a 
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  very sad one--I would relate it." 
  "Oh! tell it, by all means, Mr. Manoel," exclaimed Lina; "I like stories 
  which make you cry!" 
  "What, do you cry, :ina?" said Benito. 
  "Yes, Mr. Benito; but I cry when laughing." 
  "Oh, well! let is uave it, Manoel!" 
  "It is the history of a Frenchwoman whose sorrows rendered these 
  banks memorable in the eighteenth century." 
  "We are listening," said Minha. 
  "Here goes, then," said Manoel. "In 1741, at the time of the expedition 
  of the two Frenchmen, Bouguer and La Condamine, who were sent to 
  measure a terrestrial degree on the equator, they were accompanied by 
  a very distinguished astronomer, Godin des Odonais. Godin des 
  Odonais set out then, but he did not set out alone, for the New World; 
  he took with him his young wife, his children, his father-in-law, and his 
  brother-in-law. The travelers arrived at Quito in good health. There 
  commenced a series of misfortunes for Madame Odonais; in a few 
  months she lost some of her children. When Godin des Odonais had 
  completed his work, toward the end of the year 1759, he left Quito and 
  started for Cayenne. Once arrived in this town he wanted his family to 
  come to him, but war had been declared, and he was obliged to ask the 
  Portuguese government for permission for a free passage for Madame 
  Odonais and her people. What do you think? Many years passed before 
  the permission could be given. In 1765 Godin des Odonais, maddened 
  by the delay, resolved to ascend the Amazon in search of his wife at 
  Quito; but at the moment of his departure a sudden illness stopped him, 
  and he could not carry out his intention. However, his application had 
  not been useless, and Madame des Odonais learned at last that the king 
  of Portugal had given the necessary permission, and prepared to 
  embark and descend the river to her husband. At the same time an 
  escort was ordered to be ready in the missions of the Upper Amazon. 
  Madame des Odonais was a woman of great courage, as you will see 
  presently; she never hesitated, and notwithstanding the dangers of such 
  a voyage across the continent, she started." 
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  "It was her duty to her husband, Manoel," said Yaquita, "and I would 
  have done the same." 
  "Madame des Odonais," continued Manoel, "came to Rio Bamba, at 
  the south of Quito, bringing her brother-in-law, her children, and a 
  French doctor. Their endeavor was to reach the missions on the 
  Brazilian frontier, where they hoped to find a ship and the escort. The 
  voyage at first was favorable; it was made down the tributaries of the 
  Amazon in a canoe. The difficulties, however, gradually increased with 
  the dangers and fatigues of a country decimated by the smallpox. Of 
  several guides who offered their services, the most part disappeared 
  after a few days; one of them, the last who remained faithful to the 
  travlers, was drowned in the Bobonasa, in endeavoring to help the 
  French doctor. At length the canoe, damaged by rocks and floating 
  trees, became useless. It was therefore necessary to get on shore, and 
  there at the edge of the impenetrable forest they built a few huts of 
  foliage. The doctor offered to go on in front with a negro who had never 
  wished to leave Madame des Odonais. The two went off; they waited for 
  them several days, but in vain. They never returned. 
  "In the meantime the victuals were getting exhausted. The forsaken 
  ones in vain endeavored to descend the Bobonasa on a raft. They had to 
  again take to the forest, and make their way on foot through the almost 
  impenetrable undergrowth. The fatigues were too much for the poor 
  folks! They died off one by one in spite of the cares of the noble 
  Frenchwoman. At the end of a few days children, relations, and 
  servants, were all dead!" 
  "What an unfortunate woman!" said Lina. 
  "Madame des Odonais alone remained," continued Manoel. "There she 
  was, at a thousand leagues from the ocean which she was trying to 
  reach! It was no longer a mother who continued her journey toward the 
  river--the mother had lost her shildren; she had buried them with her 
  own hands! It was a wife who wished to see her husband once again! 
  She traveled night and day, and at length regained the Bobonasa. She 
  was there received by some kind-hearted Indians, who took her to the 
  missions, where the escort was waiting. But she arrived alone, and 
  behind her the stages of the route were marked with graves! Madame 
  des Odonais reached Loreto, where we were a few days back. From this 
  Peruvian village she descended the Amazon, as we are doing at this 
  moment, and at length she rejoined her husband after a separation of 
  nineteen years." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 11 
  "Poor lady!" said Minha. 
  "Above all, poor mother!" answered Yaquita. 
  At this moment Araujo, the pilot, came aft and said: 
  "Joam Garral, we are off the Ronde Island. We are passing the 
  frontier!" 
  "The frontier!" replied Joam. 
  And rising, he went to the side of the jangada, and looked long and 
  earnestly at the Ronde Island, with the waves breaking up against it. 
  Then his hand sought his forehead, as if to rid himself of some 
  remembrance. 
  "The frontier!" murmured he, bowing his head by an involuntary 
  movement. 
  But an instant after his head was raised, and his expression was that of 
  a man resolved to do his duty to the last. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 12 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
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  CHAPTER XII
  FRAGOSO AT WORK 
  "BRAZA" (burning embers) is a word found in the Spanish language as 
  far back as the twelfth century. It has been used to make the word 
  "brazil," as descriptive of certain woods which yield a reddish dye. 
  From this has come the name "Brazil," given to that vast district of 
  South America which is crossed by the equator, and in which these 
  products are so frequently met with. In very early days these woods 
  were the object of considerable trade. Although correctly called 
  "ibirapitunga," from the place of production, the name of "brazil" stuck 
  to them, and it has become that of the country, which seems like an 
  immense heap of embers lighted by the rays of the tropical sun. 
  Brazil was from the first occupied by the Portuguese. About the 
  commencement of the sixteenth century, Alvarez Cabral, the pilot, took 
  possession of it, and although France and Holland partially established 
  themselves there, it has remained Portuguese, and possesses all the 
  qualities which distinguish that gallant little nation. It is to-day the 
  largest state of South America, and has at its head the intelligent artist-
  king Dom Pedro. 
  "What is your privilege in the tribe?" asked Montaigne of an Indian 
  whom he met at Havre. 
  "The privilege of marching first to battle!" innocently answered the 
  Indian. 
  War, we know, was for a long time the surest and most rapid vehicle of 
  civilization. The Brazilians did what this Indian did: they fought, they 
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  defended their conquests, they enlarged them, and we see them 
  marching in the first rank of the civilizing advance. 
  It was in 1824, sixteen years after the foundation of the Portugo-
  Brazilian Empire, that Brazil proclaimed its independence by the voice 
  of Don Juan, whom the French armies had chased from Portugal. 
  It remained only to define the frontier between the new empire and that 
  of its neighbor, Peru. This was no easy matter. 
  If Brazil wished to extend to the Rio Napo in the west, Peru attempted 
  to reach eight degrees further, as far as the Lake of Ega. 
  But in the meantime Brazil had to interfere to hinder the kidnaping of 
  the Indians from the Amazon, a practice which was engaged in much to 
  the profit of the Hispano-Brazilian missions. There was no better 
  method of checking this trade than that of fortifying the Island of the 
  Ronde, a little above Tabatinga, and there establishing a post. 
  This afforded the solution, and from that time the frontier of the two 
  countries passed through the middle of this island. 
  Above, the river is Peruvian, and is called the Marañon, as has been 
  said. Below, it is Brazilian, and takes the name of the Amazon. 
  It was on the evening of the 25th of June that the jangada stopped 
  before Tabatinga, the first Brazilian town situated on the left bank, at 
  the entrance of the river of which it bears the name, and bleonging to 
  the parish of St. Paul, established on the right a little further down 
  stream. 
  Joam Garral had decided to pass thirty-six hours here, so as to give a 
  little rest to the crew. They would not start, therefore, until the morning 
  of the 27th. 
  On this occasion Yaquita and her children, less likely, perhaps, than at 
  Iquitos to be fed upon by the native mosquitoes, had announced their 
  intention of going on ashore and visiting the town. 
  The population of Tabatinga is estimated at four hundred, nearly all 
  Indians, comprising, no doubt, many of those wandering families who 
  are never settled at particular spots on the banks of the Amazon or its 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 12 
  smaller tributaries. 
  The post at the island of the Ronde has been abandoned for some years, 
  and transferred to Tabatinga. It can thus be called a garrison town, but 
  the garrison is only composed of nine soldiers, nearly all Indians, and a 
  sergeant, who is the actual commandant of the place. 
  A bank about thirty feet high, in which are cut the steps of a not very 
  solid staircase, forms here the curtain of the esplanade which carries the 
  pigmy fort. The house of the commandant consists of a couple of huts 
  placed in a square, and the soldiers occupy an oblong building a 
  hundred feet away, at the foot of a large tree. 
  The collection of cabins exactly resembles all the villages and hamlets 
  which are scattered along the banks of the river, although in them a 
  flagstaff carrying the Brazilian colors does not rise above a sentry-box, 
  forever destitute of its sentinel, nor are four small mortars present to 
  cannonade on an emergency any vessel which does not come in when 
  ordered. 
  As for the village properly so called, it is situated below, at the base of 
  the plateau. A road, which is but a ravine shaded by ficuses and miritis, 
  leads to it in a few minutes. There, on a half-cracked hill of clay, stand a 
  dozen houses, covered with the leaves of the "boiassu" palm placed 
  round a central space. 
  All this is not very curious, but the environs of Tabatinga are charming, 
  particularly at the mouth of the Javary, which is of sufficient extent to 
  contain the Archipelago of the Aramasa Islands. Hereabouts are 
  grouped many fine trees, and among them a large number of the palms, 
  whose supple fibers are used in the fabrication of hammocks and fishing-
  nets, and are the cause of some trade. To conclude, the place is one of 
  the most picturesque on the Upper Amazon. 
  Tabatinga is destined to become before long a station of some 
  importance, and will no doubt rapidly develop, for there will stop the 
  Brazilian steamers which ascend the river, and the Peruvian steamers 
  which descend it. There they will tranship passengers and cargoes. It 
  does not require much for an English or American village to become in 
  a few years the center of considerable commerce. 
  The river is very beautiful along this part of its course. The influence of 
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  ordinary tides is not perceptible at Tabatinga, which is more than six 
  hundred leagues from the Atlantic. But it is not so with the "pororoca," 
  that species of eddy which for three days in the height of the syzygies 
  raises the waters of the Amazon, and turns them back at the rate of 
  seventeen kilometers per hour. They say that the effects of this bore are 
  felt up to the Brazilian frontier. 
  On the morrow, the 26th of June, the Garral family prepared to go off 
  and visit the village. Though Joam, Benito, and Manoel had already set 
  foot in a Brazilian town, it was otherwise with Yaquita and her 
  daughter; for them it was, so to speak, a taking possession. It is 
  conceivable, therefore, that Yaquita and Minha should attach some 
  importance to the event. 
  If, on his part, Fragoso, in his capacity of wandering barber, had 
  already run through the different provinces of South America, Lina, 
  like her young mistress, had never been on Brazilian soil. 
  But before leaving the jangada Fragoso had sought Joam Garral, and 
  had the following conversation with him. 
  "Mr. Garral," said he, "from the day when you received me at the 
  fazenda of Iquitos, lodged, clothed, fed--in a word, took me in so 
  hospitably--I have owed you----" 
  "You owe me absolutely nothing, my friend," answered Joam, "so do 
  not insist----" 
  "Oh, do not be alarmed!" exclaimed Fragoso, "I am not going to pay it 
  off! Let me add, that you took me on board the jangada and gave me the 
  means of descending the river. But here we are, on the soil of Brazil, 
  which, according to all probability, I ought never to have seen again. 
  Without that liana----" 
  "It is to Lina, and to Lina alone, that you should tender your thanks," 
  said Joam. 
  "I know," said Fragoso, "and I will never forget what I owe here, any 
  more than what I owe you." 
  "They tell me, Fragoso," continued Joam, "that you are going to say 
  good-by, and intend to remain at Tabatinga." 
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  "By no means, Mr. Garral, since you have allowed me to accompany 
  you to Belem, where I hope at the least to be able to resume my old 
  trade." 
  "Well, if that is your intention--what were you going to ask me?" 
  "I was going to ask if you saw any inconvenience in my working at my 
  profession on our route. There is no necessity for my hand to rust; and, 
  besides, a few handfuls of reis would not be so bad at the bottom of my 
  pocket, more particularly if I had earned them. You know, Mr. Garral, 
  that a barber who is also a hairdresser--and I hardly like to say a 
  doctor, out of respect to Mr. Manoel--always finds customers in these 
  Upper Amazon villages." 
  "Particularly among the Brazilians," answered Joam. "As for the 
  natives----" 
  "I beg pardon," replied Fragoso, "particularly among the natives. Ah! 
  although there is no beard to trim--for nature has been very stingy 
  toward them in that way--there are always some heads of hair to be 
  dressed in the latest fashion. They are very fond of it, these savages, 
  both the men and the women! I shall not be installed ten minutes in the 
  square at Tabatinga, with my cup and ball in hand--the cup and ball I 
  have brought on board, and which I can manage with pretty pleasantly--
  before a circle of braves and squaws will have formed around me. They 
  will struggle for my favors. I could remain here for a month, and the 
  whole tribe of the Ticunas would come to me to have their hair looked 
  after! They won't hesitate to make the acquaintance of 'curling tongs'--
  that is what they will call me--if I revisit the walls of Tabatinga! I have 
  already had two tries here, and my scissors and comb have done 
  marvels! It does not do to return too often on the same track. The 
  Indian ladies don't have their hair curled every day, like the beauties of 
  our Brazilian cities. No; when it is done, it is done for year, and during 
  the twelvemonth they will take every care not to endanger the edifice 
  which I have raised--with what talent I dare not say. Now it is nearly a 
  year since I was at Tabatinga; I go to find my monuments in ruin! And 
  if it is not objectionable to you, Mr. Garral, I would render myself again 
  worthy of the reputation which I have acquired in these parts, the 
  question of reis, and not that of conceit, being, you understand, the 
  principal." 
  "Go on, then, friend, " replied Joam Garral laughingly; "but be quick! 
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  we can only remain a day at Tabatinga, and we shall start to-morrow at 
  dawn." 
  "I will not lose a minute," answered Fragoso--"just time to take the 
  tools of my profession, and I am off." 
  "Off you go, Fragoso," said Joam, "and may the reis rain into your 
  pocket!" 
  "Yes, and that is a proper sort of rain, and there can never be too much 
  of it for your obedient servant." 
  And so saying Fragoso rapidly moved away. 
  A moment afterward the family, with the exception of Joam, went 
  ashore. The jangada was able to approach near enough to the bank for 
  the landing to take place without much trouble. A staircase, in a 
  miserable state, cut in the cliff, allowed the visitors to arrive on the crest 
  of the plateau. 
  Yaquita and her party were received by the commandant of the fort, a 
  poor fellow who, however, knew the laws of hospitality, and offered 
  them some breakfast in his cottage. Here and there passed and repassed 
  several soldiers on guard, while on the threshold of the barrack 
  appeared a few children, with their mothers of Ticuna blood, affording 
  very poor specimens of the mixed race. 
  In place of accepting the breakfast of the sergeant, Yaquita invited the 
  commandant and his wife to come and have theirs on board the 
  jangada. 
  The commandant did not wait for a second invitation, and an 
  appointment was made for eleven o'clock. In the meantime Yaquita, her 
  daughter, and the young mulatto, accompanied by Manoel, went for a 
  walk in the neighborhood, leaving Benito to settle with the commandant 
  about the tolls--he being chief of the custom-house as well as of the 
  military establishment. 
  That done, Benito, as was his wont, strolled off with his gun into the 
  adjoining woods. On this occasion Manoel had declined to accompany 
  him. Fragoso had left the jangada, but instead of mounting to the fort 
  he had made for the village, crossing the ravine which led off from the 
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  right on the level of the bank. He reckoned more on the native custom of 
  Tabatinga than on that of the garrison. Doubtless the soldiers' wives 
  would not have wished better than to have been put under his hands, 
  but the husbands scarcely cared to part with a few reis for the sake of 
  gratifying the whims of their coquettish partners. 
  Among the natives it was quite the reverse. Husbands and wives, the 
  jolly barber knew them well, and he knew they would give him a better 
  reception. 
  Behold, then, Fragoso on the road, coming up the shady lane beneath 
  the ficuses, and arriving in the central square of Tabatinga! 
  As soon as he set foot in the place the famous barber was signaled, 
  recognized, surrounded. Fragoso had no big box, nor drum, nor cornet 
  to attract the attention of his clients--not even a carriage of shining 
  copper, with resplendent lamps and ornamented glass panels, nor a 
  huge parasol, no anything whatever to impress the public, as they 
  generally have at fairs. No; but Fragoso had his cup and ball, and how 
  that cup and ball were manipulated between his fingers! With what 
  address did he receive the turtle's head, which did for the ball, on the 
  pointed end of the stick! With what grace did he make the ball describe 
  some learned curve of which mathematicians have not yet calculated the 
  value--even those who have determined the wondrous curve of "the dog 
  who follows his master!" 
  Every native was there--men, women, the old and the young, in their 
  nearly primitive costume, looking on with all their eyes, listening with 
  all their ears. The smiling entertainer, half in Portuguese, half in 
  Ticunian, favored them with his customary oration in a tone of the most 
  rollicking good humor. What he said was what is said by all the 
  charlatans who place their services at the public disposal, whether they 
  be Spanish Figaros or French perruqiers. At the bottom the same self-
  possession, the same knowledge of human weakness, the same 
  description of threadbare witticisms, the same amusing dexterity, and, 
  on the part of the natives, the same wide-mouth astonishment, the same 
  curiosity, the same credulity as the simple folk of the civilized world. 
  It followed, then, that ten minutes later the public were completely won, 
  and crowded round Fragoso, who was installed in a "loja" of the place, 
  a sort of serving-bar to the inn. 
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  The loja belonged to a Brazilian settled at Tabatinga. There, for a few 
  vatems, which are the sols of the country, and worth about twenty reis, 
  or half a dozen centimes each, the natives could get drinks of the 
  crudest, and particularly assai, a liquor half-sold, half-liquid, made of 
  the fruit of the palm-tree, and drunk from a "coui" or half-calabash in 
  general use in this district of the Amazon. 
  And then men and women, with equal eagerness, took their places on 
  the barber's stool. The scissors of Fragoso had little to do, for it was not 
  a question of cutting these wealthy heads of hair, nearly all remarkable 
  for their softness and their quality, but the use to which he could put his 
  comb and the tongs, which were kept warming in the corner in a 
  brasier. 
  And then the encouragements of the artist to the crowd! 
  "Look here! look here!" said he; "how will that do, my friends--if you 
  don't sleep on the top of it! There you are, for a twelvemonth! and these 
  are the latest novelties from Belem and Rio de Janeiro! The queen's 
  maids of honor are not more cleverly decked out; and observe, I am not 
  stingy with the pomade!" 
  No, he was not stingy with it. True, it was only a little grease, with which 
  he had mixed some of the juices of a few flowers, but he plaster it on like 
  cement! 
  And as to the names of the capillary edifices--for the monuments reared 
  by the hands of Fragoso were of every order of architecture--buckles, 
  rings, clubs, tresses, crimpings, rolls, corkscrews, curls, everything 
  found there a place. Nothing false; no towers, no chignons, no shams! 
  These head were not enfeebled by cuttings nor thinned by fallings-off, 
  but were forests in all their native virginity! Fragoso, however, was not 
  above adding a few natural flowers, to or three long fish-bones, and 
  some fine bone or copper ornaments, which were brought him b the 
  dandies of the district. Assuredly, the exquisites of the Directory would 
  have envied the arrangement of these high-art coiffures, three and four 
  stories high, and the great Leonard himself would have bowed before 
  his transatlantic rival. 
  And then the vatems, the handfuls of reis--the only coins for which the 
  natives of the Amazon exchange their goods--which rained into the 
  pocket of Fragoso, and which he collected with evident satisfaction. But 
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  assuredly night would come before he could satisfy the demands of the 
  customers, who were so constantly renewed. It was not only the 
  population of Tabatinga which crowded to the door of the loja. The 
  news of the arrival of Fragoso was not slow to get abroad; natives came 
  to him from all sides: Ticunas from the left bank of the river, 
  Mayorunas from the right bank, as well as those who live on the Cajuru 
  and those who come from the villages of the Javary. 
  A long array of anxious ones formed itself in the square. The happy 
  ones coming from the hands of Fragoso went proudly from one house to 
  another, showed themselves off without daring to shake themselves, like 
  the big children that they were. 
  It thus happened that when noon came the much-occupied barber had 
  not had time to return on board, but had had to content himself with a 
  little assai, some manioc flour, and turtle eggs, which he rapidly 
  devoured between two applications of the curling-tongs. 
  But it was a great harvest for the innkeeper, as all the operations could 
  not be conducted without a large absorption of liquors drawn from the 
  cellars of the inn. In fact, it was an event for the town of Tabatinga, this 
  visit of the celebrated Fragoso, barber in ordinary and extraordinary to 
  the tribes of the Upper Amazon! 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
  | Top | Next Chapter | Title Page | Litrix Reading Room | Authors | Titles |
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 13 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XIII
  TORRES 
  AT FIVE O'CLOCK in the evening Fragoso was still there, and was 
  asking himself if he would have to pass the night on the spot to satisfy 
  the expectant crowd, when a stranger arrived in the square, and seeing 
  all t his native gathering, advanced toward the inn. 
  For some minutes the stranger eyed Fragoso attentively with some 
  circumspection. The examination was obviously satisfactory, for he 
  entered the loja. 
  He was a man about thirty-five years of age. He was dressed in a 
  somewhat elegant traveling costume, which added much to his personal 
  appearance. But his strong black beard, which the scissors had not 
  touched for some time, and his hair, a trifle long, imperiously required 
  the good offices of a barber. 
  "Good-day, friend, good-day!" said he, lightly striking Fragoso on the 
  shoulder. 
  Fragoso turned round when he heard the words pronounced in pure 
  Brazilian, and not in the mixed idiom of the natives. 
  "A compatriot?" he asked, without stopping the twisting of the 
  refractory mouth of a Mayouma head. 
  "Yes," answered the stranger. "A compatriot who has need of your 
  services." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 13 
  "To be sure! In a minute," said Fragoso. "Wait till I have finished with 
  this lady!" 
  And this was done in a couple of strokes with the curling-tongs. 
  Although he was the last comer, and had no right to the vacant place, he 
  sat down on the stool without causing any expostulation on the part of 
  the natives who lost a turn. 
  Fragoso put down the irons for the scissors, and, after the manner of his 
  brethren, said: 
  "What can I do for you, sir?" 
  "Cut my beard and my hair," answered the stranger. 
  "All right!" said Fragoso, inserting his comb into the mass of hair. 
  And then the scissors to do their work. 
  "And you come from far?" asked Fragoso, who could not work without 
  a good deal to say. 
  "I have come from the neighborhood of Iquitos." 
  "So have I!" exclaimed Fragoso. "I have come down the Amazon from 
  Iquitos to Tabatinga. May I ask your name?" 
  "No objection at all," replied the stranger. "My name is Torres." 
  When the hair was cut in the latest style Fragoso began to thin his 
  beard, but at this moment, as he was looking straight into his face, he 
  stopped, then began again, and then: 
  "Eh! Mr. Torres," said he; "I seem to know you. We must have seen 
  each other somewhere?" 
  "I do not think so," quickly answered Torres. 
  "I am always wrong!" replied Fragoso, and he hurried on to finish his 
  task. 
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  A moment after Torres continued the conversation which this question 
  of Fragoso had interrupted, with: 
  "How did you come from Iquitos?" 
  "From Iquitos to Tabatinga?" 
  "Yes." 
  "On board a raft, on which I was given a passage by a worther fazender 
  who is going down the Amazon with his family." 
  "A friend indeed!" replied Torres. "That is a chance, and if your 
  fazender would take me----" 
  "Do you intend, then, to go down the river?" 
  "Precisely." 
  "Into Para?" 
  "No, only to Manaos, where I have business." 
  "Well, my host is very kind, and I think he would cheerfully oblige 
  you." 
  "Do you think so?" 
  "I might almost say I am sure." 
  "And what is the name of this fazender?" asked Torres carelessly." 
  "Joam Garral," answered Fragoso. 
  And at the same time he muttered to himself: 
  "I certainly have seen this fellow somewhere!" 
  Torres was not the man to allow a conversation to drop which was likely 
  to interest him, and for very good reasons. 
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  "And so you think Joam Garral would give me a passage?" 
  "I do not doubt it," replied Fragoso. "What he would do for a poor 
  chap like me he would not refuse to do for a compatriot like you." 
  "Is he alone on board the jangada?" 
  "No," replied Fragoso. "I wa going to tell you that he is traveling with 
  all his family--and jolly people they are, I assure you. He is accompanied 
  by a crew of Indians and negroes, who form part of the staff at the 
  fazenda." 
  "Is he rich?" 
  "Oh, certainly!" answered Fragoso--"very rich. Even the timber which 
  forms the jangada, and the cargo it carries, constitute a fortune!" 
  "The Joam Garral and his whole family have just passed the Brazilian 
  frontier?" 
  "Yes," said Fragoso; "his wife, his son, his daughter, and Miss Minha's 
  betrothed." 
  "Ah! he has a daughter?" said Torres. 
  "A charming girl!" 
  "Going to get married?" 
  "Yes, to a brave young fellow," replied Fragoso--"an army surgeon in 
  garrison at Belem, and the wedding is to take place as soon as we get to 
  the end of the voyage." 
  "Good!" said the smiling Torres; "it is what you might call a betrothal 
  journey." 
  "A voyage of betrothal, of pleasure, and of business!" said Fragoso. 
  "Madame Yaquita and her daughter have never set foot on Brazilian 
  ground; and as for Joam Garral, it is the first time he has crossed the 
  frontier since he went to the farm of old Magalhaës." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 13 
  "I suppose," asked Torres, "that there are some servants with the 
  family?" 
  "Of course," replied Fragoso--"old Cybele, on the farm for the last fifty 
  years, and a pretty mulatto, Miss Lina, who is more of a companion 
  than a servant to her mistress. Ah, what an amiable disposition! What a 
  heart, and what eyes! And the ideas she has about everything, 
  particularly about lianas--" Fragoso, started on this subject, would not 
  have been able to stop himself, and Lina would have been the object of a 
  good many enthusiastic declarations, had Torres not quitted the chair 
  for another customer. 
  "What do I owe you?" asked he of the barber. 
  "Nothing," answered Fragoso. "Between compatriots, when they meet 
  on the frontier, there can be no question of that sort." 
  "But," replied Torres, "I want to----" 
  "Very well, we will settle that later on, on board the jangada." 
  "But I do not know that, and I do not like to ask Joam Garral to allow 
  me----" 
  "Do not hesitate!" exclaimed Fragoso; "I will speak to him if you would 
  like it better, and he will be very happy to be of use to you under the 
  circumstances." 
  And at that instant Manoel and Benito, coming into the town after 
  dinner, appeared at the door of the loja, wishing to see Fragoso at work. 
  Torres turned toward them and suddenly said: "There are two 
  gentlemen I know--or rather I remember." 
  "You remember them!" asked Fragoso, surprised. 
  "Yes, undoubtedly! A month ago, in the forest of Iquitos, they got me 
  out of a considerable difficulty." 
  "But they are Benito Garral and Manoel Valdez." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 13 
  "I know. They told me their names, but I never expected to see them 
  here." 
  Torres advanced toward the two young men, who looked at him without 
  recognizing him. 
  "You do not remember me, gentlemen?" he asked. 
  "Wait a little," answered Benito; "Mr. Torres, if I remember aright; it 
  was you who, in the forest of Iquitos, got into difficulties with a 
  guariba?" 
  "Quite true, gentlemen," replied Torres. "For six weeks I have been 
  traveling down the Amazon, and I have just crossed the frontier at the 
  same time as you have." 
  "Very pleased to see you again," said Benito; "but you have not 
  forgotten that you promised to come to the fazenda to my father?" 
  "I have not forgotten it," answered Torres. 
  "And you would have done better to have accepted my offer; it would 
  have allowed you to have waited for our departure, rested from you 
  fatigues, and descended with us to the frontier; so many days of walking 
  saved." 
  "To be sure!" answered Torres. 
  "Our compatriot is not going to stop at the frontier," said Fragoso, "he 
  is going on to Manaos." 
  "Well, then," replied Benito, "if you will come on board the jangada 
  you will be well received, and I am sure my father will give you a 
  passage." 
  "Willingly," said Torres; "and you will allow me to thank you in 
  advance." 
  Manoel took no part in the conversation; he let Benito make the offer of 
  his services, and attentively watched Torres, whose face he scarcely 
  remembered. There was an entire want of frankness in the eyes, whose 
  look changed unceasingly, as if he was afraid to fix them anywhere. But 
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  Manoel kept this impression to himself, not wishing to injure a 
  compatriot whom they were about to oblige. 
  "Gentlemen," said Torres, "if you like, I am ready to follow you to the 
  landing-place." 
  "Come, then," answered Benito. 
  A quarter of an hour afterward Torres was on board the jangada. 
  Benito introduced him to Joam Garral, acquainting him with the 
  circumstances under which they had previously met him, and asked him 
  to give him a passage down to Manaos. 
  "I am happy, sir, to be able to oblige you," replied Joam. 
  "Thank you," said Torres, who at the moment of putting forth his hand 
  kept it back in spite of himself. 
  "We shall be off at daybreak to-morrow," added Joam Garral, "so you 
  had better get your things on board." 
  "Oh, that will not take me long!" answered Torres; "there is only 
  myself and nothing else!" 
  "Make yourself at home," said Joam Garral. 
  That evening Torres took possession of a cabin near to that of the 
  barber. It was not till eight o'clock that the latter returned to the raft, 
  and gave the young mulatto an account of his exploits, and repeated, 
  with no little vanity, that the renown of the illustrious Fragoso was 
  increasing in the basin of the Upper Amazon. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 14 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER XIV
  STILL DESCENDING 
  AT DAYBREAK on the morrow, the 27th of June, the cables were cast 
  off, and the raft continued its journey down the river. 
  An extra passenger was on board. Whence came this Torres? No one 
  exactly knew. Where was he going to? "To Manaos," he said. Torres 
  was careful to let no suspicion of his past life escape him, nor of the 
  profession that he had followed till within the last two months, and no 
  one would have thought that the jangada had given refuge to an old 
  captain of the woods. Joam Garral did not wish to mar the service he 
  was rendering by questions of too pressing a nature. 
  In taking him on board the fazender had obeyed a sentiment of 
  humanity. In the midst of these vast Amazonian deserts, more especially 
  at the time when the steamers had not begun to furrow the waters, it 
  was very difficult to find means of safe and rapid transit. Boats did not 
  ply regularly, and in most cases the traveler was obliged to walk across 
  the forests. This is what Torres had done, and what he would continue 
  to have done, and it was for him unexpected good luck to have got a 
  passage on the raft. 
  From the moment that Benito had explained under what conditions he 
  had met Torres the introduction was complete, and he was able to 
  consider himself as a passenger on an Atlantic steamer, who is free to 
  take part in the general life if he cares, or free to keep himself a little 
  apart if of an unsociable disposition. 
  It was noticed, at least during the first few days, that Torres did not try 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 14 
  to become intimate with the Garral family. He maintained a good deal 
  of reserve, answering if addressed, but never provoking a reply. 
  If he appeared more open with any one, it was with Fragoso. Did he not 
  owe to this gay companion the idea of taking passage on board the raft? 
  Many times he asked him about the position of the Garrals at Iquitos, 
  the sentiments of the daughter for Manoel Valdez, and always 
  discreetly. Generally, when he was not walking alone in the bow of the 
  jangada, he kept to his cabin. 
  He breakfasted and dined with Joam Garral and his family, but he took 
  little part in their conversation, and retired when the repast was 
  finished. 
  During the morning the raft passed by the picturesque group of islands 
  situated in the vast estuary of the Javary. This important affluent of the 
  Amazon comes from the southwest, and from source to mouth has not a 
  single island, nor a single rapid, to check its course. The mouth is about 
  three thousand feet in width, and the river comes in some miles above 
  the site formerly occupied by the town of the same name, whose 
  possession was disputed for so long by Spaniards and Portuguese. 
  Up to the morning of the 30th of June there had been nothing particular 
  to distinguish the voyage. Occasionally they met a few vessels gliding 
  along by the banks attached one to another in such a way that a single 
  Indian could manage the whole--"navigar de bubina," as this kind of 
  navigation is called by the people of the country, that is to say, 
  "confidence navigation." 
  They had passed the island of Araria, the Archipelago of the Calderon 
  islands, the island of Capiatu, and many others whose names have not 
  yet come to the knowledge of geographers. 
  On the 30th of June the pilot signaled on the right the little village of 
  Jurupari-Tapera, where they halted for two or three hours. 
  Manoel and Benito had gone shooting in the neighborhood, and brought 
  back some feathered game, which was well received in the larder. At the 
  same time they had got an animal of whom a naturalist would have 
  made more than did the cook. 
  It was a creature of a dark color, something like a large Newfoundland 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 14 
  dog. 
  "A great ant-eater!" exclaimed Benito, as he threw it on the deck of the 
  jangada. 
  "And a magnificent specimen which would not disgrace the collection of 
  a museum!" added Manoel. 
  "Did you take much trouble to catch the curious animal?" asked 
  Minha. 
  "Yes, little sister," replied Benito, "and you were not there to ask for 
  mercy! These dogs die hard, and no less than three bullets were 
  necessary to bring this fellow down." 
  The ant-eater looked superb, with his long tail and grizzly hair; with his 
  pointed snout, which is plunged into the ant-hills whose insects form its 
  principal food; and his long, thin paws, armed with sharp nails, five 
  inches long, and which can shut up like the fingers of one's hand. But 
  what a hand was this hand of the ant-eater! When it has got hold of 
  anything you have to cut it off to make it let go! It is of this hand that 
  the traveler, Emile Carrey, has so justly observed: "The tiger himself 
  would perish in its grasp." 
  On the 2d of July, in the morning, the jangada arrived at the foot of San 
  Pablo d'Olivença, after having floated through the midst of numerous 
  islands which in all seasons are clad with verdure and shaded with 
  magnificent trees, and the chief of which bear the names of Jurupari, 
  Rita, Maracanatena, and Cururu Sapo. Many times they passed by the 
  mouths of iguarapes, or little affluents, with black waters. 
  The coloration of these waters is a very curious phenomenon. It is 
  peculiar to a certain number of these tributaries of the Amazon, which 
  differ greatly in importance. 
  Manoel remarked how thick the cloudiness was, for it could be clearly 
  seen on the surface of the whitish waters of the river. 
  "They have tried to explain this coloring in many ways," said he, "but I 
  do not think the most learned have yet arrived at a satisfactory 
  explanation." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 14 
  "The waters are really black with a magnificent reflection of gold," 
  replied Minha, showing a light, reddish-brown cloth, which was floating 
  level with the jangada. 
  "Yes," said Manoel, "and Humboldt has already observed the curious 
  reflection that you have; but on looking at it attentively you will see that 
  it is rather the color of sepia which pervades the whole." 
  "Good!" exclaimed Benito. "Another phenomenon on which the savants 
  are not agreed." 
  "Perhaps," said Fragoso, "they might ask the opinions of the caymans, 
  dolphins, and manatees, for they certainly prefer the black waters to the 
  others to enjoy themselves in." 
  "They are particularly attractive to those animals," replied Manoel, 
  "but why it is rather embarrassing to say. For instance, is the coloration 
  due to the hydrocarbons which the waters hold in solution, or is it 
  because they flow through districts of peat, coal, and anthracite; or 
  should we not rather attribute it to the enormous quantity of minute 
  plants which they bear along? There is nothing certain in the matter. 
  Under any circumstances, they are excellent to drink, of a freshness 
  quite enviable for the climate, and without after-taste, and perfectly 
  harmless. Take a little of the water, Minha, and drink it; you will find it 
  all right." 
  The water is in truth limpid and fresh, and would advantageously 
  replace many of the table-waters used in Europe. They drew several 
  frasques for kitchen use. 
  It has been said that in the morning of the 2d of July the jangada had 
  arrived at San Pablo d'Olivença, where they turn out in thousands those 
  long strings of beads which are made from the scales of the "coco de 
  piassaba." This trade is here extensively followed. It may, perhaps, seem 
  singular that the ancient lords of the country, Tupinambas and 
  Tupiniquis, should find their principal occupation in making objects for 
  the Catholic religion. But, after all, why not? These Indians are no 
  longer the Indians of days gone by. Instead of being clothed in the 
  national fashion, with a frontlet of macaw feathers, bow, and blow-tube, 
  have they not adopted the American costume of white cotton trousers, 
  and a cotton poncho woven by their wives, who have become thorough 
  adepts in its manufacture? 
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  San Pablo d'Olivença, a town of some importance, has not less than two 
  thousand inhabitants, derived from all the neighboring tribes. At 
  present the capital of the Upper Amazon, it began as a simple Mission, 
  founded by the Portuguese Carmelites about 1692, and afterward 
  acquired by the Jesuit missionaries. 
  From the beginning it has been the country of the Omaguas, whose 
  name means "flat-heads," and is derived from the barbarous custom of 
  the native mothers of squeezing the heads of their newborn children 
  between two plates, so as to give them an oblong skull, which was then 
  the fashion. Like everything else, that has changed; heads have re-taken 
  their natural form, and there is not the slightest trace of the ancient 
  deformity in the skulls of the chaplet-makers. 
  Every one, with the exception of Joam Garral, went ashore. Torres also 
  remained on board, and showed no desire to visit San Pablo d'Olivença, 
  which he did not, however, seem to be acquainted with. 
  Assuredly if the adventurer was taciturn he was not inquisitive. 
  Benito had no difficulty in doing a little bartering, and adding slightly to 
  the cargo of the jangada. He and the family received an excellent 
  reception from the principal authorities of the town, the commandant of 
  the place, and the chief of the custom-house, whose functions did not in 
  the least prevent them from engaging in trade. They even intrusted the 
  young merchant with a few products of the country for him to dispose 
  of on their account at Manaos and Belem. 
  The town is composed of some sixty houses, arranged on the plain which 
  hereabouts crowns the river-bank. Some of the huts are covered with 
  tiles--a very rare thing in these countries; but, on the other hand, the 
  humble church, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, has only a roof of 
  straw, rather more appropriate for a stable of Bethlehem than for an 
  edifice consecrated to religion in one of the most Catholic countries of 
  the world. 
  The commandant, his lieutenant, and the head of the police accepted an 
  invitation to dine with the family, and they were received by Joam 
  Garral with the respect due to their rank. 
  During dinner Torres showed himself more talkative than usual. He 
  spoke about some of his excursions into the interior of Brazil like a man 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 14 
  who knew the country. But in speaking of these travels Torres did not 
  neglect to ask the commandant if he knew Manaos, if his colleague 
  would be there at this time, and if the judge, the first magistrate of the 
  province, was accustomed to absent himself at this period of the hot 
  season. It seemed that in putting this series of questions Torres looked 
  at Joam Garral. It was marked enough for even Benito to notice it, not 
  without surprise, and he observed that his father gave particular 
  attention to the questions so curiously propounded by Torres. 
  The commandant of San Pablo d'Olivença assured the adventurer that 
  the authorities were not now absent from Manaos, and he even asked 
  Joam Garral to convey to them his compliments. In all probability the 
  raft would arrive before the town in seven weeks, or a little later, say 
  about the 20th or the 25th of August. 
  The guests of the fazender took leave of the Garral family toward the 
  evening, and the following morning, that of the 3d of July, the jangada 
  recommenced its descent of the river. 
  At noon they passed on the left the mouth of the Yacurupa. This 
  tributary, properly speaking, is a true canal, for it discharges its waters 
  into the Iça, which is itself an affluent of the Amazon. 
  A peculiar phenomenon, for the river displaces itself to feed its own 
  tributaries! 
  Toward three o'clock in the afternoon the giant raft passed the mouth of 
  the Jandiatuba, which brings its magnificent black waters from the 
  southwest, and discharges them into the main artery by a mouth of four 
  hundred meters in extent, after having watered the territories of the 
  Culino Indians. 
  A number of islands were breasted--Pimaicaira, Caturia, Chico, 
  Motachina; some inhabited, others deserted, but all covered with 
  superb vegetation, which forms an unbroken garland of green from one 
  end of the Amazon to the other. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 14 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 15 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER XV
  THE CONTINUED DESCENT 
  ON THE EVENING of the 5th of July, the atmosphere had been 
  oppressive since the morning and threatened approaching storms. 
  Large bats of ruddy color skimmed with their huge wings the current of 
  the Amazon. Among them could be distinguished the "perros voladors," 
  somber brown above and light-colored beneath, for which Minha, and 
  particularly the young mulatto, felt an instinctive aversion. 
  These were, in fact, the horrible vampires which suck the blood of the 
  cattle, and even attack man if he is imprudent enough to sleep out in the 
  fields. 
  "Oh, the dreadful creatures!" cried Lina, hiding her eyes; "they fill me 
  with horror!" 
  "And they are really formidable," added Minha; "are they not, 
  Manoel?" 
  "To be sure--very formidable," answered he. "These vampires have a 
  particular instinct which leads them to bleed you in the places where the 
  blood most easily comes, and principally behind the ear. During the 
  operation the continue to move their wings, and cause an agreeable 
  freshness which renders the sleep of the sleeper more profound. They 
  tell of people, unconsciously submitted to this hemorrhage for many 
  hours, who have never awoke!" 
  "Talk no more of things like that, Manoel," said Yaquita, "or neither 
  Minha nor Lina will dare sleep to-night." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 15 
  "Never fear!" replied Manoel; "if necessary we will watch over them as 
  they sleep." 
  "Silence!" said Benito. 
  "What is the matter?" asked Manoel. 
  "Do you not hear a very curious noise on that side?" continued Benito, 
  pointing to the right bank. 
  "Certainly," answered Yaquita. 
  "What causes the noise?" asked Minha. "One would think it was 
  shingle rolling on the beach of the islands." 
  "Good! I know what it is," answered Benito. "Tomorrow, at daybreak, 
  there will be a rare treat for those who like fresh turtle eggs and little 
  turtles!" 
  He was not deceived; the noise was produced by innumerable 
  chelonians of all sizes, who were attracted to the islands to lay their 
  eggs. 
  It is in the sand of the beach that these amphibians choose the most 
  convenient places to deposit their eggs. The operation commences with 
  sunset and finishes with the dawn. 
  At this moment the chief turtle had left the bed of the river to 
  reconnoiter for a favorable spot; the others, collected in thousands, were 
  soon after occupied in digging with their hind paddles a trench six 
  hundred feet long, a dozen wide, and six deep. After laying their eggs 
  they cover them with a bed of sand, which they beat down with their 
  carapaces as if they were rammers. 
  This egg-laying operation is a grand affair for the riverine Indians of 
  the Amazon and its tributaries. They watch for the arrival of the 
  chelonians, and proceed to the extraction of the eggs to the sound of the 
  drum; and the harvest is divided into three parts--one to the watchers, 
  another to the Indians, a third to the state, represented by the captains 
  of the shore, who, in their capacity of police, have to superintend the 
  collection of the dues. To certain beaches which the decrease of the 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 15 
  waters has left uncovered, and which have the privilege of attracting the 
  greater number of turtles, there has been given the name of "royal 
  beaches." When the harvest is gathered it is a holiday for the Indians, 
  who give themselves up to games, dancing, and drinking; and it is also a 
  holiday for the alligators of the river, who hold high revelry on the 
  remains of the amphibians. 
  Turtles, or turtle eggs, are an object of very considerable trade 
  throughout the Amazonian basin. It is these chelonians whom they 
  "turn"--that is to say, put on their backs--when they come from laying 
  their eggs, and whom they preserve alive, keeping them in palisaded 
  pools like fish-pools, or attaching them to a stake by a cord just long 
  enough to allow them to go and come on the land or under the water. In 
  this way they always have the meat of these animals fresh. 
  They proceed differently with the little turtles which are just hatched. 
  There is no need to pack them or tie them up. Their shell is still soft, 
  their flesh extremely tender, and after they have cooked them they eat 
  them just like oysters. In this form large quantities are consumed. 
  However, this is not the most general use to which the chelonian eggs 
  are put in the provinces of Amazones and Para. The manufacture of 
  "manteigna de tartaruga," or turtle butter, which will bear comparison 
  with the best products of Normandy or Brittany, does not take less 
  every year that from two hundred and fifty to three hundred millions of 
  eggs. But the turtles are innumerable all along the river, and they 
  deposit their eggs on the sands of the beach in incalculable quantities. 
  However, on account of the destruction caused not only by the natives, 
  but by the water-fowl from the side, the urubus in the air, and the 
  alligators in the river, their number has been so diminished that for 
  every little turtle a Brazilian pataque, or about a franc, has to be paid. 
  On the morrow, at daybreak, Benito, Fragoso, and a few Indians took a 
  pirogue and landed on the beach of one of the large islands which they 
  had passed during the night. It was not necessary for the jangada to 
  halt. They knew they could catch her up. 
  On the shore they saw the little hillocks which indicated the places 
  where, that very night, each packet of eggs had been deposited in the 
  trench in groups of from one hundred and sixty to one hundred and 
  ninety. These there was no wish to get out. But an earlier laying had 
  taken place two months before, the eggs had hatched under the action of 
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  the heat stored in the sand, and already several thousands of little 
  turtles were running about the beach. 
  The hunters were therefore in luck. The pirogue was filled with these 
  interesting amphibians, and they arrived just in time for breakfast. The 
  booty was divided between the passengers and crew of the jangada, and 
  if any lasted till the evening it did not last any longer. 
  In the morning of the 7th of July they were before San Jose de Matura, 
  a town situated near a small river filled up with long grass, and on the 
  borders of which a legend says that Indians with tails once existed. 
  In the morning of the 8th of July they caught sight of the village of San 
  Antonio, two or three little houses lost in the trees at the mouth of the 
  Iça, or Putumayo, which is about nine hundred meters wide. 
  The Putumayo is one of the most important affluents of the Amazon. 
  Here in the sixteenth century missions were founded by the Spaniards, 
  which were afterward destroyed by the Portuguese, and not a trace of 
  them now remains. 
  Representatives of different tribes of Indians are found in the 
  neighborhood, which are easily recognizable by the differences in their 
  tattoo marks. 
  The Iça is a body of water coming from the east of the Pasto Mountains 
  to the northeast of Quito, through the finest forests of wild cacao-trees. 
  Navigable for a distance of a hundred and forty leagues for steamers of 
  not greater draught than six feet, it may one day become one of the chief 
  waterways in the west of America. 
  The bad weather was at last met with. It did not show itself in continual 
  rains, but in frequent storms. These could not hinder the progress of the 
  raft, which offered little resistance to the wind. Its great length rendered 
  it almost insensible to the swell of the Amazon, but during the torrential 
  showers the Garral family had to keep indoors. They had to occupy 
  profitably these hours of leisure. They chatted together, communicated 
  their observations, and their tongues were seldom idle. 
  It was under these circumstances that little by little Torres had begun to 
  take a more active part in the conversation. The details of his many 
  voyages throughout the whole north of Brazil afforded him numerous 
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  subjects to talk about. The man had certainly seen a great deal, but his 
  observations were those of a skeptic, and he often shocked the 
  straightforward people who were listening to him. IT should be said 
  that he showed himself much impressed toward Minha. But these 
  attentions, although they were displeasing to Manoel, were not 
  sufficiently marked for him to interfere. On the other hand, Minha felt 
  for him an instinctive repulsion which she was at no pains to conceal. 
  On the 5th of July the mouth of the Tunantins appeared on the left 
  bank, forming an estuary of some four hundred feet across, in which it 
  pours its blackish waters, coming from the west-northwest, after having 
  watered the territories of the Cacena Indians. At this spot the Amazon 
  appears under a truly grandiose aspect, but its course is more than ever 
  encumbered with islands and islets. It required all the address of the 
  pilot to steer through the archipelago, going from one bank to another, 
  avoiding the shallows, shirking the eddies, and maintaining the advance. 
  They might have taken the Ahuaty Parana, a sort of natural canal, 
  which goes off a little below the mouth of the Tunantins, and re-enters 
  the principal stream a hundred an twenty miles further on by the Rio 
  Japura; but if the larger portion of this measures a hundred and fifty 
  feet across, the narrowest is only sixty feet, and the raft would there 
  have met with a difficulty. 
  On the 13th of July, after having touched at the island of Capuro, 
  passed the mouth of the Jutahy, which, coming from the east-southeast, 
  brings in its black waters by a mouth five hundred feet wide, and 
  admired the legions of monkeys, sulphur-white in color, with cinnabar-
  red faces, who are insatiable lovers of the nuts produced by the palm-
  trees from which the river derives its name, the travelers arrived on the 
  18th of July before the little village of Fonteboa. 
  At this place the jangada halted for twelve hours, so as to give a rest to 
  the crew. 
  Fonteboa, like most of the mission villages of the Amazon, has not 
  escaped the capricious fate which, during a lengthened period, moves 
  them about from one place to the other. Probably the hamlet has now 
  finished with its nomadic existence, and has definitely become 
  stationary. So much the better; for it is a charming place, with its thirty 
  houses covered with foliage, and its church dedicated to Notre Dame de 
  Guadaloupe, the Black Virgin of Mexico. Fonteboa has one thousand 
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  inhabitants, drawn from the Indians on both banks, who rear numerous 
  cattle in the fields in the neighborhood. These occupations do not end 
  here, for they are intrepid hunters, or, if they prefer it, intrepid fishers 
  for the manatee. 
  On the morning of their arrival the young fellows assisted at a very 
  interesting expedition of this nature. Two of these herbivorous cetaceans 
  had just been signaled in the black waters of the Cayaratu, which comes 
  in at Fonteboa. Six brown points were seen moving along the surface, 
  and these were the two pointed snouts and four pinions of the 
  lamantins. 
  Inexperienced fishermen would at first have taken these moving points 
  for floating wreckage, but the natives of Fonteboa were not to be so 
  deceived. Besides, very soon loud blowings indicated that the spouting 
  animals were vigorously ejecting the air which had become useless for 
  their breathing purposes. 
  Two ubas, each carrying three fishermen, set off from the bank and 
  approached the manatees, who soon took flight. The black points at first 
  traced a long furrow on the top of the water, and then disappeared for a 
  time. 
  The fishermen continued their cautious advance. One of them, armed 
  with a very primitive harpoon--a long nail at the end of a stick--kept 
  himself in the bow of the boat, while the other two noiselessly paddled 
  on. They waited till the necessity of breathing would bring the manatees 
  up again. In ten minutes or thereabouts the animals would certainly 
  appear in a circle more or less confined. 
  In fact, this time had scarcely elapsed before the black points emerged 
  at a little distance, and two jets of air mingled with vapor were 
  noiselessly shot forth. 
  The ubas approached, the harpoons were thrown at the same instant; 
  one missed its mark, but the other struck one of the cetaceans near his 
  tail. 
  It was only necessary to stun the animal, who rarely defends himself 
  when touched by the iron of the harpoon. In a few pulls the cord 
  brought him alongside the uba, and he was towed to the beach at the 
  foot of the village. 
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  It was not a manatee of any size, for it only measured about three feet 
  long. These poor cetaceans have been so hunted that they have become 
  very rare in the Amazon and its affluents, and so little time is left them 
  to grow that the giants of the species do not now exceed seven feet. What 
  are these, after manatees twelve and fifteen feet long, which still abound 
  in the rivers and lakes of Africa? 
  But it would be difficult to hinder their destruction. The flesh of the 
  manatee is excellent, superior even to that of pork, and the oil furnished 
  by its lard, which is three inches thick, is a product of great value. When 
  the meat is smoke-dried it keeps for a long time, and is capital food. If to 
  this is added that the animal is easily caught, it is not to be wondered at 
  that the species is on its way to complete destruction. 
  On the 19th of July, at sunrise, the jangada left Fonteboa, and entered 
  between the two completely deserted banks of the river, and breasted 
  some islands shaded with the grand forests of cacao-trees. The sky was 
  heavily charged with electric cumuli, warning them of renewed storms. 
  The Rio Jurua, coming from the southwest, soon joins the river on the 
  left. A vessel can go up it into Peru without encountering 
  insurmountable obstacles among its white waters, which are fed by a 
  great number of petty affluents. 
  "It is perhaps in these parts," said Manoel, "that we ought to look for 
  those female warriors who so much astonished Orellana. But we ought 
  to say that, like their predecessors, they do nor form separate tribes; 
  they are simply the wives who accompany their husbands to the fight, 
  and who, among the Juruas, have a great reputation for bravery." 
  The jangada continued to descend; but what a labyrinth the Amazon 
  now appeared! The Rio Japura, whose mouth was forty-eight miles on 
  ahead, and which is one of its largest tributaries, runs almost parallel 
  with the river. 
  Between them were canals, iguarapes, lagoons, temporary lakes, an 
  inextricable network which renders the hydrography of this country so 
  difficult. 
  But if Araujo had no map to guide him, his experience served him more 
  surely, and it was wonderful to see him unraveling the chaos, without 
  ever turning aside from the main river. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 15 
  In fact, he did so well that on the 25th of July, in the afternoon, after 
  having passed before the village of Parani-Tapera, the raft was 
  anchored at the entrance of the Lake of Ego, or Teffe, which it was 
  useless to enter, for they would not have been able to get out of it again 
  into the Amazon. 
  But the town of Ega is of some importance; it was worthy of a halt to 
  visit it. It was arranged, therefore, that the jangada should remain on 
  this spot till the 27th of July, and that on the morrow the large pirogue 
  should take the whole family to Ega. This would give a rest, which was 
  deservedly due to the hard-working crew of the raft. 
  The night passed at the moorings near a slightly rising shore, and 
  nothing disturbed the quiet. A little sheet-lightning was observable on 
  the horizon, but it came from a distant storm which did not reach the 
  entrance to the lake. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 16 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER XVI
  EGA 
  AT SIX o'clock in the morning of the 20th of July, Yaquita, Minha, 
  Lina, and the two young men prepared to leave the jangada. 
  Joam Garral, who had shown no intention of putting his foot on shore, 
  had decided this time, at the request of the ladies of his family, to leave 
  his absorbing daily work and accompany them on their excursion. 
  Torres had evinced no desire to visit Ega, to the great satisfaction of 
  Manoel, who had taken a great dislike to the man and only waited for 
  an opportunity to declare it. 
  As to Fragoso, he could not have the same reason for going to Ega as 
  had taken him to Tabatinga, which is a place of little importance 
  compared to this. 
  Ega is a chief town with fifteen hundred inhabitants, and in it reside all 
  those authorities which compose the administration of a considerable 
  city--considerable for the country; that is to say, the military 
  commandant, the chief of the police, the judges, the schoolmaster, and 
  troops under the command of officers of all ranks. 
  With so many functionaries living in a town, with their wives and 
  children, it is easy to see that hair-dressers would be in demand. Such 
  was the case, and Fragoso would not have paid his expenses. 
  Doubtless, however, the jolly fellow, who could do no business in Ega, 
  had thought to be of the party if Lina went with her mistress, but, just 
  as they were leaving the raft, he resolved to remain, at the request of 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 16 
  Lina herself. 
  "Mr. Fragoso!" she said to him, after taking him aside. 
  "Miss Lina?" answered Fragoso. 
  "I do not think that your friend Torres intends to go with us to Ega." 
  "Certainly not, he is going to stay on board, Miss Lina, but you wold 
  oblige me by not calling him my friend!" 
  "But you undertook to ask a passage for him before he had shown any 
  intention of doing so." 
  "Yes, and on that occasion, if you would like to know what I think, I 
  made a fool of myself!" 
  "Quite so! and if you would like to know what I think, I do not like the 
  man at all, Mr. Fragoso." 
  "Neither do I, Miss Lina, and I have all the time an idea that I have seen 
  him somewhere before. But the remembrance is too vague; the 
  impression, however, is far from being a pleasant one!" 
  "Where and when could you have met him? Cannot you call it to mind? 
  It might be useful to know who he is and what he has been." 
  "No--I try all I can. How long was it ago? In what country? Under what 
  circumstances? And I cannot hit upon it." 
  "Mr. Fragoso!" 
  "Miss Lina!" 
  "Stay on board and keep watch on Torres during our absence!" 
  "What? Not go with you to Ega, and remain a whole day without seeing 
  you?" 
  "I ask you to do so!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 16 
  "Is it an order?" 
  "It is an entreaty!" 
  "I will remain!" 
  "Mr. Fragoso!" 
  "Miss Lina!" 
  "I thank you!" 
  "Thank me, then, with a good shake of the hand," replied Fragoso; 
  "that is worth something." 
  Lina held out her hand, and Fragoso kept it for a few moments while he 
  looked into her face. And that is the reason why he did not take his 
  place in the pirogue, and became, without appearing to be, the guard 
  upon Torres. 
  Did the latter notice the feelings of aversion with which he was 
  regarded? Perhaps, but doubtless he had his reasons for taking no 
  account of them. 
  A distance of four leagues separated the mooring-place from the town of 
  Ega. Eight leagues, there and back, in a pirogue containing six persons, 
  besides two negroes as rowers, would take some hours, not to mention 
  the fatigue caused by the high temperature, though the sky was veiled 
  with clouds. 
  Fortunately a lovely breeze blew from the northwest, and if it held 
  would be favorable for crossing Lake Teffe. They could go to Ega and 
  return rapidly without having to tack. 
  So the lateen sail was hoisted on the mast of the pirogue. Benito took the 
  tiller, and off they went, after a last gesture from Lina to Fragoso to 
  keep his eyes open. 
  The southern shore of the lake had to be followed to get to Ega. 
  After two hours the pirogue arrived at the port of this ancient mission 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 16 
  founded by the Carmelites, which became a town in 1759, and which 
  General Gama placed forever under Brazilian rule. 
  The passengers landed on a flat beach, on which were to be found not 
  only boats from the interior, but a few of those little schooners which 
  are used in the coasting-trade on the Atlantic seaboard. 
  When the two girls entered Ega they were at first much astonished. 
  "What a large town!" said Minha. 
  "What houses! what people!" replied Lina, whose eyes seemed to have 
  expanded so that she might see better. 
  "Rather!" said Benito laughingly. "More than fifteen hundred 
  inhabitants! Two hundred houses at the very least! Some of them with a 
  first floor! And two or three streets! Genuine streets!" 
  "My dear Manoel!" said Minha, "do protect us against my brother! He 
  is making fun of us, and only because he had already been in the finest 
  towns in Amazones and Para!" 
  "Quite so, and he is also poking fun at his mother," added Yaquita, "for 
  I confess I never saw anything equal to this!" 
  "Then, mother and sister, you must take great care that you do not fall 
  into a trance when you get to Manaos, and vanish altogether when you 
  reach Belem!" 
  "Never fear," answered Manoel; "the ladies will have been gently 
  prepared for these grand wonders by visiting the principal cities of the 
  Upper Amazon!" 
  "Now, Manoel," said Minha, "you are talking just like my brother! Are 
  you making fun of us, too?" 
  "No, Minha, I assure you." 
  "Laugh on, gentlemen," said Lina, "and let us look around, my dear 
  mistress, for it is very fine!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 16 
  Very fine! A collection of houses, built of mud, whitewashed, and 
  principally covered with thatch or palm-leaves; a few built of stone or 
  wood, with verandas, doors, and shutters painted a bright green, 
  standing in the middle of a small orchard of orange-trees in flower. But 
  there were two or three public buildings, a barrack, and a church 
  dedicated to St. Theresa, which was a cathedral by the side of the 
  modest chapel at Iquitos. On looking toward the lake a beautiful 
  panorama unfolded itself, bordered by a frame of cocoanut-trees and 
  assais, which ended at the edge of the liquid level, and showed beyond 
  the picturesque village of Noqueira, with its few small houses lost in the 
  mass of the old olive-trees on the beach. 
  But for the two girls there was another cause of wonderment, quite 
  feminine wonderment too, in the fashions of the fair Egans, not the 
  primitive costume of the natives, converted Omaas or Muas, but the 
  dress of true Brazilian ladies. The wives and daughters of the principal 
  functionaries and merchants o the town pretentiously showed off their 
  Parisian toilettes, a little out of date perhaps, for Ega is five hundred 
  leagues away from Para, and this is tiself many thousands of miles from 
  Paris. 
  "Just look at those fine ladies in their fine slothes!" 
  "Lina will go mad!" exclaimed Benito. 
  "If those dresses were worn properly," said Minha, "they might not be 
  so ridiculous!" 
  "My dear Minha," said Manoel, "with your simple gown and straw hat, 
  you are better dressed than any one of these Brazilians, with their 
  headgear and flying petticoats, which are foreign to their country and 
  their race." 
  "If it pleases you to think so," answered Minha, "I do not envy any of 
  them." 
  But they had come to see. They walked through the streets, which 
  contained more stalls than shops; they strolled about the market-place, 
  the rendezvous of the fashionable, who were nearly stifled in their 
  European clothes; they even breakfasted at an hotel--it was scarcely an 
  inn--whose cookery caused them to deeply regret the excellent service 
  on the raft. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 16 
  After dinner, at which only turtle flesh, served up in different forms, 
  appeared, the Garral family went for the last time to admire the borders 
  of the lake as the setting sun gilded it with its rays; then they rejoined 
  their pirogue, somewhat disillusioned perhaps as to the magnificence of 
  a town which one hour would give time enough to visit, and a little tired 
  with walking about its stifling streets which were not nearly so pleasant 
  as the shady pathways of Iquitos. The inquisitive Lina's enthusiasm 
  alone had not been damped. 
  They all took their places in the pirogue. The wind remained in the 
  northwest, and had freshened with the evening. The sail was hoisted. 
  They took the same course as in the morning, across the lake fed by the 
  black waters of the Rio Teffe, which, according to the Indians, is 
  navigable toward the southwest for forty days' journey. At eight o'clock 
  the priogue regained the mooring-place and hailed the jangada. 
  As soon as Lina could get Fragoso aside-- 
  "Have you seen anything suspicious?" she inquired. 
  "Nothing, Miss Lina," he replied; "Torres has scarcely left hi cabin, 
  where he has been reading and writing." 
  "He did not get into the house or the dining-room, as I feared?" 
  "No, all the time he was not in his cabin he was in the bow of the raft." 
  "And what was he doing?" 
  "Holding an old piece of paper in his hand, consulting it with great 
  attention, and muttering a lot of incomprehensible words." 
  "All that is not so unimportant as you think, Mr. Fragoso. These 
  readings and writings and old papers have their interest! He is neither a 
  professor nor a lawyer, this reader and writer!" 
  "You are right!" 
  "Still watch him, Mr. Fragoso!" 
  "I will watch him always, Miss Lina," replied Fragoso. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 16 
  On the morrow, the 27th of July, at daybreak, Benito gave the pilot the 
  signal to start. 
  Away between the islands, in the Bay of Arenapo, the mouth of the 
  Japura, six thousand six hundred feet wide, was seen for an instant. 
  This large tributary comes into the Amazon through eight mouths, as if 
  it were pouring into some gulf or ocean. But its waters come from afar, 
  and it is the mountains of the republic of Ecuador which start them on a 
  course that there are no falls to break until two hundred and ten leagues 
  from its junction with the main stream. 
  All this day was spent in descending to the island of Yapura, after which 
  the river, less interfered with, makes navigation much easier. The 
  current is not so rapid and the islets are easily avoided, so that there 
  were no touchings or groundings. 
  The next day the jangada coasted along by vast beaches formed by 
  undulating high domes, which served as the barriers of immense 
  pasture grounds, in which the whole of the cattle in Europe could be 
  raised and fed. These sand banks are considered to be the richest turtle 
  grounds in the basin of the Upper Amazon. 
  On the evening of the 29th of July they were securely moored off the 
  island of Catua, so as to pass the night, which promised to be dark. 
  On this island, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, there 
  appeared a party of Muras Indians, the remains of that ancient and 
  powerful tribe, which formerly occupied more than a hundred leagues 
  of the river bank between the Teffe and the Madeira. 
  These Indians went and came, watching the raft, which remained 
  stationary. There were about a hundred of them armed with blow-tubes 
  formed of a reed peculiar to these parts, and which is strengthened 
  outside by the stem of a dwarf palm from which the pith has been 
  extracted. 
  Joam Garral quitted for an instand the work which took up all his time, 
  to warn his people to keep a good guard and not to provoke these 
  Indians. 
  In truth the sides were not well matched. The Muras are remarkably 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 16 
  clever at sending through their blow-tubes arrows which cause 
  incurable wounds, even at a range of three hundred paces. 
  These arrows, made of the leaf of the "coucourite" palm, are feathered 
  with cotton, and nine or ten inches long, with a point like a needle, and 
  poisoned with "curare." 
  Curare, or "wourah," the liquor "which kills in a whisper," as the 
  Indians say, is prepared from the sap of one of the euphorbiaceæ and 
  the juice of a bulbous strychnos, not to mention the paste of venomous 
  ants and poisonous serpent fangs which they mix with it. 
  "It is indeed a terrible poison," said Manoel. "It attacks at once those 
  nerves by which the movements are subordinated to the will. But the 
  heart is not touched, and it does not cease to beat until the extinction of 
  the vital functions, and besides no antidote is known to the poison, 
  which commences by numbness of the limbs." 
  Very fortunately, these Muras made no hostile demonstrations, 
  although they entertain a profound hatred toward the whites. They 
  have, in truth, no longer the courage of their ancestors. 
  At nightfall a five-holed flute was heard behind the trees in the island, 
  playing several airs in a minor key. Another flute answered. This 
  interchange of musical phrases lasted for two or three minutes, and the 
  Muras disappeared. 
  Fragoso, in an exuberant moment, had tried to reply by a song in his 
  own fashion, but Lina had clapped her hand on his mouth, and 
  prevented his showing off his insignificant singing talents, which he was 
  so willingly lavish of. 
  On the 2d of August, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the raft arrived 
  twenty leagues away from there at Lake Apoara, which is fed by the 
  black waters of the river of the same name, and two days afterward, 
  about five o'clock, it stopped at the entrance into Lake Coary. 
  This lake is one of the largest which communicates with the Amazon, 
  and it serves as a reservoir for different rivers. Five or six affluents run 
  into it, and there are stored and mixed up, and emerge by a narrow 
  channel into the main stream. 
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  After catching a glimpse of the hamlet of Tahua-Miri, mounted on its 
  piles as on stilts, as a protection against inundation from the floods, 
  which often sweep up over these low sand banks, the raft was moored 
  for the night. 
  The stoppage was made in sight of the village of Coary, a dozen houses, 
  considerably dilapidated, built I the midst of a thick mass of orange and 
  calabash trees. 
  Nothing can be more changeable than the aspect of this village, for 
  according to the rise or fall of the water the lake stretches away on all 
  sides of it, or is reduced to a narrow canal, scarcely deep enough to 
  communicate with the Amazon. 
  On the following morning, that of the 5th of August, they started at 
  dawn, passing the canal of Yucura, belonging to the tangled system of 
  lakes and furos of the Rio Zapura, and on the morning of the 6th of 
  August they reached the entrance to Lake Miana. 
  No fresh incident occurred in the life on board, which proceeded with 
  almost methodical regularity. 
  Fragoso, urged on by Lina, did not cease to watch Torres. 
  Many times he tried to get him to talk about his past life, but the 
  adventurer eluded all conversation on the subject, and ended by 
  maintaining a strict reserve toward the barber. 
  After catching a glimpse of the hamlet of Tahua-Miri, mounted on its 
  piles as on stilts, as a protection against inundation from the floods, 
  which often sweep up and over these low sand banks, the raft was 
  moored for the night. 
  His intercourse with the Garral family remained the same. If he spoke 
  little to Joam, he addressed himself more willingly to Yaquita and her 
  daughter, and appeared not to notice the evident coolness with which he 
  was received. They all agreed that when the raft arrived at Manaos, 
  Torres should leave it, and that they would never speak of him again. 
  Yaquita followed the advice of Padre Passanha, who counseled patience, 
  but the good priest had not such an easy task in Manoel, who was quite 
  disposed to put on shore the intruder who had been so unfortunately 
  taken on to the raft. 
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  The only thing that happened on this evening was the following: 
  A pirogue, going down the river, came alongside the jangada, after 
  being hailed by Joam Garral. 
  "Are you going to Manaos?" askee he of the Indian who commanded 
  and was steering her. 
  "Yes," replied he. 
  "When will you get there?" 
  "In eight days." 
  "Then you will arrive before we shall. Will you deliver a letter for me?" 
  "With pleasure." 
  "Take this letter, then, my friend, and deliver it at Manaos." 
  The Indian took the letter which Joam gave him, and a handful of reis 
  was the price of the commission he had undertaken. 
  No members of the family, then gone into the house, knew anything of 
  this. Torres was the only witness. He heard a few words exchanged 
  between Joam and the Indian, and from the cloud which passed over his 
  face it was easy to see that the sending of this letteer considerably 
  surprised him. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 17 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XVII
  AT ATTACK 
  HOWEVER, if Manoel, to avoid giving rise to a violent scene on board, 
  said nothing on the subject of Torres, he resolved to have an 
  explanation with Benito. 
  "Benito," he began, after taking him to the bow of the jangada, "I have 
  something to say to you." 
  Benito, generally so good-humored, stopped as he looked at Manoel, 
  and a cloud came over his countenance. 
  "I know why," he said; "it is about Torres." 
  "Yes, Benito." 
  "And I also wish to speak to you." 
  "You have then noticed his attention to Minha?" said Manoel, turning 
  pale. 
  "Ah! It is not a feeling of jealousy, though, that exasperates you against 
  such a man?" said Benito quickly. 
  "No!" replied Manoel. "Decidedly not! Heaven forbid I should do such 
  an injury to the girl who is to become my wife. No, Benito! She holds the 
  adventurer in horror! I am not thinking anything of that sort; but it 
  distresses me to see this adventurer constantly obtruding himself by his 
  presence and conversation on your mother and sister, and seeking to 
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  introduce himself into that intimacy with your family which is already 
  mine." 
  "Manoel," gravely answered Benito, "I share your aversion for this 
  dubious individual, and had I consulted my feelings I would already 
  have driven Torres off the raft! But I dare not!" 
  "You dare not?" said Manoel, seizing the hand of his friend. "You dare 
  not?" 
  "Listen to me, Manoel," continued Benito. "You have observed Torres 
  well, have you not? You have remarked his attentions to my sister! 
  Nothing can be truer! But while you have been noticing that, have you 
  not seen that this annoying man never keeps his eyes off my father, no 
  matter if he is near to him or far from him, and that he seems to have 
  some spiteful secret intention in watching him with such unaccountable 
  persistency?" 
  "What are you talking about, Benito? Have you any reason to think 
  that Torres bears some grudge against Joam Garral?" 
  "No! I think nothing!" replied Benito; "it is only a presentiment! But 
  look well at Torres, study his face with care, and you will see what an 
  evil grin he has whenever my father comes into his sight." 
  "Well, then," exclaimed Manoel, "if it is so, Benito, the more reason for 
  clearing him out!" 
  "More reason--or less reason," replied Benito. "Manoel, I fear--what? I 
  know not--but to force my father to get rid of Torres would perhaps be 
  imprudent! I repeat it, I am aafraid, though no positive fact enables me 
  to explain my fear to myself!" 
  And Benito seemed to shudder with anger as he said these words. 
  "Then," said Manoel, "you think we had better wait?" 
  "Yes; wait, before doing anything, but above all things let us be on our 
  guard!" 
  "After all," answered Manoel, "in twenty days we shall be at Manaos. 
  There Torres must stop. There he will leave us, and we shall be relieved 
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  of his presence for good! Till then we must keep our eyes on him!" 
  "You understand me, Manoel?" asked Benito. 
  "I understand you, my friend, my brother!" replied Manoel, "although 
  I do not share, and cannot share, your fears! What connection can 
  possibly exist between your father and this adventurer? Evidently your 
  father has never seen him!" 
  "I do not say that my father knows Torres," said Benito; "but assuredly 
  it seems to me that Torres knows my father. What was the fellow doing 
  in the neighborhood of the fazenda when we met him in the forest of 
  Iquitos? Why did he then refuse the hospitality which we offered, so as 
  to afterward manage to force himself on us as our traveling companion? 
  We arrive at Tabatinga, and there he is as if he was waiting for us! The 
  probability is that these meetings were in pursuance of a preconceived 
  plan. When I see the shifty, dogged look of Torres, all this crowds on my 
  mind. I do not know! I am losing myself in things that defy explanation! 
  Oh! why did I ever think of offering to take him on board this raft?" 
  "Be calm, Benito, I pray you!" 
  "Manoel!" continued Benito, who seemed to be powerless to contain 
  himself, "think you that if it only concerned me--this man who inspires 
  us all with such aversion and disgust--I should not hesitate to throw him 
  overboard! But when it concerns my father, I fear lest in giving way to 
  my impressions I may be injuring my object! Something tells me that 
  with this scheming fellow there may be danger in doing anything until 
  he has given us the right--the right and the duty--to do it. In short, on 
  the jangada, he is in our power, and if we both keep good watch over 
  my father, we can spoil his game, no matter how sure it may be, and 
  force him to unmask and betray himself! Then wait a little longer!" 
  The arrival of Torres in the bow of the raft broke off the conversation. 
  Torres looked slyly at the two young men, but said not a word. 
  Benito was not deceived when he said that the adventurer's eyes were 
  never off Joam Garral as long as he fancied he was unobserved. 
  No! he was not deceived when he said that Torres' face grew evil when 
  he looked at his father! 
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  By what myeterious bond could these two men--one nobleness itself, 
  that was self-evident--be connected with each other? 
  Such being the state of affairs it was certainly difficult for Torres, 
  constantly watched as he was by the two young men, by Fragoso and 
  Lina, to make a single movement without having instantly to repress it. 
  Perhaps he understood the position. If he did, he did not show it, for his 
  manner changed not in the least. 
  Satisfied with their mutual explanation, Manoel and Benito promised to 
  keep him in sight without doing anything to awaken his suspicions. 
  During the following days the jangada passed on the right the mouths of 
  the rivers Camara, Aru, and Yuripari, whose waters instead of flowing 
  into the Amazon run off to the south to feed the Rio des Purus, and 
  return by it into the main river. At five o'clock on the evening of the 
  10th of August they put into the island of Cocos. 
  They there passed a "seringal." This name is applied to a caoutchouc 
  plantation, the caoutchouc being extracted from the "seringueira" tree, 
  whose scientific name is siphonia elastica. 
  It is said that, by negligence or bad management, the number of these 
  trees is decreasing in the basin of the Amazon, but the forests of 
  seringueira trees are still very considerable on the banks of the 
  Madeira, Purus, and other tributaries. 
  There were here some twenty Indians collecting and working the 
  caoutchouc, an operation which principally takes place during the 
  months of May, June, and July. 
  After having ascertained that the trees, well prepared by the river 
  floods which have bathed their stems to a height of about four feet, are 
  in good condition for the harvest, the Indians are set to work. 
  Incisions are made into the alburnum of the seringueiras; below the 
  wound small pots are attached, which twenty-four hours suffice to fill 
  with a milky sap. It can also be collected by means of a hollow bamboo, 
  and a receptacle placed on the ground at the foot of the tree. 
  The sap being obtained, the Indians, to prevent the separation of its 
  peculiar resins, fumigate it over a fire of the nuts of the assai palm. By 
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  spreading out the sap on a wooden scoop, and shaking it in the smoke, 
  its coagulation is almost immediately obtained; it assumes a grayish-
  yellow tinge and solidifies. The layers formed in succession are detached 
  from the scoop, exposed to the sun, hardened, and assume the brownish 
  color with which we are familiar. The manufacture is then complete. 
  Benito, finding a capital opportunity, bought from the Indians all the 
  caoutchouc stored in their cabins, which, by the way, are mostly built on 
  piles. The price he gave them was sufficiently remunierative, and they 
  were highly satisfied. 
  Four days later, on the 14th of August, the jangada passed the mouths 
  of the Purus. 
  This is another of the large affluents of the Amazon, and seems to 
  possess a navigable course, even for large ships, of over five hundred 
  leagues. It rises in the southwest, and measures nearly five thousand feet 
  across at its junction with the main river. After winding beneath the 
  shade of ficuses, tahuaris, nipa palms, and cecropias, it enters the 
  Amazon by five mouths. 
  Hereabouts Araujo the pilot managed with great ease. The course of the 
  river was but slightly obstructed with islands, and besides, from one 
  bank to another its width is about two leagues. 
  The current, too, took along the jangada more steadily, and on the 18th 
  of August it stopped at the village of Pasquero to pass the night. 
  The sun was already low on the horizon, and with the rapidity peculiar 
  to these low latitudes, was about to set vertically, like an enormous 
  meteor. 
  Joam Garral and his wife, Lina, and old Cybele, were in front of the 
  house. 
  Torres, after having for an instant turned toward Joam as if he would 
  speak to him, and prevented perhaps by the arrival of Padre Passanha, 
  who had come to bid the family good-night, had gone back to his cabin. 
  The Indians and the negroes were at their quarters along the sides. 
  Araujo, seated at the bow, was watching the current which extended 
  straight away in front of him. 
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  Manoel and Benito, with their eyes open, but chatting and smoking with 
  apparent indifference, walked about the central part of the craft 
  awaiting the hour of repose. 
  All at once Manoel stopped Benito with his hand and said: 
  "What a queer smell! Am I wrong? Do you not notice it?" 
  "One would say that it was the odor of burning musk!" replied Benito. 
  "There ought to be some alligators asleep on the neighboring beach!" 
  "Well, nature has done wisely in allowing them so to betray 
  themselves." 
  "Yes," said Benito, "it is fortunate, for they are sufficiently formidable 
  creatures!" 
  Often at the close of the day these saurians love to stretch themselves on 
  the shore, and install themselves comfortably there to pass the night. 
  Crouched at the opening of a hole, into which they have crept back, they 
  sleep with the mouth open, the upper jaw perpendicularly erect, so as to 
  lie in wait for their prey. To these amphibians it is but sport to launch 
  themselves in its pursuit, either by swimming through the waters 
  propelled by their tails or running along the bank with a speed no man 
  can equal. 
  It is on these huge beaches that the caymans are born, live, and die, not 
  without affording extraordinary examples of longevity. Not only can the 
  old ones, the centenarians, be recognized by the greenish moss which 
  carpets their carcass and is scattered over their protuberances, but by 
  their natural ferocity, which increases with age. As Benito said, they are 
  formidable creatures, and it is fortunate that their attacks can be 
  guarded against. 
  Suddenly cries were heard in the bow. 
  "Caymans! caymans!" 
  Manoel and Benito came forward and looked. 
  Three large saurians, from fifteen to twenty feet long, had managed to 
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  clamber on to the platform of the raft. 
  "Bring the guns! Bring the guns!" shouted Benito, making signs to the 
  Indians and the blacks to get behind. 
  "Into the house!" said Manoel; "make haste!" 
  And in truth, as they could not attack them at once, the bst thing they 
  could do was to get into shelter without delay. 
  It was done in an instant. The Garral family took refuge in the house, 
  where the two young men joined them. The Indians and the negroes ran 
  into their huts and cabins. As they were shutting the door: 
  "And Minha?" said Manoel. 
  "She is not there!" replied Lina, who had just run to her mistress' 
  room. 
  "Good heavens! where is she?" exclaimed her mother, and they all 
  shouted at once: 
  "Himha! Minha!" 
  No reply. 
  "There she is, on the bow of the jangada!" said Benito. 
  "Minha!" shouted Manoel. 
  The two young men, and Fragoso and Joam Garral, thinking no more of 
  danger, rushed out of the house, guns in hand. 
  Scarcely were they outside when two of the alligators made a half turn 
  and ran toward them. 
  A doze of buckshot to the head, close to the eye, from Benito, stopped 
  one of the monsters, who, mortally wounded, writhed in frightful 
  convulsions and fell on his side. 
  But the second still lived, and came on, and there was no way of 
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  avoiding him. 
  The huge alligator tore up to Joam Garral, and after knocking him over 
  with a sweep of his tail, ran at him with open jaws. 
  At this moment Torres rushed from the cabin, hatchet in hand, and 
  struck such a terrific blow that its edge sunk into the jaw of the cayman 
  and left him defenseless. 
  Blinded by the blood, the animal flew to the side, and, designedly or not, 
  fell over and was lost in the stream. 
  "Minha! Minha!" shouted Manoel in distraction, when he got to the 
  bow of the jangada. 
  Suddenly she came into view. She had taken refuge in the cabin of 
  Araujo, and the cabin had just been upset by a powerful blow from the 
  third alligator. Minha was flying aft, pursued by the monster, who was 
  not six feet away from her. 
  Minha fell. 
  A second shot from Benito failed to stop the cayman. He only struck the 
  animals carapace, and the scales flew to splinters but the ball did not 
  penetrate. 
  Manoel threw himself at the girl to raise her, or to snatch her from 
  death! A side blow from the animal's tail knocked him down too. 
  Minha fainted, and the mouth of the alligator opened to crush her! 
  And then Fragoso jumped in to the animal, and thrust in a knife to the 
  very bottom of his throat, at the risk of having his arm snapped off by 
  the two jaws, had they quickly closed. 
  Fragoso pulled out his arm in time, but he could not avoid the chock of 
  the cayman, and was hurled back into the river, whose waters reddened 
  all around. 
  "Fragoso! Fragoso!" shrieked Lina, kneeling on the edge of the raft. 
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  A second afterward Fragoso reappeared on the surface of the Amazon--
  safe and sound. 
  But, at the peril of his life he had saved the young girl, who soon came 
  to. And as all hands were held out to him--Manoel's, Yaquita's, 
  Minha's, and Lina's, and he did not know what to say, he ended by 
  squeezing the hands of the young mulatto. 
  However, though Fragoso had saved Minha, it was assuredly to the 
  intervention of Torres that Joam Garral owed his safety. 
  It was not, therefore, the fazender's life that the adventurer wanted. In 
  the face of this fact, so much had to be admitted. 
  Manoel said this to Benito in an undertone. 
  "That is true!" replied Benito, embarrassed. "You are right, and in a 
  sense it is one cruel care the less! Nevertheless, Manoel, my suspicions 
  still exist! It is not always a man's worst enemy who wishes him dead!" 
  Joam Garral walked up to Torres. 
  "Thank you, Torres!" he said, holding out his hand. The adventurer 
  took a step or two backward without replying. 
  "Torres," continued Joam, "I am sorry that we are arriving at the end 
  of our voyage, and that in a few days we must part! I owe you----" 
  "Joam Garral!" answered Torres, "you owe me nothing! Your life is 
  precious to me above all things! But if you will allow me--I have been 
  thinking--in place of stopping at Manaos, I will go on to Belem. Will you 
  take me there?" 
  Joam Garral replied by an affirmative nod. 
  In hearing this demand Benito in an unguarded moment was about to 
  intervene, but Manoel stopped him, and the young man checked 
  himself, though not without a violent effort. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 17 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
  | Top | Next Chapter | Title Page | Litrix Reading Room | Authors | Titles |
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 18 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XVIII
  THE ARRIVAL DINNER 
  IN THE MORNING, after a night which was scarcely sufficient to calm 
  so much excitement, they unmoored from the cayman beach and 
  departed. Before five days, if nothing intervered with their voyage, the 
  raft would reach the port of Manaos. 
  Minha had quite recovered from her fright, and her eyes and smiles 
  thanked all those who had risked their lives for her. 
  As for Lina, it seemed as though she was more grateful to the brave 
  Fragoso than if it was herself that he had saved. 
  "I will pay you back, sooner or later, Mr. Fragoso," said she, smiling. 
  "And how, Miss Lina?" 
  "Oh! You know very well!" 
  "Then if I know it, let it be soon and not late!" replied the good-natured 
  fellow. 
  And from this day it began to be whispered about that the charming 
  Lina was engaged to Fragoso, that their marriage would take place at 
  the same time as that of Minha and Manoel, and that the young couple 
  would remain at Belem with the others. 
  "Capital! capital!" repeated Fragoso unceasingly; "but I never thought 
  Para was such a long way off!" 
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  As for Manoel and Benito, they had had a long conversation about what 
  had passed. There could be no question about obtaining from Joam 
  Garral the dismissal of his rescuer. 
  "Your life is precious to me above all things!" Torres had said. 
  This reply, hyperbolical and enigmatical at the time, Benito had heard 
  and remembered. 
  In the meantime the young men could do nothing. More than ever they 
  were reduced to waiting--to waiting not for four or five days, but for 
  seven or eight weeks--that is to say, for whatever time it would take for 
  the raft to get to Belem. 
  "There is in all this some mystery that I cannot understand," said 
  Benito. 
  "Yes, but we are assured on one point," answered Manoel. "It is certain 
  that Torres does not want your father's life. For the rest, we must still 
  watch!" 
  It seemed that from this day Torres desired to keep himself more 
  reserved. He did not seek to intrude on the family, and was even less 
  assiduous toward Minha. There seemed a relief in the situation of which 
  all, save perhaps Joam Garral, felt the gravity. 
  On the evening of the same day they left on the right the island of 
  Baroso, formed by a furo of that name, and Lake Manaori, which is fed 
  by a confused series of petty tributaries. 
  The night passed without incident, though Joam Garral had advised 
  them to watch with great care. 
  On the morrow, the 20th of August, the pilot, who kept near the right 
  bank on account of the uncertain eddies on the left, entered between the 
  bank and the islands. 
  Beyond this bank the country was dotted with large and small lakes, 
  much as those of Calderon, Huarandeina, and other black-watered 
  lagoons. This water system marks the approach of the Rio Negro, the 
  most remarkable of all the tributaries of the Amazon. In reality the 
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  main river still bore the name of the Solimoens, and it is only after the 
  junction of the Rio Negro that it takes the name which has made it 
  celebrated among the rivers of the globe. 
  During this day the raft had to be worked under curious conditions. 
  The arm followed by the pilot, between Calderon Island and the shore, 
  was very narrow, although it appeared sufficiently large. This was 
  owing to a great portion of the island being slightly above the mean 
  level, but still covered by the high flood waters. On each side were 
  massed forests of giant trees, whose summits towered some fifty feet 
  above the ground, and joining one bank to the other formed an 
  immense cradle. 
  On the left nothing could be more picturesque than this flooded forest, 
  which seemed to have been planted in the middle of a lake. The stems of 
  the trees arose from the clear, still water, in which every interlacement 
  of their boughs was reflected with unequaled purity. They were 
  arranged on an immense sheet of glass, like the trees in miniature on 
  some table epergne, and their reflection could not be more perfect. The 
  difference between the image and the reality could scarcely be 
  described. Duplicates of grandeur, terminated above and below by a 
  vast parasol of green, they seemed to form two hemispheres, inside 
  which the jangada appeared to follow one of the great circles. 
  It had been necessary to bring the raft under these boughs, against 
  which flowed the gentle current of the stream. It was impossible to go 
  back. Hence the task of navigating with extreme care, so as to avoid the 
  collisions on either side. 
  In this all Araujo's ability was shown, and he was admirably seconded 
  by his crew. The trees of the forest furnished the resting-places for the 
  long poles which kept the jangada in its course. The least blow to the 
  jangada would have endangered the complete demolition of the 
  woodwork, and caused the loss, if not of the crew, of the greater part of 
  the cargo. 
  "It is truly very beautiful," said Minha, "and it would be very pleasant 
  for us always to travel in this way, on this quiet water, shaded from the 
  rays of the sun." 
  "At the same time pleasant and dangerous, dear Minha," said Manoel. 
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  "In a pirogue there is doubtless nothing to fear in sailing here, but on a 
  huge raft of wood better have a free course and a clear stream." 
  "We shall be quite through the forest in a couple of hours," said the 
  pilot. 
  "Look well at it, then!" said Lina. "All these beautiful things pass so 
  quickly! Ah! dear mistress! do you see the troops of monkeys disporting 
  in the higher branches, and the birds admiring themselves in the 
  pellucid water!" 
  "And the flowers half-opened on the surface," replied Minha, "and 
  which the current dandles like the breeze!" 
  "And the long lianas, which so oddly stretch from one tree to another!" 
  added the young mulatto. 
  "And no Fragoso at the end of them!" said Lina's betrothed. "That was 
  rather a nice flower you gathered in the forest of Iquitos!" 
  "Just behold the flower--the only one in the world," said Lina 
  quizzingly; "and, mistress! just look at the splendid plants!" 
  And Lina pointed to the nymphæas with their colossal leaves, whose 
  flowers bear buds as large as cocoanuts. Then, just where the banks 
  plunged beneath the waters, there were clumps of "mucumus," reeds 
  with large leaves, whose elastic stems bend to give passage to the 
  pirogues and close again behind them. There was there what would 
  tempt any sportsman, for a whole world of aquatic birds fluttered 
  between the higher clusters, which shook with the stream. 
  Ibises half-lollingly posed on some old trunk, and gray herons 
  motionless on one leg, solemn flamingoes who from a distance looked 
  like red umbrellas scattered in the foliage, and phenicopters of every 
  color, enlivened the temporary morass. 
  And along the top of the water glided long and swiftly-swimming 
  snakes, among them the formidable gymnotus, whose electric discharges 
  successively repeated paralyze the most robust of men or animals, and 
  end by dealing death. Precautions had to be taken against the 
  "sucurijus" serpents, which, coiled round the trunk of some tree, unroll 
  themselves, hang down, seize their prey, and draw it into their rings, 
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  which are powerful enough to crush a bullock. Have there not been met 
  with in these Amazonian forests reptiles from thirty to thirty-five feet 
  long? and even, according to M. Carrey, do not some exist whose length 
  reaches forty-seven feet, and whose girth is that of a hogshead? 
  Had one of these sucurijus, indeed, got on to the raft he would have 
  proved as formidable as an alligator. 
  Very fortunately the travelers had to contend with neither gymnotus 
  nor sucuriju, and the passage across the submerged forest, which lasted 
  about two hours, was effected without accident. 
  Three days passed. They neared Manaos. Twenty-four hours more and 
  the raft would be off the mouth of the Rio Negro, before the capital of 
  the province of Amazones. 
  In fact, on the 23d of August, at five o'clock in the evening, they stopped 
  at the southern point of Muras Island, on the right bank of the stream. 
  They only had to cross obliquely for a few miles to arrive at the port, 
  but the pilot Araujo very properly would not risk it on that day, as 
  night was coming on. The three miles which remained would take three 
  hours to travel, and to keep to the course of the river it was necessary, 
  above all things, to have a clear outlook. 
  This evening the dinner, which promised to be the last of this first part 
  of the voyage, was not served without a certain amount of ceremony. 
  Half the journey on the Amazon had been accomplished, and the task 
  was worthy of a jovial repast. It was fitting to drink to the health of 
  Amazones a few glasses of that generous liquor which comes from the 
  coasts of Oporto and Setubal. Besides, this was, in a way, the betrothal 
  dinner of Fragoso and the charming Lina--that of Manoel and Minha 
  had taken place at the fazenda of Iquitos several weeks before. After the 
  young master and mistress, it was the turn of the faithful couple who 
  were attached to them by so many bonds of gratitude. 
  So Lina, who was to remain in the service of Minha, and Fragoso, who 
  was about to enter into that of Manoel Valdez, sat at the common table, 
  and even had the places of honor reserved for them. 
  Torres, naturally, was present at the dinner, which was worthy of the 
  larder and kitchen of the jangada. 
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  The adventurer, seated opposite to Joam Garral, who was always 
  taciturn, listened to all that was said, but took no part in the 
  conversation. Benito quietly and attentively watched him. The eyes of 
  Torres, with a peculiar expression, constantly sought his father. One 
  would have called them the eyes of some wild beast trying to fascinate 
  his prey before he sprang on it. 
  Manoel talked mostly with Minha. Between whiles his eyes wandered to 
  Torres, but he acted his part more successfully than Benito in a 
  situation which, if it did not finish at Manaos, would certainly end at 
  Belem. 
  The dinner was jolly enough. Lina kept it going with her good humor, 
  Fragoso with his witty repartees. 
  The Padre Passanha looked gayly round on the little world he 
  cherished, and on the two young couples which his hands would shortly 
  bless in the waters of Para. 
  "Eat, padre," said Benito, who joined in the general conversation; "do 
  honor to this betrothal dinner. You will want some strength to celebrate 
  both marriages at once!" 
  "Well, my dear boy," replied Passanha, "seek out some lovely and 
  gentle girl who wishes you well, and you will see that I can marry you at 
  the same time!" 
  "Well answered, padre!" exclaimed Manoel. "Let us drink to the 
  coming marriage of Benito." 
  "We must look out for some nice young lady at Belem," said Minha. 
  "He should do what everybody else does." 
  "To the wedding of Mr. Benito!" said Fragoso, "who ought to wish all 
  the world to marry him!" 
  "They are right, sir," said Yaquita. "I also drink to your marriage, and 
  may you be as happy as Minha and Manoel, and as I and your father 
  have been!" 
  "As you always will be, it is to be hoped," said Torres, drinking a glass 
  of port without having pledged anybody. "All here have their happiness 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 18 
  in their own hands." 
  It was difficult to say, but this wish, coming from the adventurer, left an 
  unpleasant impression. 
  Manoel felt this, and wishing to destroy its effect, "Look here, padre," 
  said he, "while we are on this subject, are there not any more couples to 
  betroth on the raft?" 
  "I do not know," answered Padre Passanha, "unless Torres--you are 
  not married, I believe?" 
  "No; I am, and always shall be, a bachelor." 
  Benito and Manoel thought that while thus speaking Torres looked 
  toward Minha. 
  "And what should prevent you marrying?" replied Padre Passanha; "at 
  Belem you could find a wife whose age would suit yours, and it would be 
  possible perhaps for you to settle in that town. That would be better 
  than this wandering life, of which, up to the present, you have not made 
  so very much." 
  "You are right, padre," answered Torres; "I do not say no. Besides the 
  example is contagious. Seeing all these young couples gives me rather a 
  longing for marriage. But I am quite a stranger in Belem, and, for 
  certain reasons, that would make my settlement more difficult." 
  "Where do you come from, then?" asked Fragoso, who always had the 
  idea that he had already met Torres somewhere. 
  "From the province of Minas Geraes." 
  "And you were born----" 
  "In the capital of the diamond district, Tijuco." 
  Those who had seen Joam Garral at this moment would have been 
  surprised at the fixity of his look which met that of Torres. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 18 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 19 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XIX
  ANCIENT HISTORY 
  BUT THE CONVERSATION was continued by Fragoso, who 
  immediately rejoined: 
  "What! you come from Tijuco, from the very capital of the diamond 
  district?" 
  "Yes," said Torres. "Do you hail from that province?" 
  "No! I come from the Atlantic seaboard in the north of Brazil," replied 
  Fragoso. 
  "You do not know this diamond country, Mr. Manoel?" asked Torres. 
  A negative shake of the head from the young man was the only reply. 
  "And you, Mr. Benito," continued Torres, addressing the younger 
  Garral, whom he evidently wished to join in the conversation; "you 
  have never had curiosity enough to visit the diamond arraval?" 
  "Never," dryly replied Benito. 
  "Ah! I should like to see that country," said Fragoso, who unconsciously 
  played Torres' game. "It seems to me I should finish by picking up a 
  diamond worth something considerable." 
  "And what would you do with this diamond worth something 
  considerable, Fragoso?" queried Lina. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 19 
  "Sell it!" 
  "Then you would get rich all of a sudden!" 
  "Very rich!" 
  "Well, if you had been rich three months ago you would never have had 
  the idea of--that liana!" 
  "And if I had not had that," exclaimed Fragoso, "I should not have 
  found a charming little wife who--well, assuredly, all is for the best!" 
  "You see, Fragoso," said Minha, "when you marry Lina, diamond takes 
  the place of diamond, and you do not lose by the change!" 
  "To be sure, Miss Minha," gallantly replied Fragoso; "rather I gain!" 
  There could be no doubt that Torres did not want the subject to drop, 
  for he went on with: 
  "It is a fact that at Tijuco sudden fortunes are realized enough to turn 
  any man's head! Have you heard tell of the famous diamond of Abaete, 
  which was valued at more than two million contos of reis? Well, this 
  stone, which weighed an ounce, came from the Brazilian mines! And 
  they were three convicts--yes! three men sentenced to transportation for 
  life--who found it by chance in the River Abaete, at ninety leagues from 
  Terro de Frio." 
  "At a stroke their fortune was made?" asked Fragoso. 
  "No," replied Torres; "the diamond was handed over to the governor-
  general of the mines. The value of the stone was recognized, and King 
  John VI., of Portugal, had it cut, and wore it on his neck on great 
  occasions. As for the convicts, they got their pardon, but that was all, 
  and the cleverest could not get much of an income out of that!" 
  "You, doubtless?" said Benito very dryly. 
  "Yes--I? Why not?" answered Torres. "Have you ever been to the 
  diamond district?" added he, this time addressing Joam Garral. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 19 
  "Never!" said Joam, looking straight at him. 
  "That is a pity!" replied he. "You should go there one day. It is a very 
  curious place, I assure you. The diamond valley is an isolated spot in the 
  vast empire of Brazil, something like a park of a dozen leagues in 
  circumference, which in the nature of its soil, its vegetation, and its 
  sandy rocks surrounded by a circle of high mountains, differs 
  considerably from the neighboring provinces. But, as I have told you, it 
  is one of the richest places in the world, for from 1807 to 1817 the 
  annual return was about eighteen thousand carats. Ah! there have been 
  some rare finds there, not only for the climbers who seek the precious 
  stone up to the very tops of the mountains, but also for the smugglers 
  who fraudulently export it. But the work in the mines is not so pleasant, 
  and the two thousand negroes employed in that work by the 
  government are obliged even to divert the watercourses to get at the 
  diamantiferous sand. Formerly it was easier work." 
  "In short," said Fragoso, "the good time has gone!" 
  "But what is still easy is to get the diamonds in scoundrel-fashion--that 
  is, by theft; and--stop! in 1826, when I was about eight years old, a 
  terrible drama happened at Tijuco, which showed that criminal would 
  recoil from nothing if they could gain a fortune by one bold stroke. But 
  perhaps you are not interested?" 
  "On the contrary, Torres; go on," replied Joam Garral, in a singularly 
  calm voice. 
  "So be it," answered Torres. "Well, the story is about stealing 
  diamonds, and a handful of those pretty stones is worth a million, 
  sometimes two!" 
  And Torres, whose face expressed the vilest sentiments of cupidity, 
  almost unconsciously made a gesture of opening and shutting his hand. 
  "This is what happened," he continued. "At Tijuco it is customary to 
  send off in one delivery the diamonds collected during the year. They 
  are divided into two lots, according to their size, after being sorted in a 
  dozen sieves with holes of different dimensions. These lots are put into 
  sacks and forwarded to Rio de Janeiro; but as they are worth many 
  millions you may imagine they are heavily escorted. A workman chosen 
  by the superintendent, four cavalrymen from the district regiment, and 
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  ten men on foot, complete the convoy. They first make for Villa Rica, 
  where the commandant puts his seal on the sacks, and then the convoy 
  continues its journey to Rio de Janeiro. I should add that, for the sake of 
  precaution, the start is always kept secret. Well, in 1826, a young fellow 
  named Dacosta, who was about twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, 
  and who for some years had been employed at Tijuco in the offices of 
  the governor-general, devised the following scheme. He leagued himself 
  with a band of smugglers, and informed them of the date of the 
  departure of the convoy. The scoundrels took their measures 
  accordingly. They were numerous and well armed. Close to Villa Rica, 
  during the night of the 22d of January, the gang suddenly attacked the 
  diamond escort, who defended themselves bravely, but were all 
  massacred, with the exception of one man, who, seriously wounded, 
  managed to escape and bring the news of the horrible deed. The 
  workman was not spared any more than the soldiers. He fell beneath he 
  blows of the thieves, and was doubtless dragged away and thrown over 
  some precipice, for his body was never found." 
  "And this Dacosta?" asked Joam Garral. 
  "Well, his crime did not do him much good, for suspicion soon pointed 
  toward him. He was accused of having got up the affair. In vain he 
  protested that he was innocent. Thanks to the situation he held, he was 
  in a position to know the date on which the convoy's departure was to 
  take place. He alone could have informed the smugglers. He was 
  charged, arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Such a sentence 
  required his execution in twenty-four hourse." 
  "Was the fellow executed?" asked Fragoso. 
  "No," replied Torres; "they shut him up in the prison at Villa Rica, and 
  during the night, a few hours only before his execution, whether alone 
  or helped by others, he managed to escape." 
  "Has this young man been heard of since?" asked Joam Garral. 
  "Never," replied Torres. "He probably left Brazil, and now, in some 
  distant land, lives a cheerful life with the proceeds of the robbery which 
  he is sure to have realized." 
  "Perhaps, on the other hand, he died miserably!" answered Joam 
  Garral. 
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  "And, perhaps," added Padre Passanha, "Heaven caused him to feel 
  remorse for his crime." 
  Here they all rose from the table, and, having finished their dinner, 
  went out to breathe the evening air. The sun was low on the horizon, but 
  an hour had still to elapse before nightfall. 
  "These stories are not very lively," said Fragoso, "and our betrothal 
  dinner was best at the beginning." 
  "But it was your fault, Fragoso," answered Lina. 
  "How my fault?" 
  "It was you who went on talking about the district and the diamonds, 
  when you should not have done so." 
  "Well, that's true," replied Fragoso; "but I had no idea we were going 
  to wind up in that fashion." 
  "You are the first to blame!" 
  "And the first to be punished, Miss Lina; for I did not hear you laugh 
  all through the dessert." 
  The whole family strolled toward the bow of the jangada. Manoel and 
  Benito walked one behind the other without speaking. Yaquita and her 
  daughter silently followed, and all felt an unaccountable impression of 
  sadness, as if they had a presentiment of some coming calamity. 
  Torres stepped up to Joam Garral, who, with bowed head, seemed to be 
  lost in thought, and putting his hand on his shoulder, said, "Joam 
  Garral, may I have a few minutes' conversation with you?" 
  Joam looked at Torres. 
  "Here?" he asked. 
  "No; in private." 
  "Come, then." 
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  They went toward the house, entered it, and the door was shut on them. 
  It would be difficult to depict what every one felt when Joam Garral 
  and Torres disappeared. What could there be in common between the 
  adventurer and the honest fazender of Iquitos? The menace of some 
  frightful misfortune seemed to hang over the whole family, and they 
  scarcely dared speak to each other. 
  "Manoel!" said Benito, seizing his friend's arm, "whatever happens, 
  this man must leave us tomorrow at Manaos." 
  "Yes!" it is imperative!" answered Manoel. 
  "And if through him some misfortune happens to my father--I shall kill 
  him!" 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 20 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XX
  BETWEEN THE TWO MEN 
  FOR A MOMENT, alone in the room, where none could see or hear 
  them, Joam Garral and Torres looked at each other without uttering a 
  word. Did the adventurer hesitate to speak? Did he suspect that Joam 
  Garral would only reply to his demands by a scornful silence? 
  Yes! Probably so. So Torres did not question him. At the outset of the 
  conversation he took the affirmative, and assumed the part of an 
  accuser. 
  "Joam," he said, "your name is not Garral. Your name is Dacosta!" 
  At the guilty name which Torres thus gave him, Joam Garral could not 
  repress a slight shudder. 
  "You are Joam Dacosta," continued Torres, "who, twenty-five years 
  ago, were a clerk in the governor-general's office at Tijuco, and you are 
  the man who was sentenced to death in this affair of the robbery and 
  murder!" 
  No response from Joam Garral, whose strange tranquillity surprised 
  the adventurer. Had he made a mistake in accusing his host? No! For 
  Joam Garral made no start at the terrible accusations. Doubtless he 
  wanted to know to what Torres was coming. 
  "Joam Dacosta, I repeat! It was you whom they sought for this diamond 
  affair, whom they convicted of crime and sentenced to death, and it was 
  you who escaped from the prison at Villa Rica a few hours before you 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 20 
  should have been executed! Do you not answer?" 
  Rather a long silence followed this direct question which Torres asked. 
  Joam Garral, still calm, took a seat. His elbow rested on a small table, 
  and he looked fixedly at his accuser without bending his head. 
  "Will you reply?" repeated Torres. 
  "What reply do you want from me?" said Joam quietly. 
  "A reply," slowly answered Torres, "that will keep me from finding out 
  the chief of the police at Manaos, and saying to him, 'A man is there 
  whose identity can easily be established, who can be recognized even 
  after twenty-five years' absence, and this man was the instigator of the 
  diamond robbery at Tijuco. He was the accomplice of the murderers of 
  the soldiers of the escort; he is the man who escaped from execution; he 
  is Joam Garral, whose true name is Joam Dacosta.'" 
  "And so, Torres," said Joam Garral, "I shall have nothing to fear from 
  you if I give the answer you require?" 
  "Nothing, for neither you nor I will have any interest in talking about 
  the matter." 
  "Neither you nor I?" asked Joam Garral. "It is not with money, then, 
  that your silence is to be bought?" 
  "No! No matter how much you offered me!" 
  "What do you want, then?" 
  "Joam Garral," replied Torres, "here is my proposal. Do not be in a 
  hurry to reply by a formal refusal. Remember that you are in my 
  power." 
  "What is this proposal?" asked Joam. 
  Torres hesitated for a moment. 
  The attitude of this guilty man, whose life he held in his hands, was 
  enough to astonish him. He had expected a stormy discussion and 
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  prayers and tears. He had before him a man convicted of the most 
  heinous of crimes, and the man never flinched. 
  At length, crossing his arms, he said: 
  "You have a daughter!--I like her--and I want to marry her!" 
  Apparently Joam Garral expected anything from such a man, and was 
  as quiet as before. 
  "And so," he said, "the worthy Torres is anxious to enter the family of a 
  murderer and a thief?" 
  "I am the sole judge of what it suits me to do," said Torres. "I wish to 
  be the son-in-law of Joam Garral, and I will." 
  "You ignore, then, that my daughter is going to marry Manoel 
  Valdez?" 
  "You will break it off with Manoel Valdez!" 
  "And if my daughter declines?" 
  "If you tell her all, I have no doubt she would consent," was the 
  impudent answer. 
  "All?" 
  "All, if necessary. Between her own feelings and the honor of her family 
  and the life of her father she would not hesitate." 
  "You are a consummate scoundrel, Torres," quietly said Joam, whose 
  coolness never forsook him. 
  "A scoundrel and a murderer were made to understand each other." 
  At these words Joam Garral rose, advanced to the adventurer, and 
  looking him straight in the face, "Torres," he said, "if you wish to 
  become one of the family of Joam Dacosta, you ought to know that 
  Joam Dacosta was innocent of the crime for which he was condemned." 
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  "Really!" 
  "And I add," replied Joam, "that you hold the proof of his innocence, 
  and are keeping it back to proclaim it on the day when you marry his 
  daughter." 
  "Fair play, Joam Garral," answered Torres, lowering his voice, "and 
  when you have heard me out, you will see if you dare refuse me your 
  daughter!" 
  "I am listening, Torres." 
  "Well," said the adventurer, half keeping back his words, as if he was 
  sorry to let them escape from his lips, "I know you are innocent! I know 
  it, for I know the true culprit, and I am in a position to prove your 
  innocence." 
  "And the unhappy man who committed the crime?" 
  "Is dead." 
  "Dead!" exclaimed Joam Garral; and the word made him turn pale, in 
  spite of himself, as if it had deprived him of all power of reinstatement. 
  "Dead," repeated Torres; "but this man, whom I knew a long time after 
  his crime, and without knowing that he was a convict, had written out at 
  length, in his own hand, the story of this affair of the diamonds, even to 
  the smallest details. Feeling his end approaching, he was seized with 
  remorse. He knew where Joam Dacosta had taken refuge, and under 
  what name the innocent man had again begun a new life. He knew that 
  he was rich, in the bosom of a happy family, but he knew also that there 
  was no happiness for him. And this happiness he desired to add to the 
  reputation to which he was entitled. But death came--he intrusted to me, 
  his companion, to do what he could no longer do. He gave me the proofs 
  of Dacosta's innocence for me to transmit them to him, and he died." 
  "The man's name?" exclaimed Joam Garral, in a tone he could not 
  control. 
  "You will know it when I am one of your family." 
  "And the writing?" 
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  Joam Garral was ready to throw himself on Torres, to search him, to 
  snatch from him the proofs of his innocence. 
  "The writing is in a safe place," replied Torres, "and you will not have 
  it until your daughter has become my wife. Now will you still refuse 
  me?" 
  "Yes," replied Joam, "but in return for that paper the half of my 
  fortune is yours." 
  "The half of your fortune?" exclaimed Torres; "agreed, on condition 
  that Minha brings it to me at her marriage." 
  "And it is thus that you respect the wishes of a dying man, of a criminal 
  tortured by remorse, and who has charge you to repair as much as he 
  could the evil which he had done?" 
  "It is thus." 
  "Once more, Torres," said Joam Garral, "you are a consummate 
  scoundrel." 
  "Be it so." 
  "And as I am not a criminal we were not made to understand one 
  another." 
  "And your refuse?" 
  "I refuse." 
  "It will be your ruin, then, Joam Garral. Everything accuses you in the 
  proceedings that have already taken place. You are condemned to 
  death, and you know, in sentences for crimes of that nature, the 
  government is forbidden the right of commuting the penalty. 
  Denounced, you are taken; taken, you are executed. And I will denounce 
  you." 
  Master as he was of himself, Joam could stand it no longler. He was 
  about to rush on Torres. 
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  A gesture from the rascal cooled his anger. 
  "Take care," said Torres, "your wife knows not that she is the wife of 
  Joam Dacosta, your children do not know they are the children of Joam 
  Dacosta, and you are not going to give them the information." 
  Joam Garral stopped himself. He regained his usual command over 
  himself, and his features recovered their habitual calm. 
  "This discussion has lasted long enough," said he, moving toward the 
  door, "and I know what there is left for me to do." 
  "Take care, Joam Garral!" said Torres, for the last time, for he could 
  scarcely believe that his ignoble attempt at extortion had collapsed. 
  Joam Garral made him no answer. He threw back the door which 
  opened under the veranda, made a sign to Torres to follow him, and 
  they advanced toward the center of the jangada, where the family were 
  assembled. 
  Benito, Manoel, and all of them, under a feeling of deep anxiety, had 
  risen. They could see that the bearing of Torres was still menacing, and 
  that the fire of anger still shone in his eyes. 
  In extraordinary contrast, Joam Garral was master of himself, and 
  almost smiling. 
  Both of them stopped before Yaquita and her people. Not one dared to 
  say a word to them. 
  It was Torres who, in a hollow voice, and with his customary 
  impudence, broke the painful silence. 
  "For the last time, Joam Garral," he said, "I ask you for a last reply!" 
  "And here is my reply." 
  And addressing his wife: 
  "Yaquita," he said, "peculiar circumstances oblige me to alter what we 
  have formerly decided as to the marriage of Minha and Manoel." 
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  "At last!" exclaimed Torres. 
  Joam Garral, without answering him, shot at the adventurer a glance of 
  the deepest scorn. 
  But at the words Manoel had felt his heart beat as if it would break. The 
  girl arose, ashy pale, as if she would seek shelter by the side of her 
  mother. Yaquita opened her arms to protect, to defend her. 
  "Father," said Benito, who had placed himself between Joam Garral 
  and Torres, "what were you going to say?" 
  "I was going to say," answered Joam Garral, raising his voice, "that to 
  wait for our arrival in Para for the wedding of Minha and Manoel is to 
  wait too long. The marriage will take place here, not later than to-
  morrow, on the jangada, with the aid of Padre Passanha, if, after a 
  conversation I am about to have with Manoel, he agrees with me to 
  defer it no longer." 
  "Ah, father, father!" exclaimed the young man. 
  "Wait a little before you call me so, Manoel," replied Joam, in a tone of 
  unspeakable suffering. 
  Here Torres, with crossed arms, gave the whole family a look of 
  inconceivable insolence. 
  "So that is you last word?" said he, extending his hand toward Joam 
  Garral 
  "No, that is not my last word." 
  "What is it, then?" 
  "This, Torres. I am master here. You will be off, if you please, and even 
  if you do not please, and leave the jangada at this very instant!" 
  "Yes, this instant!" exclaimed Benito, "or I will throw you overboard." 
  Torres shrugged his shoulders. 
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  "No threats," he said; "they are of no use. It suits me also to land, and 
  without delay. But you will remember me, Joam Garral. We shall not be 
  long before we meet." 
  "If it only depends on me," answered Joam Garral, "we shall soon 
  meet, and rather sooner, perhaps, than you will like. To-morrow I shall 
  be with Judge Ribeiro, the first magistrate of the province, whom I have 
  advised of my arrival at Manaos. If you dare, meet me there!" 
  "At Judge Ribeiro's?" said Torres, evidently disconcerted. 
  "At Judge Ribeiro's," answered Joam Garral. 
  And then, showing the pirogue to Torres, with a gesture of supreme 
  contempt Joam Garral ordered four of his people to land him without 
  delay on the nearest point of the island. 
  The scoundrel at last disappeared. 
  The family, who were still appalled, respected the silence of its chief; but 
  Fragoso, comprehending scarce half the gravity of the situation, and 
  carried away by his customary vivacity, came up to Joam Garral. 
  "If the wedding of Miss Minha and Mr. Manoel is to take place to-
  morrow on the raft----" 
  "Yours shall take place at the same time," kindly answered Joam 
  Garral. 
  And making a sign to Manoel, he retired to his room with him. 
  The interview between Joam and Manoel had lasted for half an hour, 
  and it seemed a century to the family, when the door of the room was 
  reopened. 
  Manoel came out alone; his face glowed with generous resolution. 
  Going up to Yaquita, he said, "My mother!" to Minha he said, "My 
  wife!" and to Benito he said, "My brother!" and, turning toward Lina 
  and Fragoso, he said to all, "To-morrow!" 
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  He knew all that had passed between Joam Garral and Torres. He knew 
  that, counting on the protection of Judge Ribeiro, by means of a 
  correspondence which he had had with him for a year past without 
  speaking of it to his people, Joam Garral had at last succeeded in 
  clearing himself and convincing him of his innocence. He knew that 
  Joam Garral had boldly undertaken the voyage with the sole object of 
  canceling the hateful proceedings of which he had been the victim, so as 
  not to leave on his daughter and son-in-law the weight of the terrible 
  situation which he had had to endure so long himself. 
  Yes, Manoel knew all this, and, further, he knew that Joam Garral--or 
  rather Joam Dacosta--was innocent, and his misfortunes made him even 
  dearer and more devoted to him. What he did not know was that the 
  material proof of the innocence of the fazender existed, and that this 
  proof was in the hands of Torres. Joam Garral wished to reserve for the 
  judge himself the use of this proof, which, if the adventurer had spoken 
  truly, would demonstrate his innocence. 
  Manoel confined himself, then, to announcing that he was going to 
  Padre Passanha to ask him to get things ready for the two weddings. 
  Next day, the 24th of August, scarcely an hour before the ceremony was 
  to take place, a large pirogue came off from the left bank of the river 
  and hailed the jangada. A dozen paddlers had swiftly brought it from 
  Manaos, and with a few men it carried the chief of the police, who made 
  himself known and came on board. 
  At the moment Joam Garral and his family, attired for the ceremony, 
  were coming out of the house. 
  "Joam Garral?" asked the chief of the police. 
  "I am here," replied Joam. 
  "Joam Garral," continued the chief of the police, "you have also been 
  Joam Dacosta; both names have been borne by the same man--I arrest 
  you!" 
  At these words Yaquita and Minha, struck with stupor, stopped without 
  any power to move. 
  "My father a murderer?" exclaimed Benito, rushing toward Joam 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 20 
  Garral. 
  By a gesture his father silenced him. 
  "I will only ask you one question," said Joam with firm voice, 
  addressing the chief of police. "Has the warrant in virtue of which you 
  arrest me been issued against me by the justice at Manaos--by Judge 
  Ribeiro?" 
  "No," answered the chief of the police, "it was given to me, with an 
  order for its immediate execution, by his substitute. Judge Ribeiro was 
  struck with apoplexy yesterday evening, and died during the night at 
  two o'clock, without having recovered his consciousness." 
  "Dead!" exclaimed Joam Garral, crushed for a moment by the news--
  "dead! dead!" 
  But soon raising his head, he said to his wife and children, "Judge 
  Ribeiro alone knew that I was innocent, my dear ones. The death of the 
  judge may be fatal to me, but that is no reason for me to despair." 
  And, turning toward Manoel, "Heaven help us!" he said to him; "we 
  shall see if truth will come down to the earth from Above." 
  The chief of the police made a sign to his men, who advanced to secure 
  Joam Garral. 
  "But speak, father!" shouted Benito, mad with despair; "say one word, 
  and we shall contest even by force this horrible mistake of which you 
  are the victim!" 
  "There is no mistake here, my son," replied Joam Garral; "Joam 
  Dacosta and Joam Garral are one. I am in truth Joam Dacosta! I am the 
  honest man whom a legal error unjustly doomed to death twenty-five 
  years ago in the place of the true culprit! That I am quite innocent I 
  swear before Heaven, once for all, on your heads, my children, and on 
  the head of your mother!" 
  "All communication between you and yours is now forbidden," said the 
  chief of the police. "You are my prisoner, Joam Garral, and I will 
  rigorously execute my warrant." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 20 
  Joam restrained by a gesture his dismayed children and servants. 
  "Let the justice of man be done while we wait for the justice of God!" 
  And with his head unbent, he stepped into the pirogue. 
  It seemed, indeed, as though of all present Joam Garral was the only 
  one whom this fearful thunderbolt, which had fallen so unexpectedly on 
  his head, had failed to overwhelm. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 21 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  PART II
  THE CRYPTOGRAM 
  CHAPTER I 
  MANAOS 
  THE TOWN of Manaos is in 3° 8' 4" south latitude, and 67° 27' west 
  longitude, reckoning from the Paris meridian. It is some four hundred 
  and twenty leagues from Belem, and about ten miles from the 
  embouchure of the Rio Negro. 
  Manaos is not built on the Amazon. It is on the left bank of the Rio 
  Negro, the most important and remarkable of all the tributaries of the 
  great artery of Brazil, that the capital of the province, with its 
  picturesque group of private houses and public buildings, towers above 
  the surrounding plain. 
  The Rio Negro, which was discovered by the Spaniard Favella in 1645, 
  rises in the very heart of the province of Popayan, on the flanks of the 
  mountains which separate Brazil from New Grenada, and it 
  communicates with the Orinoco by two of its affluents, the Pimichin and 
  the Cassiquary. 
  After a noble course of some seventeen hundred miles it mingles its 
  cloudy waters with those of the Amazon through a mouth eleven 
  hundred feet wide, but such is its vigorous influx that many a mile has 
  to be completed before those waters lose their distinctive character. 
  Hereabouts the ends of both its banks trend off and form a huge bay 
  fifteen leagues across, extending to the islands of Anavilhanas; and in 
  one of its indentations the port of Manaos is situated. Vessels of all kinds 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 21 
  are there collected in great numbers, some moored in the stream 
  awaiting a favorable wind, others under repair up the numerous 
  iguarapes, or canals, which so capriciously intersect the town, and give it 
  its slightly Dutch appearance. 
  With the introduction of steam vessels, which is now rapidly taking 
  place, the trade of Manaos is destined to increase enormously. Woods 
  used in building and furniture work, cocoa, caoutchouc, coffee, 
  sarsaparilla, sugar-canes, indigo, muscado nuts, salt fish, turtle butter, 
  and other commodities, are brought here from all parts, down the 
  innumerable streams into the Rio Negro from the west and north, into 
  the Madeira from the west and south, and then into the Amazon, and by 
  it away eastward to the coast of the Atlantic. 
  Manaos was formerly called Moura, or Barra de Rio Negro. From 1757 
  to 1804 it was only part of the captaincy which bears the name of the 
  great river at whose mouth it is placed; but since 1826 it has been the 
  capital of the large province of Amazones, borrowing its latest name 
  from an Indian tribe which formerly existed in these parts of equatorial 
  America. 
  Careless travelers have frequently confounded it with the famous 
  Manoa, a city of romance, built, it was reported, near the legendary lake 
  of Parima--which would seem to be merely the Upper Branco, a 
  tributary of the Rio Negro. Here was the Empire of El Dorado, whose 
  monarch, if we are to believe the fables of the district, was every 
  morning covered with powder of gold, there being so much of the 
  precious metal abounding in this privileged locality that it was swept up 
  with the very dust of the streets. This assertion, however, when put to 
  the test, was disproved, and with extreme regret, for the auriferous 
  deposits which had deceived the greedy scrutiny of the gold-seekers 
  turned out to be only worthless flakes of mica! 
  In short, Manaos has none of the fabulous splendors of the mythical 
  capital of El Dorado. It is an ordinary town of about five thousand 
  inhabitants, and of these at least three thousand are in government 
  employ. This fact is to be attributed to the number of its public 
  buildings, which consist of the legislative chamber, the government 
  house, the treasury, the post-office, and the custom-house, and, in 
  addition, a college founded in 1848, and a hospital erected in 1851. 
  When with these is also mentioned a cemetery on the south side of a hill, 
  on which, in 1669, a fortress, which has since been demolished, was 
  thrown up against the pirates of the Amazon, some idea can be gained 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 21 
  as to the importance of the official establishments of the city. Of 
  religious buildings it would be difficult to find more than two, the small 
  Church of the Conception and the Chapel of Notre Dame des Remedes, 
  built on a knoll which overlooks the town. These are very few for a town 
  of Spanish origin, though to them should perhaps be added the 
  Carmelite Convent, burned down in 1850, of which only the ruins 
  remain. The population of Manaos does not exceed the number above 
  given, and after reckoning the public officials and soldiers, is principally 
  made of up Portuguese and Indian merchants belonging to the different 
  tribes of the Rio Negro. 
  Three principal thoroughfares of considerable irregularity run through 
  the town, and they bear names highly characteristic of the tone of 
  thought prevalent in these parts--God-the-Father Street, God-the-Son 
  Street, and God-the-Holy Ghost Street! 
  In the west of the town is a magnificent avenue of centenarian orange 
  trees which were carefully respected by the architects who out of the old 
  city made the new. Round these principal thoroughfares is interwoven a 
  perfect network of unpaved alleys, intersected every now and then by 
  four canals, which are occasionally crossed by wooden bridges. In a few 
  places these iguarapes flow with their brownish waters through large 
  vacant spaces covered with straggling weeds and flowers of startling 
  hues, and here and there are natural squares shaded by magnificent 
  trees, with an occasional white-barked sumaumeira shooting up, and 
  spreading out its large dome-like parasol above its gnarled branches. 
  The private houses have to be sought for among some hundreds of 
  dwellings, of very rudimentary type, some roofed with tiles, others with 
  interlaced branches of the palm-tree, and with prominent miradors, and 
  projecting shops for the most part tenanted by Portuguese traders. 
  And what manner of people are they who stroll on to the fashionable 
  promenade from the public buildings and private residences? Men of 
  good appearance, with black cloth coats, chimney-pot hats, patent-
  leather boots, highly-colored gloves, and diamond pins in their necktie 
  bows; and women in loud, imposing toilets, with flounced dressed and 
  headgear of the latest style; and Indians, also on the road to 
  Europeanization in a way which bids fair to destroy every bit of local 
  color in this central portion of the district of the Amazon! 
  Such is Manaos, which, for the benefit of the reader, it was necessary to 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 21 
  sketch. Here the voyage of the giant raft, so tragically interrupted, had 
  just come to a pause in the midst of its long journey, and here will be 
  unfolded the further vicissitudes of the mysterious history of the 
  fazender of Iquitos. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 22 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER II
  THE FIRST MOMENTS 
  SCARCELY HAD the pirogue which bore off Joam Garral, or rather 
  Joam Dacosta--for it is more convenient that he should resume his real 
  name-disappeared, than Benito stepped up to Manoel. 
  "What is it you know?" he asked. 
  "I know that your father is innocent! Yes, innocent!" replied Manoel, 
  "and that he was sentenced to death twenty-three years ago for a crime 
  which he never committed!" 
  "He has told you all about it, Manoel?" 
  "All about it," replied the young man. "The noble fazender did not wish 
  that any part of his past life should be hidden from him who, when he 
  marries his daughter, is to be his second son." 
  "And the proof of his innocence my father can one day produce?" 
  "That proof, Benito, lies wholly in the twenty-three years of an 
  honorable and honored life, lies entirely in the bearing of Joam Dacosta, 
  who comes forward to say to justice, 'Here am I! I do not care for this 
  false existence any more. I do not care to hide under a name which is 
  not my true one! You have condemned an innocent man! Confess your 
  errors and set matters right." 
  "And when my father spoke like that, you did not hesitate for a moment 
  to believe him?" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 22 
  "Not for an instant," replied Manoel. 
  The hands of the two young fellows closed in a long and cordial grasp. 
  Then Benito went up to Padre Passanha. 
  "Padre," he said, "take my mother and sister away to their rooms. Do 
  not leave them all day. No one here doubts my father's innocence--not 
  one, you know that! To-morrow my mother and I will seek out the chief 
  of the police. They will not refuse us permission to visit the prison. No! 
  that would be too cruel. We will see my father again, and decide what 
  steps shall be taken to procure his vindication." 
  Yaquita was almost helpless, but the brave woman, though nearly 
  crushed by this sudden blow, arose. With Yaquita Dacosta it was as 
  with Yaquita Garral. She had not a doubt as to the innocence of her 
  husband. The idea even never occurred to her that Joam Dacosta had 
  been to blame in marrying her under a name which was not his own. 
  She only thought of the life of happiness she had led with the noble man 
  who had been injured so unjustly. Yes! On the morrow she would go to 
  the gate of the prison, and never leave it until it was opened! 
  Padre Passanha took her and her daughter, who could not restrain her 
  tears, and the tree entered the house. 
  The two young fellows found themselves alone. 
  "And now," said Benito, "I ought to know all that my father has told 
  you." 
  "I have nothing to hide from you." 
  "Why did Torres come on board the jangada?" 
  "To see to Joam Dacosta the secret of his past life." 
  "And so, when we first met Torres in the forest of Iquitos, his plan had 
  already been formed to enter into communication with my father?" 
  "There cannot be a doubt of it," replied Manoel. "The scoundrel was on 
  his way to the fazenda with the idea of consummating a vile scheme of 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 22 
  extortion which he had been preparing for a long time." 
  "And when he learned from us that my father and his whole family 
  were about to pass the frontier, he suddenly changed his line of 
  conduct?" 
  "Yes. Because Joam Dacosta once in Brazilian territory became more at 
  his mercy than while within the frontiers of Peru. That is why we found 
  Torres at Tabatinga, where he was waiting in expectation of our 
  arrival." 
  "And it was I who offered him a passage on the raft!" exclaimed Benito, 
  with a gesture of despair. 
  "Brother," said Manoel, "you need not reproach yourself. Torres would 
  have joined us sooner or later. He was not the man to abandon such a 
  trail. Had we lost him at Tabatinga, we should have found him at 
  Manaos." 
  "Yes, Manoel, you are right. But we are not concerned with the past 
  now. We must think of the present. An end to useless recriminations! 
  Let us see!" And while speaking, Benito, passing his hand across his 
  forehead, endeavored to grasp the details of the strange affair. 
  "How," he asked, "did Torres ascertain that my father had been 
  sentenced twenty-three years back for this abominable crime at 
  Tijuco?" 
  "I do not know," answered Manoel, "and everything leads me to think 
  that your father did not know that." 
  "But Torres knew that Garral was the name under which Joam Dacosta 
  was living?" 
  "Evidently." 
  "And he knew that it was in Peru, at Iquitos, that for so many years my 
  father had taken refuge?" 
  "He knew it," said Manoel, "but how he came to know it I do not 
  understand." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 22 
  "One more question," continued Benito. "What was the proposition 
  that Torres made to my father during the short interview which 
  preceded his expulsion?" 
  "He threatened to denounce Joam Garral as being Joam Dacosta, if he 
  declined to purchase his silence." 
  "And at what price?" 
  "At the price of his daughter's hand!" answered Manoel unhesitatingly, 
  but pale with anger. 
  "The scoundrel dared to do that!" exclaimed Benito. 
  "To this infamous request, Benito, you saw the reply that your father 
  gave." 
  "Yes, Manoel, yes! The indignant reply of an honest man. He kicked 
  Torres off the raft. But it is not enough to have kicked him out. No! 
  That will not do for me. It was on Torres' information that they came 
  here and arrested my father; is not that so?" 
  "Yes, on his denunciation." 
  "Very well," continued Benito, shaking his fist toward the left bank of 
  the river, "I must find out Torres. I must know how he became master 
  of the secret. He must tell me if he knows the real author of this crime. 
  He shall speak out. And if he does not speak out, I know what I shall 
  have to do." 
  "What you will have to do is for me to do as well!" added Manoel, more 
  coolly, but not less reolutely. 
  "No! Manoel, no, to me alone!" 
  "We are brothers, Benito," replied Manoel. "The right of demanding 
  an explanation belongs to us both." 
  Benito made no reply. Evidently on that subject his decision was 
  irrevocable. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 22 
  At this moment the pilot Araujo, who had been observing the state of 
  the river, came up to them. 
  "Have you decided," he asked, "if the raft is to remain at her moorings 
  at the Isle of Muras, or to go on to the port of Manaos?" 
  The question had to be decided before nightfall, and the sooner it was 
  settled the better. 
  In fact, the news of the arrest of Joam Dacosta ought already to have 
  spread through the town. That it was of a nature to excite the interest of 
  the population of Manaos could scarcely be doubted. But would it 
  provoke more than curiosity against the condemned man, who was the 
  principal author of the crime of Tijuco, which had formerly created 
  such a sensation? Ought they not to fear that some popular movement 
  might be directed against the prisoner? In the face of this hypothesis 
  was it not better to leave the jangada moored near the Isle of Muras on 
  the right bank of the river at a few miles from Manaos?" 
  The pros and cons of the question were well weighed. 
  "No!" at length exclaimed Benito; "to remain here would look as 
  though we were abandoning my father and doubting his innocence--as 
  though we were afraid to make common cause with him. We must go to 
  Manaos, and without delay." 
  "You are right," replied Manoel. "Let us go." 
  Araujo, with an approving nod, began his preparations for leaving the 
  island. The maneuver necessitated a good deal of care. They had to 
  work the raft slantingly across the current of the Amazon, here doubled 
  in force by that of the Rio Negro, and to make for the embouchure of the 
  tributary about a dozen miles down on the left bank. 
  The ropes were cast off from the island. The jangada, again started on 
  the river, began to drift off diagonally. Araujo, cleverly profiting by the 
  bendings of the current, which were due to the projections of the banks, 
  and assisted by the long poles of his crew, succeeded in working the 
  immense raft in the desired direction. 
  In two hours the jangada was on the other side of the Amazon, a little 
  above the mouth of the Rio Negro, and fairly in the current which was 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 22 
  to take it to the lower bank of the vast bay which opened on the left side 
  of the stream. 
  At five o'clock in the evening it was strongly moored alongside this 
  bank, not in the port of Manaos itself, which it could not enter without 
  stemming a rather powerful current, but a short mile below it. 
  The raft was then in the black waters of the Rio Negro, near rather a 
  high bluff covered with cecropias with buds of reddish-brown, and 
  palisaded with stiff-stalked reeds called "froxas," of which the Indians 
  make some of their weapons. 
  A few citizens were strolling about the bank. A feeling of curiosity had 
  doubtless attracted them to the anchorage of the raft. The news of the 
  arrest of Joam Dacosta had soon spread about, but the curiosity of the 
  Manaens did not outrun their discretion, and they were very quiet. 
  Benito's intention had been to land that evening, but Manoel dissuaded 
  him. 
  "Wait till to-morrow," he said; "night is approaching, and there is no 
  necessity for us to leave the raft." 
  "So be it! To-morrow!" answered Benito. 
  And here Yaquita, followed by her daughter and Padre Passanha, came 
  out of the house. Minha was still weeping, but her mother's face was 
  tearless, and she had that look of calm resolution which showed that the 
  wife was now ready for all things, either to do her duty or to insist on 
  her rights. 
  Yaquita slowly advanced toward Manoel. 
  "Manoel," she said, "listen to what I have to say, for my conscience 
  commands me to speak as I am about to do." 
  "I am listening," replied Manoel. 
  Yaquita, looking him straight in the face, continued: "Yesterday, after 
  the interview you had with Joam Dacosta, my husband, you came to me 
  and called me--mother! You took Minha's hand, and called her--your 
  wife! You then knew everything, and the past life of Joam Dacosta had 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 22 
  been disclosed to you." 
  "Yes," answered Manoel, "and heaven forbid I should have had any 
  hesitation in doing so!" 
  "Perhaps so," replied Yaquita; "but then Joam Dacosta had not been 
  arrested. The position is not now the same. However innocent he may 
  be, my husband is in the hands of justice; his past life has been publicly 
  proclaimed. Minha is a convict's daughter." 
  "Minha Dacosta or Minha Garral, what matters it to me?" exclaimed 
  Manoel, who could keep silent no longer. 
  "Manoel!" murmured Minha. 
  And she would certainly have fallen had not Lina's arm supported her. 
  "Mother, if you do not wish to kill her," said Manoel, "call me your 
  son!" 
  "My son! my child!" 
  It was all Yaquita could say, and the tears, which she restrained with 
  difficulty, filled her eyes. 
  And then they all re-entered the house. But during the long night not an 
  hour's sleep fell to the lot of the unfortunate family who were being so 
  cruelly tried. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 23 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER III
  RETROSPECTIVE 
  JOAM DACOSTA had relied entirely on Judge Albeiro, and his death 
  was most unfortunate. 
  Before he was judge at Manaos, and chief magistrate in the province, 
  Ribeiro had known the young clerk at the time he was being prosecuted 
  for the murder in the diamond arrayal. He was then an advocate at 
  Villa Rica, and he it was who defended the prisoner at the trial. He took 
  the cause to heart and made it his own, and from an examination of the 
  papers and detailed information, and not from the simple fact of his 
  position in the matter, he came to the conclusion that his client was 
  wrongfully accused, and that he had taken not the slightest part in the 
  murder of the escort or the theft of the diamonds--in a word, that Joam 
  Dacosta was innocent. 
  But, notwithstanding this conviction, notwithstanding his talent and 
  zeal, Ribeiro was unable to persuade the jury to take the same view of 
  the matter. How could he remove so strong a presumption? If it was not 
  Joam Dacosta, who had every facility for informing the scoundrels of 
  the convoy's departure, who was it? The official who acocmpanied the 
  escort had perished with the greater part of the soldiers, and suspicion 
  could not point against him. Everything agreed in distinguishing 
  Dacosta as the true and only author of the crime. 
  Ribeiro defended him with great warmth and with all his powers, but he 
  could not succeed in saving him. The verdict of the jury was affirmative 
  on all the questions. Joam Dacosta, convicted of aggravated and 
  premeditated murder, did not even obtain the benefit of extenuating 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 23 
  circumstances, and heard himself condemned to death. 
  There was no hope left for the accused. No commutation of the sentence 
  was possible, for the crime was committed in the diamond arrayal. The 
  condemned man was lost. But during the night which preceded his 
  execution, and when the gallows was already erected, Joam Dacosta 
  managed to escape from the prison at Villa Rica. We know the rest. 
  Twenty years later Ribeiro the advocate became the chief justice of 
  Manaos. In the depths of his retreat the fazender of Iquitos heard of the 
  change, and in it saw a favorable opportunity for bringing forward the 
  revision of the former proceedings against him with some chance of 
  success. He knew that the old convictions of the advocate would be still 
  unshaken in the mind of the judge. He therefore resolved to try and 
  rehabilitate himself. Had it not been for Ribeiro's nomination to the 
  chief justiceship in the province of Amazones, he might perhaps have 
  hesitated, for he had no new material proof of his innocence to bring 
  forward. Although the honest man suffered acutely, he might still have 
  remained hidden in exile at Iquitos, and still have asked for time to 
  smother the remembrances of the horrible occurrence, but something 
  was urging him to act in the matter without delay. 
  In fact, before Yaquita had spoken to him, Joam Dacosta had noticed 
  that Manoel was in love with his daughter. 
  The union of the young army doctor and his daughter was in every 
  respect a suitable one. It was evident to Joam that some day or other he 
  would be asked for her hand in marriage, and he did not wish to be 
  obliged to refuse. 
  But then the thought that his daughter would have to marry under a 
  name which did not belong to her, that Manoel Valdez, thinking he was 
  entering the family of Garral, would enter that of Dacosta, the head of 
  which was under sentence of death, was intolerable to him. No! The 
  wedding should not take place unless under proper conditions! Never! 
  Let us recall what had happened up to this time. Four years after the 
  young clerk, who eventually became the partner of Magalhaës, had 
  arrived at Iquitos, the old Portuguese had been taken back to the farm 
  mortally injured. A few days only were left for him to live. He was 
  alarmed at the thought that his daughter would be left alone and 
  unprotected; but knowing that Joam and Yaquita were in love with 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 23 
  each other, he desired their union without delay. 
  Joam at first refused. He offered to remain the protector or the servant 
  of Yaquita without becoming her husband. The wish of the dying 
  Magalhaës was so urgent that resistance became impossible. Yaquita 
  put her hand into the hand of Joam, and Joam did not withdraw it. 
  Yes! It was a serious matter! Joam Dacosta ought to have confessed all, 
  or to have fled forever from the house in which he had been so 
  hospitably received, from the establishment of which he had built up the 
  prosperity! Yes! To confess everything rather than to give to the 
  daughter of his benefactor a name which was not his, instead of the 
  name of a felon condemned to death for murder, innocent though he 
  might be! 
  But the case was pressing, the old fazender was on the point of death, 
  his hands were stretched out toward the young people! Joam was silent, 
  the marriage took place, and the remainder of his life was devoted to the 
  happiness of the girl he had made his wife. 
  "The day when I confess everything," Joam repeated, "Yaquita will 
  pardon everything! She will not doubt me for an instant! But if I ought 
  not to have deceived her, I certainly will not deceive the honest fellow 
  who wishes to enter our family by marrying Mina! No! I would rather 
  give myself up and have done with this life!" 
  Many times had Joam thought of telling his wife about his past life. Yes! 
  the avowal was on his lips whenever she asked him to take her into 
  Brazil, and with her and her daughter descend the beautiful Amazon 
  river. He knew sufficient of Yaquita to be sure that her affection for him 
  would not thereby be diminished in the least. But courage failed him! 
  And this is easily intelligible in the face of the happiness of the family, 
  which increased on every side. This happiness was his work, and it 
  might be destroyed forever by his return. 
  Such had been his life for those long years; such had been the 
  continuous source of his sufferings, of which he had kept the secret so 
  well; such had been the existence of this man, who had no action to be 
  ashamed of, and whom a great injustice compelled to hide away from 
  himself! 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 23 
  But at length the day arrived when there could no longer remain a 
  doubt as to the affection which Manoel bore to Minha, when he could 
  see that a year would not go by before he was asked to give his consent 
  to her marriage, and after a short delay he no longer hesitated to 
  proceed in the matter. 
  A letter from him, addressed to Judge Ribeiro, acquainted the chief 
  justice with the secret of the existence of Joam Dacosta, with the name 
  under which he was concealed, with the place where he lived with his 
  family, and at the same time with his formal intention of delivering 
  himself up to justice, and taking steps to procure the revision of the 
  proceedings, which would either result in his rehabilitation or in the 
  execution of the iniquitous judgment delivered at Villa Rica. 
  What were the feelings which agitated the heart of the worthy 
  magistrate? We can easily divine them. It was no longer to the advocate 
  that the accused applied; it was to the chief justice of the province that 
  the convict appealed. Joam Dacosta gave himself over to him entirely, 
  and did not even ask him to keep the secret. 
  Judge Ribeiro was at first troubled about this unexpected revelation, 
  but he soon recovered himself, and scrupulously considered the duties 
  which the position imposed on him. It was his place to pursue criminals, 
  and here was one who delivered himself into his hands. This criminal, it 
  was true, he had defended; he had never doubted but that he had been 
  unjustly condemned; his joy had been extreme when he saw him escape 
  by flight from the last penalty; he had even instigated and facilitated his 
  flight! But what the advocate had done in the past could the magistrate 
  do in the present? 
  "Well, yes!" had the judge said, "my conscience tells me not to abandon 
  this just man. The step he is taking is a fresh proof of his innocence, a 
  moral proof, even if he brings me others, which may be the most 
  convincing of all! No! I will not abandon him!" 
  From this day forward a secret correspondence took place between the 
  magistrate and Joam Dacosta. Ribeiro at the outset cautioned his client 
  against compromising himself by any imprudence. He had again to 
  work up the matter, again to read over the papers, again to look 
  through the inquiries. He had to find out if any new facts had come to 
  light in the diamond province referring to so serious a case. Had any of 
  the accomplices of the crime, of the smugglers who had attacked the 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 23 
  convoy, been arrested since the attempt? Had any confessions or half-
  confessions been brought forward? Joam Dacosta had done nothing but 
  protest his innocence from the very first. But that was not enough, and 
  Judge Ribeiro was desirous of finding in the case itself the clue to the 
  real culprit. 
  Joam Dacosta had accordingly been prudent. He had promised to be so. 
  But in all his trials it was an immense consolation for him to find his old 
  advocate, though now a chief justice, so firmly convinced that he was 
  not guilty. Yes! Joam Dacosta, in spite of his condemnation, was a 
  victim, a martyr, an honest man to whom society owed a signal 
  reparation! And when the magistrate knew the past career of the 
  fazender of Iquitos since his sentence, the position of his family, all that 
  life of devotion, of work, employed unceasingly for the happiness of 
  those belonging to him, he was not only more convinced but more 
  affected, and determined to do all that he could to procure the 
  rehabilitation of the felon of Tijuco. 
  For six months a correspondence had passed between these two men. 
  One day, the case being pressing, Joam Dacosta wrote to Judge Ribeiro: 
  "In two months I will be with you, in the power of the chief justice of 
  the province!" 
  "Come, then," replied Ribeiro. 
  The jangada was then ready to go down the river. Joam Dacosta 
  embarked on it with all his people. During the voyage, to the great 
  astonishment of his wife and son, he landed but rarely, as we know. 
  More often he remained shut up on his room, writing, working, not at 
  his trading accounts, but, without saying anything about it, at a kind of 
  memoir, which he called "The History of My Life," and which was 
  meant to be used in the revision of the legal proceedings. 
  Eight days before his new arrest, made on account of information given 
  by Torres, which forestalled and perhaps would ruin his prospects, he 
  intrusted to an Indian on the Amazon a letter, in which he warned 
  Judge Ribeiro of his approaching arrival. 
  The letter was sent and delivered as addressed, and the magistrate only 
  waited for Joam Dacosta to commence on the serious undertaking 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 23 
  which he hoped to bring to a successful issue. 
  During the night before the arrival of the raft at Manaos Judge Ribeiro 
  was seized with an attack of apoplexy. But the denunciation of Torres, 
  whose scheme of extortion had collapsed in face of the noble anger of his 
  victim, had produced its effect. Joam Dacosta was arrested in the bosom 
  of his family, and his old advocate was no longer in this world to defend 
  him! 
  Yes, the blow was terrible indeed. His lot was cast, whatever his fate 
  might be; there was no going back for him! And Joam Dacosta rose 
  from beneath the blow which had so unexpectedly struck him. It was 
  not only his own honor which was in question, but the honor of all who 
  belonged to him. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 24 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER IV
  MORAL PROOFS 
  THE WARRANT against Joam Dacosta, alias Joam Garral, had been 
  issued by the assistant of Judge Ribeiro, who filled the position of the 
  magistrate in the province of Amazones, until the nomination of the 
  successor of the late justice. 
  This assistant bore the name of Vicente Jarriquez. He was a surly little 
  fellow, whom forty years' practice in criminal procedure had not 
  rendered particularly friendly toward those who came before him. He 
  had had so many cases of this sort, and tried and sentenced so many 
  rascals, that a prisoner's innocence seemed to him à priori inadmissable. 
  To be sure, he did not come to a decision unconscientiously; but his 
  conscience was strongly fortified and was not easily affected by the 
  circumstances of the examination or the arguments for the defense. Like 
  a good many judges, he thought but little of the indulgence of the jury, 
  and when a prisoner was brought before him, after having passed 
  through the sieve of inquest, inquiry, and examination, there was every 
  presumption in his eyes that the man was quite ten times guilty. 
  Jarriquez, however, was not a bad man. Nervous, fidgety, talkative, 
  keen, crafty, he had a curious look about him, with his big head on his 
  little body; his ruffled hair, which would not have disgraced the judges 
  wig of the past; his piercing gimlet-like eyes, with their expression of 
  surprising acuteness; his prominent nose, with which he would 
  assuredly have gesticulated had it been movable; his ears wide open, so 
  as to better catch all that was said, even when it was out of range of 
  ordinary auditory apparatus; his fingers unceasingly tapping the table 
  in front of him, like those of a pianist practicing on the mute; and his 
  body so long and his legs so short, and his feet perpetually crossing and 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 24 
  recrossing, as he sat in state in his magistrate's chair. 
  In private life, Jarriquez, who was a confirmed old bachelor, never left 
  his law-books but for the table which he did not despise; for chess, of 
  which he was a past master; and above all things for Chinese puzzles, 
  enigmas, charades, rebuses, anagrams, riddles, and such things, with 
  which, like more than one European justice--thorough sphinxes by taste 
  as well as by profession--he principally passed his leisure. 
  It will be seen that he was an original, and it will be seen also how much 
  Joam Dacosta had lost by the death of Judge Ribeiro, inasmuch as his 
  case would come before this not very agreeable judge. 
  Moreover, the task of Jarriquez was in a way very simple. He had either 
  to inquire nor to rule; he had not even to regulate a discussion nor to 
  obtain a verdict, neither to apply the articles of the penal code nor to 
  pronounce a sentence. Unfortunately for the fazender, such formalities 
  were no longer necessary; Joam Dacosta had been arrested, convicted, 
  and sentenced twenty-three years ago for the crime at Tijuco; no 
  limitation had yet affected his sentence. No demand in commutation of 
  the penalty could be introduced, and no appeal for mercy could be 
  received. It was only necessary then to establish his identity, and as soon 
  as the order arrived from Rio Janeiro justice would have to take its 
  course. 
  But in the nature of things Joam Dacosta would protest his innocence; 
  he would say he had been unjustly condemned. The magistrate's duty, 
  notwithstanding the opinions he held, would be to listen to him. The 
  question would be, what proofs could the convict offer to make good his 
  assertions? And if he was not able to produce them when he appeared 
  before his first judges, was he able to do so now? 
  Herein consisted all the interest of the examination. There would have 
  to be admitted the fact of a defaulter, prosperous and safe in a foreign 
  country, leaving his refuge of his won free will to face the justice which 
  his past life should have taught him to dread, and herein would be on of 
  those rare and curious cases which ought to interest even a magistrate 
  hardened with all the surroundings of forensic strife. Was it impudent 
  folly on the part of the doomed man of Tijuco, who was tired of his life, 
  or was it the impulse of a conscience which would at all risks have 
  wrong set right? The problem was a strange one, it must be 
  acknowledged. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 24 
  On the morrow of Joam Dacosta's arrest, Judge Jarriquez made his 
  way to the prison in God-the-Son Street, where the convict had been 
  placed. The prison was an old missionary convent, situated on the bank 
  of one of the principal iguarapes of the town. To the voluntary prisoners 
  of former times there had succeeded in this building, which was but 
  little adapted for the purpose, the compulsory prisoners of to-day. The 
  room occupied by Joam Dacosta was nothing like one of those sad little 
  cells which form part of our modern penitentiary system: but an old 
  monk's room, with a barred window without shutters, opening on to an 
  uncultivated space, a bench in one corner, and a kind of pallet in the 
  other. It was from this apartment that Joam Dacosta, on this 25th of 
  August, about eleven o'clock in the morning, was taken and brought 
  into the judge's room, which was the old common hall of the convent. 
  Judge Jarriquez was there in front of his desk, perched on his high 
  chair, his back turned toward the window, so that his face was in 
  shadow while that of the accused remained in full daylight. His clerk, 
  with the indifference which characterizes these legal folks, had taken his 
  seat at the end of the table, his pen behind his ear, ready to record the 
  questions and answers. 
  Joam Dacosta was introduced into the room, and at a sign from the 
  judge the guards who had brought him withdrew. 
  Judge Jarriquez looke at the accused for some time. The latter, leaning 
  slightly forward and maintaining a becoming attitude, neither careless 
  nor humble, waited with dignity for the questions to which he was 
  expected to reply. 
  "Your name?" said Judge Jarriquez. 
  "Joam Dacosta." 
  "Your age?" 
  "Fifty-two." 
  "Where do you live?" 
  "In Peru, at the village of Iquitos." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 24 
  "Under what name?" 
  "Under that of Garral, which is that of my mother." 
  "And why do you bear that name?" 
  "Because for twenty-three years I wished to hide myself from the 
  pursuit of Brazilian justice." 
  The answers were so exact, and seemed to show that Joam Dacosta had 
  made up his mind to confess everything concerning his past and present 
  life, that Judge Jarriquez, little accustomed to such a course, cocked up 
  his nose more than was usual to him. 
  "And why," he continued, "should Brazilian justice pursue you?" 
  "Because I was sentenced to death in 1826 in the diamond affair at 
  Tijuco." 
  "You confess then that you are Joam Dacosta?" 
  "I am Joam Dacosta." 
  All this was said with great calmness, and as simply as possible. The 
  little eyes of Judge Jarriquez, hidden by their lids, seemed to say: 
  "Never came across anything like this before." 
  He had put the invariable question which had hitherto brought the 
  invariable reply from culprits of every category protesting their 
  innocence. The fingers of the judge began to beat a gentle tattoo on the 
  table. 
  "Joam Dacosta," he asked, "what were you doing at Iquitos?" 
  "I was a fazender, and engaged in managing a farming establishment of 
  considerable size." 
  "It was prospering?" 
  "Greatly prospering." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 24 
  "How long ago did you leave your fazenda?" 
  "About nine weeks." 
  "Why?" 
  "As to that, sir," answered Dacosta, "I invented a pretext, but in reality 
  I had a motive." 
  "What was the pretext?" 
  "The responsibility of taking into Para a large raft, and a cargo of 
  different products of the Amazon." 
  "Ah! and what was the real motive of your departure?" 
  And in asking this question Jarriquez said to himself: 
  "Now we shall get into denials and falsehoods." 
  "The real motive," replied Joam Dacosta, in a firm voice, "was the 
  resolution I had taken to give myself up to the justice of my country." 
  "You give yourself up!" exclaimed the judge, rising from his stool. 
  "You give yourself up of your own free will?" 
  "Of my own free will." 
  "And why?" 
  "Because I had had enough of this lying life, this obligatin to live under 
  a false name, of this impossibility to be able to restore to my wife and 
  children that which belongs to them; in short, sir, because----" 
  "Because?" 
  "I was innocent!" 
  "That is what I was waiting for," said Judge Jarriquez. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 24 
  And while his fingers tattooed a slightly more audible march, he made a 
  sign with his head to Dacosta, which signified as clearly as possible, "Go 
  on! Tell me your history. I know it, but I do not wish to interrupt you in 
  telling it in your own way." 
  Joam Dacosta, who did not disregard the magistrate's far from 
  encouraging attitude, could not but see this, and he told the history of 
  his whole life. He spoke quietly without departing from the calm he had 
  imposed upon himself, without omitting any circumstances which had 
  preceded or succeeded his condemnation. In the same tone he insisted 
  on the honored and honorable life he had led since his escape, on his 
  duties as head of his family, as husband and father, which he had so 
  worthily fulfilled. He laid stress only on one circumstance--that which 
  had brought him to Manaos to urge on the revision of the proceedings 
  against him, to procure his rehabilitation--and that he was compelled to 
  do. 
  Judge Jarriques, who was naturally prepossessed against all criminals, 
  did not interrupt him. He contented himself with opening and shutting 
  his eyes like a man who heard the story told for the hundredth time; 
  and when Joam Dacosta laid on the table the memoir which he had 
  drawn up, he made no movement to take it. 
  "You have finished?" he said. 
  "Yes, sir." 
  "And you persist in asserting that you only left Iquitos to procure the 
  revision of the judgment against you." 
  "I had no other intention." 
  "What is there to prove that? Who can prove that, without the 
  denunciation which had brought about your arrest, you would have 
  given yourself up?" 
  "This memoir, in the first place." 
  "That memoir was in your possession, and there is nothing to show that 
  had you not been arrested, you would have put it to the use you say you 
  intended." 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 24 
  "At the least, sir, there was one thing that was not in my possession, and 
  of the authenticity of which there can be no doubt." 
  "What?" 
  "The letter I wrote to your predecessor, Judge Ribeiro, the letter which 
  gave him notice of my early arrival." 
  "Ah! you wrote?" 
  "Yes. And the letter which ought to have arrived at its destination 
  should have been handed over to you." 
  "Really!" answered Judge Jarriquez, in a slightly incredulous tone. 
  "You wrote to Judge Ribeiro." 
  "Before he was a judge in this province," answered Joam Dacosta, "he 
  was an advocate at Villa Rica. He it was who defended me in the trial at 
  Tijuco. He never doubted of the justice of my cause. He did all he could 
  to save me. Twenty years later, when he had become chief justice at 
  Manaos, I let him know who I was, where I was, and what I wished to 
  attempt. His opinion about me had not changed, and it was at his advice 
  I left the fazenda, and came in person to proceed with my rehabilitation. 
  But death had unfortunately struck him, and maybe I shall be lost, sir, 
  if in Judge Jarriquez I do not find another Judge Ribeiro." 
  The magistrate, appealed to so directly, was about to start up in 
  defiance of all the traditions of the judicial bench, but he managed to 
  restrain himself, and was contented with muttering: 
  "Very strong, indeed; very strong!" 
  Judge Jarriquez was evidently hard of heart, and proof against all 
  surprise. 
  At this moment a guard entered the room, and handed a sealed packet 
  to the magistrate. 
  He broke the seal and drew a letter from the envelope. He opened it and 
  read it, not without a certain contraction of his eyebrows, and then said: 
  "I have no reason for hiding from you, Joam Dacosta, that this is the 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 24 
  letter you have been speaking about, addressed by you to Judge Ribeiro 
  and sent on to me. I have, therefore, no reason to doubt what you have 
  said on the subject." 
  "Not only on that subject," answered Dacosta, "but on the subject of all 
  the circumstances of my life which I have brought to your knowledge, 
  and which are none of them open to question." 
  "Eh! Joam Dacosta," quickly replie dJudge Jarriquez. "You protest 
  your innocence; but all prisoners do as much! After all, you only offer 
  moral presumptions. Have you any material proof?" 
  "Perhaps I have," answered Joam Dacosta. 
  At these words, Judge Jarriquez left his chair. This was too much for 
  him, and he had to take two or three circuits of the room to recover 
  himself. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
  | Top | Next Chapter | Title Page | Litrix Reading Room | Authors | Titles |
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  http://www.litrix.com/800lgs/800lg024.htm (8 of 8) [12/3/2001 11:21:27 AM]
  
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 25 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER V
  MATERIAL PROOFS 
  WHEN THE MAGISTRATE had again taken his place, like a man who 
  considered he was perfectly master of himself, he leaned back in his 
  chair, and with his head raised and his eyes looking straight in front, as 
  though not even noticing the accused, remarked, in a tone of the most 
  perfect indifference: 
  "Go on." 
  Joam Dacosta reflected for a minute as if hesitating to resume the order 
  of his thoughts, and then answered as follows: 
  "Up to the present, sir, I have only given you moral presumptions of my 
  innocence grounded on the dignity, propriety, and honesty of the whole 
  of my life. I should have thought that such proofs were those most 
  worthy of being brought forward in matters of justice." 
  Judge Jarriquez could not restrain a movement of his shoulders, 
  showing that such was not his opinion. 
  "Since they are not enough, I proceed with the material proofs which I 
  shall perhaps be able to produce," continued Dacosta; "I say perhaps, 
  for I do not yet know what credit to attach to them. And, sir, I have 
  never spoken of these things to my wife or children, not wishing to raise 
  a hope which might be destroyed." 
  "To the point," answered Jarriquez. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 25 
  "I have every reason to believe, sir, that my arrest on the eve of the 
  arrival of the raft at Manaos is due to information given to the chief of 
  the police!" 
  "You are not mistaken, Joam Dacosta, but I ought to tell you that the 
  information is anonymous." 
  "It matters little, for I know that it could only come from a scoundrel 
  called Torres." 
  "And what right have you to speak in such a way of this--informer?" 
  "A scoundrel! Yes, sir!" replied Joam quickly. "This man, whom I 
  received with hospitality, only came to me to propose that I should 
  purchase his silence to offer me an odious bargain that I shall never 
  regret having refused, whatever may be the consequences of his 
  denunciation!" 
  "Always this method!" thought Judge Jarriquez; "accusing others to 
  clear himself." 
  But he none the less listened with extreme attention to Joam's recital of 
  his relations with the adventurer up to the moment when Torres let him 
  know that he knew and could reveal the name of the true author of the 
  crime of Tijuco. 
  "And what is the name of the guilty man?" asked Jarriquez, shaken in 
  his indifference. 
  "I do not know," answered Joam Dacosta. "Torres was too cautious to 
  let it out." 
  "And the culprit is living?" 
  "He is dead." 
  The fingers of Judge Jarriquez tattooed more quickly, and he could not 
  avoid exclaiming, "The man who can furnish the proof of a prisoner's 
  innocence is always dead." 
  "If the real culprit is dead, sir, " replied Dacosta, "Torres at least is 
  living, and the proof, written throughout in the handwriting of the 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 25 
  author of the crime, he has assured me is in his hands! He offered to sell 
  it to me!" 
  "Eh! Joam Dacosta!" answered Judge Jarriquez, "that would not have 
  been dear at the cost of the whole of your fortune!" 
  "If Torres had only asked my fortune, I would have given it to him and 
  not one of my people would have demurred! Yes, you are right, sir; a 
  man cannot pay too dearly for the redemption of his honor! But this 
  scoundrel, knowing that I was at his mercy, required more than my 
  fortune!" 
  "How so?" 
  "My daughter's hand was to be the cost of the bargain! I refused; he 
  denounced me, and that is why I am now before you!" 
  "And if Torres had not informed against you," asked Judge Jarriquez--
  "if Torres had not met with you on your voyage, what would you have 
  done on learning on your arrival of the death of Judge Ribeiro? Would 
  you then have delivered yourself into the hands of justice?" 
  "Without the slightest hesitation," replied Joam, in a firm voice; "for, I 
  repeat it, I had no other object in leaving Iquitos to come to Manaos." 
  This was said in such a tone of truthfulness that Judge Jarriquez 
  experienced a kind of feeling making its way to that corner of the heart 
  where convictions are formed, but he did not yet give in. 
  He could hardly help being astonished. A judge engaged merely in this 
  examination, he knew nothing of what is known by those who have 
  followed this history, and who cannot doubt but that Torres held in his 
  hands the material proof of Joam Dacosta's innocence. They know that 
  the document existed; that it contained this evidence; and perhaps they 
  may be led to think that Judge Jarriquez was pitilessly incredulous. But 
  they should remember that Judge Jarriquez was not in their position; 
  that he was accustomed to the invariable protestations of the culprits 
  who came before him. The document which Joam Dacosta appealed to 
  was not produced; he did not really know if it actually existed; and to 
  conclude, he had before him a man whose guilt had for him the 
  certainty of a settled thing. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 25 
  However, he wished, perhaps through curiosity, to drive Joam Dacosta 
  behind his last entrenchments. 
  "And so," he said, "all your hope now rests on the declaration which 
  has been made to you by Torres." 
  "Yes, sir, if my whole life does not plead for me." 
  "Where do you think Torres really is?" 
  "I think in Manaos." 
  "And you hope that he will speak--that he will consent to good-
  naturedly hand over to you the document for which you have declined 
  to pay the price he asked?" 
  "I hope so, sir," replied Joam Dacosta; "the situation now is not the 
  same for Torres; he has denounced me, and consequently he cannot 
  retain any hope of resuming his bargaining under the previous 
  conditions. But this document might still be worth a fortune if, 
  supposing I am acquitted or executed, it should ever escape him. Hence 
  his interest is to sell me the document, which can thus not injure him in 
  any way, and I think he will act according to his interest." 
  The reasoning of Joam Dacosta was unanswerable, and Judge Jarriquez 
  felt it to be so. He made the only possible objection. 
  "The interest of Torres is doubtless to selel you the document--if the 
  document exists." 
  "If it does not exist," answered Joam Dacosta, in a penetrating voice, 
  "in trusting to the justice of men, I must put my trust only in God!" 
  At these words Judge Jarriquez rose, and, in not quite such an 
  indifferent tone, said, "Joam Dacosta, in examining you here, in 
  allowing you to relate the particulars of your past life and to protest 
  your innocence, I have gone further than my instructions allow me. An 
  information has already been laid in this affair, and you have appeared 
  before the jury at Villa Rica, whose verdict was given unanimously, and 
  without even the addition of extenuating circumstances. You have been 
  found guilty of the instigation of, and complicity in, the murder of the 
  soldiers and the robbery of the diamonds at Tijuco, the capital sentence 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 25 
  was pronounced on you, and it was only by flight that you escaped 
  execution. But that you came here to deliver yourself over, or not, to the 
  hands of justice twenty-three years afterward, you would never have 
  been retaken. For the last time, you admit that you are Joam Dacosta, 
  the condemned man of the diamond arrayal?" 
  "I am Joam Dacosta." 
  "You are ready to sign this declaration?" 
  "I am ready." 
  And with a hand without a tremble Joam Dacosta put his name to the 
  foot of the declaration and the report which Judge Jarriquez had made 
  his clerk draw up. 
  "The report, addressed to the minister of justice, is to be sent off to Rio 
  Janeiro," said the magistrate. "Many days will elapse before we receive 
  orders to carry out your sentence. If then, as you say, Torres possesses 
  the proof of your innocence, do all you can yourself--do all you can 
  through your friends--do everything, so that that proof can be produced 
  in time. Once the order arrives no delay will be possible, and justice 
  must take its course." 
  Joam Dacosta bowed slightly. 
  "Shall I be allowed in the meantime to see my wife and children?" he 
  asked. 
  "After to-day, if you wish," answered Judge Jarriquez; "you are no 
  longer in close confinement, and they can be brought to you as soon as 
  they apply." 
  The magistrate then rang the bell. The guards entered the room, and 
  took away Joam Dacosta. 
  Judge Jarriquez watched him as he went out, and shook his head and 
  muttered: 
  "Well, well! This is a much stranger affair than I ever thought it would 
  be!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 25 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 26 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER VI
  THE LAST BLOW 
  WHILE JOAM DACOSTA was undergoing this examination, Yaquita, 
  from an inquiry made by Manoel, ascertained that she and her children 
  would be permitted to see the prisoner that very day about four o'clock 
  in the afternoon. 
  Yaquita had not left her room since the evening before. Minha and Lina 
  kept near her, waiting for the time when she would be admitted to see 
  her husband. 
  Yaquita Garral or Yaquita Dacosta, he would still find her the devoted 
  wife and brave companion he had ever known her to be. 
  About eleven o'clock in the morning Benito joined Manoel and Fragoso, 
  who were talking in the bow of the jangada. 
  "Manoel," said he, "I have a favor to ask you." 
  "What is it?" 
  "And you too, Fragoso." 
  "I am at your service, Mr. Benito," answered the barber. 
  "What is the matter?" asked Manoel, looking at his friend, whose 
  expression was that of a man who had come to some unalterable 
  resolution. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 26 
  "You never doubt my father's innocence? Is that so?" said Benito. 
  "Ah!" exclaimed Fragoso. "Rather I think it was I who committed the 
  crime." 
  "Well, we must now commence on the project I thought of yesterday." 
  "To find out Torres?" asked Manoel. 
  "Yes, and know from him how he found out my father's retreat. There 
  is something inexplicable about it. Did he know it before? I cannot 
  understand it, for my father never left Iquitos for more than twenty 
  years, and this scoundrel is hardly thirty! But the day will not close 
  before I know it; or, woe to Torres!" 
  Benito's resolution admitted of no discussion; and besides, neither 
  Manoel nor Fragoso had the slightest thought of dissuading him. 
  "I will ask, then," continued Benito, "for both of you to accompany me. 
  We shall start in a minute or two. It will not do to wait till Torres has 
  left Manaos. He has no longer got his silence to sell, and the idea might 
  occur to him. Let us be off!" 
  And so all three of them landed on the bank of the Rio Negro and 
  started for the town. 
  Manaos was not so considerable that it could not be searched in a few 
  hours. They had made up their minds to go from house to house, if 
  necessary, to look for Torres, but their better plan seemed to be to apply 
  in the first instance to the keepers of the taverns and lojas where the 
  adventurer was most likely to put up. There could hardly be a doubt 
  that the ex-captain of the woods would not have given his name; he 
  might have personal reasons for avoiding all communication with the 
  police. Nevertheless, unless he had left Manaos, it was almost impossible 
  for him to escape the young fellows' search. In any case, there would be 
  no use in applying to the police, for it was very probable--in fact, we 
  know that it actually was so--that the information given to them had 
  been anonymous. 
  For an hour Benito, Manoel, and Fragoso walked along the principal 
  streets of the town, inquiring of the tradesmen in their shops, the tavern-
  keepers in their cabarets, and even the bystanders, without any one 
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  being able to recognize the individual whose description they so 
  accurately gave. 
  Had Torres left Manaos? Would they have to give up all hope of coming 
  across him? 
  In vain Manoel tried to calm Benito, whose head seemed on fire. Cost 
  what it might, he must get at Torres! 
  Chance at last favored them, and it was Fragoso who put them on the 
  right track. 
  In a tavern in Holy Ghost Street, from the description which the people 
  received of the adventurer, they replied that the individual inquestion 
  had put up at the loja the evening before. 
  "Did he sleep here?" asked Fragoso. 
  "Yes," answered the tavern-keeper. 
  "Is he here now?" 
  "No. He has gone out." 
  "But has he settled his bill, as a man would who has gone for good?" 
  "By no means; he left his room about an hour ago, and he will doubtless 
  come back to supper." 
  "Do you know what road he took when he went out?" 
  "We saw him turning toward the Amazon, going through the lower 
  town, and you will probably meet him on that side." 
  Fragoso did not want any more. A few seconds afterward he rejoined 
  the young fellows, and said: 
  "I am on the track." 
  "He is there!" exclaimed Benito. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 26 
  "No; he has just gone out, and they have seen him walking across to the 
  bank of the Amazon." 
  "Come on!" replied Benito. 
  They had to go back toward the river, and the shortest way was for 
  them to take the left bank of the Rio Negro, down to its mouth. 
  Benito and his companions soon left the last houses of the town behind, 
  and followed the bank, making a slight detour so as not to be observed 
  from the jangada. 
  The plain was at this time deserted. Far away the view exstended across 
  the flat, where cultivated fields had replaced the former forests. 
  Benito did not speak; he could not utter a word. Manoel and Fragoso 
  respected his silence. And so the three of them went along and looked 
  about on all sides as they traversed the space between the bank of the 
  Rio Negro and that of the Amazon. Three-quarters of an hour after 
  leaving Manaos, and still they had seen nothing! 
  Once or twice Indians working in the fields were met with. Manoel 
  questioned them, and one of them at length told him that a man, such as 
  he described, had just passed in the direction of the angle formed by the 
  two rivers at their confluence. 
  Without waiting for more, Benito, by an irresistible movement, strode 
  to the front, and his two companions had to hurry on to avoid being left 
  behind. 
  The left bank of the Amazon was then about a quarter of a mile off. A 
  sort of cliff appeared ahead, hiding a part of the horizon, and bounding 
  the view a few hundred paces in advance. 
  Benito, hurrying on, soon disappeared behind one of the sandy knolls. 
  "Quicker! quicker!" said Manoel to Fragoso. "We must not leave him 
  alone for an instant." 
  And they were dashing along when a shout struck on their ears. 
  Had Benito caught sight of Torres? What had he seen? Had Benito and 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 26 
  Torres already met? 
  Manoel and Fragoso, fifty paces further on, after swiftly running round 
  one of the spurs of the bank, saw two men standing face to face to each 
  other. 
  They were Torres and Benito. 
  In an instant Manoel and Fragoso had hurried up to them. It might 
  have been supposed that in Benito's state of excitement he would be 
  unable to restrain himself when he found himself once again in the 
  presence of the adventurer. It was not so. 
  As soon as the young man saw himself face to face with Torres, and was 
  certain that he could not escape, a complete change took place in his 
  manner, his coolness returned, and he became once more master of 
  himself. 
  The two men looked at one another for a few moments without a word. 
  Torres first broke silence, and, in the impudent tone habitual to him, 
  remarked: 
  "Ah! How goes it, Mr. Benito Garral?" 
  "No, Benito Dacosta!" answered the young man. 
  "Quite so," continued Torres. "Mr. Benito Dacosta, accompanied by 
  Mr. Manoel Valdez and my friend Fragoso!" 
  At the irritating qualification thus accorded him by the adventurer, 
  Fragoso, who was by no means loath to do him some damage, was about 
  to rush to the attack, when Benito, quite unmoved, held him back. 
  "What is the matter with you, my lad?" exclaimed Torres, retreating 
  for a few steps. "I think I had better put myself on guard." 
  And as he spoke he drew from beneath his poncho his manchetta, the 
  weapon, adapted at will for offense or defense, which a Brazilian is 
  never without. And then, slightly stooping, and planted firmly on his 
  feet, he waited for what was to follow. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 26 
  "I have come to look for you, Torres," said Benito, who had not stirred 
  in the least at this threatening attitude. 
  "To look for me?" answered the adventurer. "It is not very difficult to 
  find me. And why have you come to look for me?" 
  "To know from your own lips what you appear to know of the past life 
  of my father." 
  "Really?" 
  "Yes. I want to know how you recognized him, why yu were prowling 
  about our fazenda in the forest of Iquitos, and why you were waiting for 
  us at Tabatinga." 
  "Well! it seems to me nothing could be clearer!" answered Torres, with 
  a grin. "I was waiting to get a passage on the jangada, and I went on 
  board with the intention of making him a very simple proposition--
  which possibly he was wrong in rejecting." 
  At these words Manoel could stand it no longer. With pale face and eye 
  of fire he strode up to Torres. 
  Benito, wishing to exhaust every means of conciliation, thrust himself 
  between them. 
  "Calm yourself, Manoel!" he said. "I am calm--even I." 
  And then continuing: 
  "Quite so, Torres; I know the reason of your coming on board the raft. 
  Possessed of a secret which was doubtless given to you, you wanted to 
  make it a means of extortion. But that is not what I want to know at 
  present." 
  "What is it, then?" 
  "I want to know how you recognized Joam Dacosta in the fazenda of 
  Iquitos?" 
  "How I recognized him?" replied Torres. "That is my business, and I 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 26 
  see no reason why I should tell you. The important fact is, that I was not 
  mistaken when I denounced in him the real author of the crime of 
  Tijuco!" 
  "You say that to me?" exclaimed Benito, who began to lose his self-
  possession. 
  "I will tell you nothing," returned Torres; "Joam Dacosta declined my 
  propositions! He refused to admit me into his family! Well! now that his 
  secret is known, now that he is a prisoner, it is I who refuse to enter his 
  family, the family of a thief, of a murderer, of a condemned felon, for 
  whom the gallows now waits!" 
  "Scoundrel!" exclaimed Benito, who drew his manchetta from his belt 
  and put himself in position. 
  Manoel and Fragoso, by a similar movement, quickly drew their 
  weapons. 
  "Three against one!" said Torres. 
  "No! one against one!" answered Benito. 
  "Really! I should have thought an assassination would have better 
  suited an assassin's son!" 
  "Torres!" exclaimed Benito, "defend yourself, or I will kill you like a 
  mad dog!" 
  "Mad! so be it!" answered Torres. "But I bite, Benito Dacosta, and 
  beware of the wounds!" 
  And then again grasping his manchetta, he put himself on guard and 
  ready to attack his enemy. 
  Benito had stepped back a few paces. 
  "Torres," he said, regaining all his coolness, which for a moment he had 
  lost; "you were the guest of my father, you threatened him, you 
  betrayed him, you denounced him, you accused an innocent man, and 
  with God's help I am going to kill you!" 
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  Torres replied with the most insolent smile imaginable. Perhaps at the 
  moment the scoundrel had an idea of stopping any struggle between 
  Benito and him, and he could have done so. In fact he had seen that 
  Joam Dacosta had said nothing about the document which formed the 
  material proof of his innocence. 
  Had he revealed to Benito that he, Torres, possessed this proof, Benito 
  would have been that instant disarmed. But his desire to wait till the 
  very last moment, so as to get the very best price for the document he 
  possessed, the recollection of the young man's insulting words, and the 
  hate which he bore to all that belonged to him, made him forget his own 
  interest. 
  In addition to being thoroughly accustomed to the manchetta, which he 
  often had had occasion to use, the adventurer was strong, active, and 
  artful, so that against an adversary who was scarcely twenty, who could 
  have neither his strength nor his dexgterity, the chances were greatly in 
  his favor. 
  Manoel by a last effort wished to insist on fighting him instead of 
  Benito. 
  "No, Manoel," was the cool reply, "it is for me alone to avenge my 
  father, and as everyhthing here ought to be in order, you shall be my 
  second." 
  "Benito!" 
  "As for you, Fragoso, you will not refuse if I ask you to act as second for 
  that man?" 
  "So be it," answered Fragoso, "though it is not an office of honor. 
  Without the least ceremony," he added, "I would have killed him like a 
  wild beast." 
  The place where the duel was about to take place was a level bank about 
  fifty paces long, on the top of a cliff rising perpendicularly some fifty 
  feet above the Amazon. The river slowly flowed at the foot, and bathed 
  the clumps of reeds which bristled round its base. 
  There was, therefore, none too much room, and the combatant who was 
  the first to give way would quickly be driven over into the abyss. 
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  The signal was given by Manoel, and Torres and Benito stepped 
  forward. 
  Benito had complete command over himself. The defender of a sacred 
  cause, his coolness was unruffled, much more so than that of Torres, 
  whose conscience insensible and hardened as it was, was bound at the 
  moment to trouble him. 
  The two met, and the first blow came from Benito. Torres parried it. 
  They then jumped back, but almost at the same instant they rushed 
  together, and with their left hands seized each other by the shoulder--
  never to leave go again. 
  Torres, who was the strongest, struck a side blow with his manchetta 
  which Benito could not quite parry. His left side was touched, and his 
  poncho was reddened with his blood. But he quickly replied, and 
  slightly wounded Torres in the hand. 
  Several blows were then interchanged, but nothing decisive was done. 
  The ever silent gaze of Benito pierced the eyes of Torres like a sword 
  blade thrust to his very heart. Visibly the scoundrel began to quail. He 
  recoiled little by little, pressed back by his implacable foe, who was 
  more determined on taking the life of his father's denouncer than in 
  defending his own. To strike was all that Benito longed for; to parry was 
  all that the other now attempted to do. 
  Soon Torres saw himself thrust to the very edge of the bank, at a spot 
  where, slightly scooped away, it overhung the river. He perceived the 
  danger; he tried to retake the offensive and regain the lost ground. His 
  agitation increased, his looks grew livid. At length he was obliged to 
  stoop beneath the arm which threatened him. 
  "Die, then!" exclaimed Benito. 
  The blow was struck full on its chest, but the point of the manchetta was 
  stopped by a hard substance hidden beneath the poncho of the 
  adventurer. 
  Benito renewed his attack, and Torres, whose return thrust did not 
  touch his adversary, felt himself lost. He was again obliged to retreat. 
  Then he would have shouted--shouted that the life of Joam Dacosta 
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  depended on his own! He had not time! 
  A second thrust of the manchetta pierced his heart. He fell backward, 
  and the ground suddenly failing him, he was precipitated down the cliff. 
  As a last effort his hands convulsively clutched at a clump of reeds, but 
  they could not stop him, and he disappeared beneath the waters of the 
  river. 
  Benito was supported on Manoel's shoulder; Fragoso grasped his hands. 
  He would not even give his companions time to dress his wound, which 
  was very slight. 
  "To the jangada!" he said, "to the jangada!" 
  Manoel and Fragoso with deep emotion followed him without speaking 
  a word. 
  A quarter of an hour afterward the three reached the bank to which the 
  raft was moored. Benito and Manoel rushed into the room where were 
  Yaquita and Minha, and told them all that had passed. 
  "My son!" "My brother!" 
  The words were uttered at the same moment. 
  "To the prison!" said Benito. 
  "Yes! Come! come!" replied Yaquita. 
  Benito, followed by Manoel, hurried along his mother, and half an hour 
  later they arrived before the prison. 
  Owing to the order previously given by Judge Jarriquez they were 
  immediately admitted, and conducted to the chamber occupied by the 
  prisoner. 
  The door opened. Joam Dacosta saw his wife, his son, and Manoel enter 
  the room. 
  "Ah! Joam, my Joam!" exclaimed Yaquita. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 26 
  "Yaquita! my wife! my children!" replied the prisoner, who opened his 
  arms and pressed them to his heart. 
  "My Joam, innocent!" 
  "Innocent and avenged!" said Benito. 
  "Avenged? What do you mean?" 
  "Torres is dead, father; killed by my hand!" 
  "Dead!--Torres!--Dead!" gasped Joam Dacosta. "My son! You have 
  ruined me!" 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 27 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER VII
  RESOLUTIONS 
  A FEW HOURS later the whole family had returned to the raft, and 
  were assembled in the large room. All were there, except the prisoner, 
  on whom the last blow had just fallen. Benito was quite overwhelmed, 
  and accused himself of having destroyed his father, and had it not been 
  for the entreaties of Yaquita, of his sister, of Padre Passanha, and of 
  Manoel, the distracted youth would in the first moments of despair have 
  probably made away with himself. But he was never allowed to get out 
  of sight; he was never left alone. And besides, how could he have acted 
  otherwise? Ah! why had not Joam Dacosta told him all before he left the 
  jangada? Why had he refrained from speaking, except before a judge, 
  of this material proof of his innocence? Why, in his interview with 
  Manoel after the expulsion of Torres, had he been silent about the 
  document which the adventurer pretended to hold in his hands? But, 
  after all, what faith ought he to place in what Torres had said? Could he 
  be certain that such a document was in the rascal's possession? 
  Whatever might be the reason, the family now knew everything, and 
  that from the lips of Joam Dacosta himself. They knew that Torres had 
  declared that the proof of the innocence of the convict of Tijuco actually 
  existed; that the document had been written by the very hand of the 
  author of the attack; that the criminal, seized by remorse at the moment 
  of his death, had intrusted it to his companion, Torres; and that he, 
  instead of fulfilling the wishes of the dying man, had made the handing 
  over of the document an excuse for extortion. But they knew also that 
  Torrres had just been killed, and that his body was engulfed in the 
  waters of the Amazon, and that he died without even mentioning the 
  name of the guilty man. 
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  Unless he was saved by a miracle, Joam Dacosta might now be 
  considered as irrevocably lost. The death of Judge Ribeiro on the one 
  hand, the death of Torres on the other, were blows from which he could 
  not recover! It should here be said that public opinion at Manaos, 
  unreasoning as it always is, was all against he prisoner. The unexpected 
  arrest of Joam Dacosta had revived the memory of the terrible crime of 
  Tijuco, which had lain forgotten for twenty-three years. The trial of 
  othe young clerk at the mines of the diamond arrayal, his capital 
  sentence, his escape a few hours before his intended execution--all were 
  remembered, analyzed, and commented on. An article which had just 
  appeared in the O Diario d'o Grand Para, the most widely circulated 
  journal in these parts, after giving a history of the circumstances of the 
  crime, showed itself decidedly hostile to the prisoner. Why should these 
  people believe in Joam Dacosta's innocence, when they were ignorant of 
  all that his friends knew--of what they alone knew? 
  And so the people of Manaos became excited. A mob of Indians and 
  negroes hurried, in their blind folly, to surround the prison and roar 
  forth tumultuous shouts of death. In this part of the two Americas, 
  where executions under Lynch law are of frequent occurrence, the mob 
  soon surrenders itself to its cruel instincts, and it was feared that on this 
  occasion it would do justice with its own hands. 
  What a night it was for the passengers from the fazenda! Masters and 
  servants had been affected by the blow! Were not the servants of the 
  fazenda members of one family? Every one of them would watch over 
  the safety of Yaquita and her people! On the bank of the Rio Negro 
  there was a constant coming and going of the natives, evidently excited 
  by the arrest of Joam Dacosta, and who could say to what excesses these 
  half-barbarous men might be led? 
  The time, however, passed without any demonstration against the 
  jangada. 
  On the morrow, the 26th of August, as soon as the sun rose, Manoel and 
  Fragoso, who had never left Benito for an instant during this terrible 
  night, attempted to distract his attention from his despair. After taking 
  him aside they made him understand that there was no time to be lost--
  that they must make up their minds to act. 
  "Benito," said Manoel, "pull yourself together! Be a man again! Be a 
  son again!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 27 
  "My father!" exclaimed Benito. "I have killed him!" 
  "No!" replied Manoel. "With heaven's help it is possible that all may 
  not be lost!" 
  "Listen to us, Mr. Benito," said Fragoso. 
  The young man, passing his hand over his eyes, made a violent effort to 
  collect himself. 
  "Benito," continued Manoel, "Torres never gave a hint to put us on the 
  track of his past life. We therefore cannot tell who was the author of the 
  crime of Tijuco, or under what conditions it was committed. To try in 
  that direction is to lose our time." 
  "And time presses!" added Fragoso. 
  "Besides," said Manoel, "suppose we do find out who this companion of 
  Torres was, he is dead, and he could not testify in any way to the 
  innocence of Joam Dacosta. But it is none the less certain that the proof 
  of this innocence exists, and there is not room to doubt the existence of a 
  document which Torres was anxious to make the subject of a bargain. 
  He told us so himself. The document is a complete avowal written in the 
  handwriting of the culprit, which relates the attack in its smallest 
  details, and which clears our father! Yes! a hundred times, yes! The 
  document exists!" 
  "But Torres does not exist!" groaned Benito, "and the document has 
  perished with him!" 
  "Wait, and don't despair yet!" answered Manoel. "You remember 
  under what circumstances we made the acquaintance of Torres? It was 
  in the depths of the forest of Iquitos. He was in pursuit of a monkey 
  which had stolen a metal case, which it so strangely kept, and the chase 
  had lasted a couple of hours when the monkey fell to our guns. Now, do 
  you think that it was for the few pieces of gold contained in the case that 
  Torres was in such a fury to recover it? and do you not remember the 
  extraordinary satisfaction which he displayed when we gave him back 
  the case which we had taken out of the monkey's paw?" 
  "Yes!" yes!" answered Benito. "This case which I held--which I gave 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 27 
  back to him! Perhaps it contained----" 
  "It is more than probable! It is certain!" replied Manoel. 
  "And I beg to add," said Fragoso, "for now the fact recurs to my 
  memory, that during the time you were at Ega I remained on board, at 
  Lina's advice, to keep an eye on Torres, and I saw him--yes, I saw him--
  reading, and again reading, an old faded paper, and muttering words 
  which I could not understand." 
  "That was the document!" exclaimed Benito, who snatched at the hope--
  the only one that was left. "But this document; had he not put it in some 
  place of security?" 
  "No," answered Manoel--"no; it was too precious for Torres to dream 
  of parting with it. He was bound to carry it always about with him, and 
  doubtless in that very case." 
  "Wait! wait, Manoel!" exclaimed Benito; "I remember--yes, I 
  remember. During the struggle, at the first blow I struck Torres in his 
  chest, my manchetta was stopped by some hard substance under his 
  poncho, like a plate of metal----" 
  "That was the case!" said Fragoso. 
  "Yes," replied Manoel; "doubt is impossible! That was the case; it was 
  in his breast-pocket." 
  "But the corpse of Torres?" 
  "We will recover it!" 
  "But the paper! The water will have stained it, perhaps destroyed it, or 
  rendered it undecipherable!" 
  "Why," answered Manoel, "if the metal case which held it was water-
  tight?" 
  "Manoel," replied Benito, who seized on the last hope, "you are right! 
  The corpse of Torres must be recovered! We will ransack the whole of 
  this part of the river, if necessary, but we will recover it!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 27 
  The pilot Araujo was then summoned and informed of what they were 
  going to do. 
  "Good!" replied he; "I know all the eddies and currents where the Rio 
  Negro and the Amazon join, and we shall succeed in recovering the 
  body. Let us take two pirogues, two ubas, a dozen of our Indians, and 
  make a start." 
  Padre Passanha was then coming out of Yaquita's room. 
  Benito went to him, and in a few words told him what they were going 
  to do to get possession of the document. "Say nothing to my mother or 
  my sister," he added; "if this last hope fails it will kill them!" 
  "Go, my lad, go," replied Passanha, "and may God help you in your 
  search." 
  Five minutes afterward the four boats started from the raft. After 
  descending the Rio Negro they arrived near the bank of the Amazon, at 
  the very place where Torres, mortally wounded, had disappeared 
  beneath the waters of the stream. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 28 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER VIII
  THE FIRST SEARCH 
  THE SEARCH had to commence at once, and that for two weighty 
  reasons. 
  The first of these was--and this was a question of life or death--that this 
  proof of Joam Dacosta's innocence must be produced before the arrival 
  of the order from Rio Janeiro. Once the identity of the prisoner was 
  established, it was impossible that such an order could be other than the 
  order for his execution. 
  The second was that the body of Torres should be got out of the water 
  as quickly as possible so as to regain undamaged the metal case and the 
  paper it ought to contain. 
  At this juncture Araujo displayed not only zeal and intelligence, but also 
  a perfect knowledge of the state of the river at its confluence with the 
  Rio Negro. 
  "If Torres," he said to the young men, "had been from the first carried 
  away by the current, we should have to drag the river throughout a 
  large area, for we shall have a good many days to wait for his body to 
  reappear on the surface through the effects of decomposition." 
  "We cannot do that," replied Manoel. "This very day we ought to 
  succeed." 
  "If, on the contrary," continued the pilot, "the corpse has got stuck 
  among the reeds and vegetation at the foot of the bank, we shall not be 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 28 
  an hour before we find it." 
  "To work, then!" answered Benito. 
  There was but one way of working. The boats approached the bank, and 
  the Indians, furnished with long poles, began to sound every part of the 
  river at the base of the bluff which had served for the scene of combat. 
  The place had been easily recognized. A track of blood stained the 
  declivity in its chalky part, and ran perpendicularly down it into the 
  water; and there many a clot scattered on the reeds indicated the very 
  spot where the corpse had disappeared. 
  About fifty feet down stream a point jutted out from the riverside and 
  kept back the waters in a kind of eddy, as in a large basin. There was no 
  current whatever near the shore, and the reeds shot up out of the river 
  unbent. Every hope then existed that Torres' body had not been carried 
  away by the main stream. Where the bed of the river showed sufficient 
  slope, it was perhaps possible for the corpse to have rolled several feet 
  along the ridge, and even there no effect of the current could be traced. 
  The ubas and the pirogues, dividing the work among them, limited the 
  field of their researches to the extreme edge of the eddy, and from the 
  circumference to the center the crews' long poles left not a single point 
  unexplored. But no amount of sounding discovered the body of the 
  adventurer, neither among the clumps of reeds nor on the bottom of the 
  river, whose slope was then carefully examined. 
  Two hours after the work had begun they had been led to think that the 
  body, having probably struck against the declivity, had fallen off 
  obliquely and rolled beyond the limits of this eddy, where the action of 
  the current commenced to be felt. 
  "But that is no reason why we should despair," said Manoel, "still less 
  why we should give up our search." 
  "Will it be necessary," exclaimed Benito, "to search the river 
  throughout its breadth and its length?" 
  "Throughout its breadth, perhaps," answered Araujo, "throughout its 
  length, no--fortunately." 
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  "And why?" asked Manoel. 
  "Because the Amazon, about a mile away from its junction with the Rio 
  Negro, makes a sudden bend, and at the same time its bed rises, so that 
  there is a kind of natural barrier, well known to sailors as the Bar of 
  Frias, which things floating near the surface are alone able to clear. In 
  short, the currents are ponded back, and they cannot possibly have any 
  effect over this depression." 
  This was fortunate, it must be admitted. But was Araujo mistaken? The 
  old pilot of the Amazon could be relied on. For the thirty years that he 
  had followed his profession the crossing of the Bar of Frias, where the 
  current was increased in force by its decrease in depth, had often given 
  him trouble. The narrowness of the channel and the elevation of the bed 
  made the passage exceedingly difficult, and many a raft had there come 
  to grief. 
  And so Araujo was right in declaring that if the corpse of Torres was 
  still retained by its weight on the sandy bed of the river, it could not 
  have been dragged over the bar. It is true that later on, when, on 
  account of the expansion of the gases, it would again rise to the surface, 
  the current would bear it away, and it would then be irrevocably lost 
  down the stream, a long way beyond the obstruction. But this purely 
  physical effect would not take place for several days. 
  They could not have applied to a man who was more skillful or more 
  conversant with the locality than Araujo, and when he affirmed that the 
  body could not have been borne out of the narrow channel for more 
  than a mile or so, they were sure to recover it if they thoroughly 
  sounded that portion of the river. 
  Not an island, not an islet, checked the course of the Amazon in these 
  parts. Hence, when the foot of the two banks had been visited up to the 
  bar, it was in the bed itself, about five hundred feet in width, that more 
  careful investigations had to be commenced. 
  The way the work was conducted was this. The boats taking the right 
  and left of the Amazon lay alongside the banks. The reeds and 
  vegetation were tried with the poles. Of the smallest ledges in the banks 
  in which a body could rest, not one escaped the scrutiny of Araujo and 
  his Indians. 
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  But all this labor produced no result, and half the day had elapsed 
  without the body being brought to the surface of the stream. 
  An hour's rest was given to the Indians. During this time they partook 
  of some refreshment, and then they returned to their task. 
  Four of the boats, in charge of the pilot, Benito, Fragoso, and Manoel, 
  divided the river between the Rio Negro and the Bar of Frias into four 
  portions. They set to work to explore its very bed. In certain places the 
  poles proved insufficient to thoroughly search among the deeps, and 
  hence a few dredges--or rather harrows, made of stones and old iron, 
  bound round with a solid bar--were taken on board, and when the boats 
  had pushed off these rakes were thrown in and the river bottom stirred 
  up in every direction. 
  It was in this difficult task that Benito and his companions were 
  employed till the evening. The ubas and pirogues, worked by the oars, 
  traversed the whole surface of the river up to the bar of Frias. 
  There had been moments of excitement during this spell of work, when 
  the harrows, catching in something at the bottom, offered some slight 
  resistance. They were then hauled up, but in place of the body so 
  eagerly searched for, there would appear only heavy stones or tufts of 
  herbage which they had dragged from their sandy bed. No one, 
  however, had an idea of giving up the enterprise. They none of them 
  thought of themselves in this work of salvation. Benito, Manoel, Araujo 
  had not even to stir up the Indians or to encourage them. The gallant 
  fellows knew that they were working for the fazender of Iquitos--for the 
  man whom they lvoed, for the chief of the excellent family who treated 
  their servants so well. 
  Yes; and so they would have passed the night in dragging the river. Of 
  every minute lost all knew the value. 
  A little before the sun disappeared, Araujo, finding it useless to continue 
  his operations in the gloom, gave the signal for the boats to join 
  company and return together to the confluence of the Rio Negro and 
  regain the jangada. 
  The work so carefully and intelligently conducted was not, however, at 
  an end. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 28 
  Manoel and Fragoso, as they came back, dared not mention their ill 
  success before Benito. They feared that the disappointment would only 
  force him to some act of despair. 
  But neither courage nor coolness deserted the young fellow; he was 
  determined to follow to the end this supreme effort to save the honor 
  and the life of his father, and he it was who addressed his companions, 
  and said: "To-morrow we will try again, and under better conditions if 
  possible." 
  "Yes," answered Manoel; "you are right, Benito. We can do better. We 
  cannot pretend to have entirely explored the river along the whole of the 
  banks and over the whole of its bed." 
  "No; we cannot have done that," replied Araujo; "and I maintain what 
  I said--that the body of Torres is there, and that it is there because it has 
  not been carried away, because it could not be drawn over the Bar of 
  Frias, and because it will take many days before it rises to the surface 
  and floats down the stream. Yes, it is there, and not a demijohn of tafia 
  will pass my lips until I find it!" 
  This affirmation from the pilot was worth a good deal, and was of a 
  hope-inspiring nature. 
  However, Benito, who did not care so much for words as he did for 
  things, thought proper to reply, "Yes, Araujo; the body of Torres is in 
  the river, and we shall find it if----" 
  "If?" said the pilot. 
  "If it has not become the prey of the alligators!" 
  Manoel and Fragoso waited anxiously for Araujo's reply. 
  The pilot was silent for a few moments; they felt that he was reflecting 
  before he spoke. "Mr. Benito," he said at length, "I am not in the habit 
  of speaking lightly. I had the same idea as you; but listen. During the ten 
  hours we have been at work have you seen a single cayman in the 
  river?" 
  "Not one," said Fragoso. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 28 
  "If you have not seen one," continued the pilot, "it was because there 
  were none to see, for these animals have nothing to keep them in the 
  white waters when, a quarter of a mile off, there are large stretches of 
  the black waters, which they so greatly prefer. When the raft was 
  attacked by some of these creatures it was in a part where there was no 
  place for them to flee to. Here it is quite different. Go to the Rio Negro, 
  and there you will see caymans by the score. Had Torres' body fallen 
  into that tributary there might be no chance of recovering it. But it was 
  in the Amazon that it was lost, and in the Amazon it will be found." 
  Benito, relieved from his fears, took the pilot's hand and chook it, and 
  contented himself with the reply, "To-morrow, my friends!" 
  Ten minutes later they were all on board the jangada. During the day 
  Yaquit had passed some hours with her husband. But before she 
  started, and when she saw neither the pilot, nor Manoel, nor Benito, nor 
  the boats, she had guessed the search on which they had gone, but she 
  said nothing to Joam Dacosta, as she hoped that in the morning she 
  would be able to inform him of their success. 
  But when Benito set foot on the raft she perceived that their search had 
  been fruitless. However, she advanced toward him. "Nothing?" she 
  asked. 
  ":Nothing," replied Benito. "But the morrow is left to us." 
  The members of the family retired to their rooms, and nothing more 
  was said as to what had passed. 
  Manoel tried to make Benito lie down, so as to take a few hours' rest. 
  "What is the good of that?" asked Benito. "Do you think I could sleep?" 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 29 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER IX
  THE SECOND ATTEMPT 
  ON THE MORROW, the 27th of August, Benito took Manoel apart, 
  before the sun had risen, and said to him: "Our yesterday's search was 
  vain. If we begin again under the same conditions we may be just as 
  unlucky." 
  "We must do so, however," replied Manoel. 
  "Yes," continued Benito; "but suppose we do not find the body, can you 
  tell me how long it will be before it rises to the surface?" 
  "If Torres," answered Manoel, "had fallen into the water living, and 
  not mortally wounded, it would take five or six days; but as he only 
  disappeared after being so wounded, perhaps two or three days would 
  be enough to bring him up again." 
  This answer of Manoel, which was quite correct, requires some 
  explanation. Every human body which falls into the water will float if 
  equilibrium is established between its density and that of its liquid bed. 
  This is well known to be the fact, even when a person does not know 
  how to swim. Under such circumstances, if you are entirely submerged, 
  and only keep your mouth and nose away from the water, you are sure 
  to float. But this is not generally done. The first movement of a 
  drowning man is to try and hold as much as he can of himself above the 
  water; he holds up his head and lifts up his arms, and these parts of his 
  body, being no longer supported by the liquid, do not lose that amount 
  of weight which they would do if completely immersed. Hence an excess 
  of weight, and eventually entire submersion, for the water makes its 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 29 
  way to the lungs through the mouth, takes the place of the air which fills 
  them, and the body sinks to the bottom. 
  On the other hand, when the man who falls into the water is already 
  dead the conditions are different, and more favorable for his floating, 
  for then the movements of which we have spoken are checked, and the 
  liquid does not make its way to the lungs so copiously, as there is no 
  attempt to respire, and he is consequently more likely to promptly 
  reappear. Manoel then was right in drawing the distinction between the 
  man who falls into the water living and the man who falls into it dead. 
  In the one case the return to the surface takes much longer than in the 
  other. 
  The reappearance of the body after an immersion more or less 
  prolonged is always determined by the decomposition, which causes the 
  gases to form. These bring about the expansion of the cellular tissues, 
  the volume augments and the weight decreases, and then, weighing less 
  than the water it displaces, the body attains the proper conditions for 
  floating. 
  "And thus," continued Manoel, "supposing the conditions continue 
  favorable, and Torres did not live after he fell into the water, if the 
  decomposition is not modified by circumstances which we cannot 
  foresee, he will not reappear before three days." 
  "We have not got three days," answered Benito. "We cannot wait, you 
  know; we must try again, and in some new way." 
  "What can you do?" answered Manoel. 
  "Plunge down myself beneath the waters," replied Benito, "and search 
  with my eyes--with my hands." 
  "Plunge in a hundred times--a thousand times!" exclaimed Manoel. "So 
  be it. I think, like you, that we ought to go straight at what we want, and 
  not struggle on with poles and drags like a blind man who only works 
  by touch. I also think that we cannot wait three days. But to jump in, 
  come up again, and go down again will give only a short period for the 
  exploration. No; it will never do, and we shall only risk a second 
  failure." 
  "Have you no other plan to propose, Manoel?" asked Benito, looking 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 29 
  earnestly at his friend. 
  "Well, listen. There is what would seem to be a Providential 
  circumstance that may be of use to us." 
  "What is that?" 
  "Yesterday, as we hurried through Manaos, I noticed that they were 
  repairing one of the quays on the bank of the Rio Negro. The submarine 
  works were being carried on with the aid of a diving-dress. Let us 
  borrow, or hire, or buy, at any price, this apparatus, and then we may 
  resume our researches under more favorable conditions." 
  "Tell Araujo, Fragoso, and our men, and let us be off," was the instant 
  reply of Benito. 
  The pilot and the barber were informed of the decision with regard to 
  Manoel's project. Both were ordered to go with the four boats and the 
  Indians to the basin of Frias, and there to wait for the two young men. 
  Manoel and Benito started off without losing a moment, and reached 
  the quay at Manaos. There they offered the contractor such a price that 
  he put the apparatus at their service for the whole day. 
  "Will you not have one of my men," he asked, "to help you?" 
  "Give us your foreman and one of his mates to work the air-pump," 
  replied Manoel. 
  "But who is going to wear the diving-dress?" 
  "I am," answered Benito. 
  "You!" exclaimed Manoel. 
  "I intend to do so." 
  It was useless to resist. 
  An hour afterward the raft and all the instruments necessary for the 
  enterprise had drifted down to the bank where the boats were waiting. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 29 
  The diving-dress is well known. By its means men can descend beneath 
  the waters and remain there a certain time without the action of the 
  lungs being in any way injured. The diver is clothed in a waterproof suit 
  of India rubber, and his feet are attached to leaden shoes, which allow 
  him to retain his upright position beneath the surface. At the collar of 
  the dress, and about the height of the neck, there is fitted a collar of 
  copper, on which is screwed a metal globe with a glass front. In this 
  globe the diver places his head, which he can move about at his ease. To 
  the globe are attached two pipes; one used for carrying off the air 
  ejected from the lungs, and which is unfit for respiration, and the other 
  in communication with a pump worked on the raft, and bringing in the 
  fresh air. When the diver is at work the raft remains immovable above 
  him; when the diver moves about on the bottom of the river the raft 
  follows his movements, or he follows those of the raft, according to his 
  convenience. 
  These diving-dresses are now much improved, and are less dangerous 
  than formerly. The man beneath the liquid mass can easily bear the 
  additional pressure, and if anything was to be feared below the waters it 
  was rather some cayman who might there be met with. But, as had been 
  observed by Araujo, not one of these amphibians had been seen, and 
  they are well known to prefer the black waters of the tributaries of the 
  Amazon. Besides, in case of danger, the diver has always his check-
  string fastened to the raft, and at the least warning can be quickly 
  hauled to the surface. 
  Benito, invariably very cool once his resolution was taken, commenced 
  to put his idea into execution, and got into the diving dress. His head 
  disappeared in the metal globe, his hand grasped a sort of iron spear 
  with which to stir up the vegetation and detritus accumulated in the 
  river bed, and on his giving the signal he was lowered into the stream. 
  The men on the raft immediately commenced to work the air-pump, 
  while four Indians from the jangada, under the orders of Araujo, gently 
  propelled it with their long poles in the desired direction. 
  The two pirogues, commanded one by Fragoso, the other by Manoel, 
  escorted the raft, and held themselves ready to start in any direction, 
  should Benito find the corpse of Torres and again bring it to the surface 
  of the Amazon. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 29 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 30 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER X
  A CANNON SHOT 
  BENITO THEN HAD disappeared beneath the vast sheet which still 
  covered the corpse of the adventurer. Ah! If he had had the power to 
  divert the waters of the river, to turn them into vapor, or to drain them 
  off--if he could have made the Frias basin dry down stream, from the 
  bar up to the influx of the Rio Negro, the case hidden in Torres' clothes 
  would already have been in his hand! His father's innocence would have 
  been recognized! Joam Dacosta, restored to liberty, would have again 
  started on the descent of the river, and what terrible trials would have 
  been avoided! 
  Benito had reached the bottom. His heavy shoes made the gravel on the 
  bed crunch beneath him. He was in some ten or fifteen feet of water, at 
  the base of the cliff, which was here very steep, and at the very spot 
  where Torres had disappeared. 
  Near him was a tangled mass of reeds and twigs and aquatic plants, all 
  laced together, which assuredly during the researches of the previous 
  day no pole could have penetrated. It was consequently possible that the 
  body was entangled among the submarine shrubs, and still in the place 
  where it had originally fallen. 
  Hereabouts, thanks to the eddy produced by the prolongation of one of 
  the spurs running out into the stream, the current was absolutely nil. 
  Benito guided his movements by those of the raft, which the long poles 
  of the Indians kept just over his head. 
  The light penetrated deep through the clear waters, and the magnificent 
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  sun, shining in a cloudless sky, shot its rays down into them unchecked. 
  Under ordinary conditions, at a depth of some twenty feet in water, the 
  view becomes exceedingly blurred, but here the waters seemed to be 
  impregnated with a luminous fluid, and Benito was able to descend still 
  lower without the darkness concealing the river bed. 
  The young man slowly made his way along the bank. With his iron-shod 
  spear he probed the plants and rubbish accumulated along its foot. 
  Flocks of fish, if we can use such an expression, escaped on all sides 
  from the dense thickets like flocks of birds. It seemed as though the 
  thousand pieces of a broken mirror glimmered through the waters. At 
  the same time scores of crustaceans scampered over the sand, like huge 
  ants hurrying from their hills. 
  Notwithstanding that Benito did not leave a single point of the river 
  unexplored, he never caught sight of the object of his search. He 
  noticed, however, that the slope of the river bed was very abrupt, and he 
  concluded that Torres had rolled beyond the eddy toward the center of 
  the stream. If so, he would probably still recover the body, for the 
  current could hardly touch it at the depth, which was already great, and 
  seemed sensibly to increase. Benito then resolved to pursue his 
  investigations on the side where he had begun to probe the vegetation. 
  This was why he continued to advance in that direction, and the raft 
  had to follow him during a quarter of an hour, as had been previously 
  arranged. 
  The quarter of an hour had elapsed, and Benito had found nothing. He 
  felt the need of ascending to the surface, so as to once more experience 
  those physiological conditions in which he could recoup his strength. In 
  certain spots, where the depth of the river necessitated it, he had had to 
  descend about thirty feet. He had thus to support a pressure almost 
  equal to an atmosphere, with the result of the physical fatigue and 
  mental agitation which attack those who are not used to this kind of 
  work. Benito then pulled the communication cord, and the men on the 
  raft commenced to haul him in, but they worked slowly, taking a minute 
  to draw him up two or three feet so as not to produce in his internal 
  organs the dreadful effects of decompression. 
  As soon as the young man had set foot on the raft the metallic sphere of 
  the diving-dress was raised, and he took a long breath and sat down to 
  rest. 
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  The pirogues immediately rowed alongside. Manoel, Fragoso, and 
  Araujo came close to him, waiting for him to speak. 
  "Well?" asked Manoel. 
  "Still nothing! Nothing!" 
  "Have you not seen a trace?" 
  "Not one!" 
  "Shall I go down now?" 
  "No, Manoel," answered Benito; "I have begun; I know where to go. 
  Let me do it!" 
  Benito then explained to the pilot that his intention was to visit the 
  lower part of the bank up to the Bar of Frias, for there the slope had 
  perhaps stopped the corpse, if, floating between the two streams, it had 
  in the least degree been affected by the current. But first he wanted to 
  skirt the bank and carefully explore a sort of hole formed in the slope of 
  the bed, to the bottom of which the poles had evidently not been able to 
  penetrate. Araujo approved of this plan, and made the necessary 
  preparations. 
  Manoel gave Benito a little advice. "As you want to pursue your search 
  on that side," he said, "the raft will have to go over there obliquely; but 
  mind what you are doing, Benito. That is much deeper than where you 
  have been yet; it may be fifty or sixty feet, and you will have to support 
  a pressure of quite two atmospheres. Only venture with extreme 
  caution, or you may lose your presence of mind, or no longer know 
  where you are or what to do. If your head feels as if in a vice, and your 
  ears tingle, do not hesitate to give us the signal, and we will at once haul 
  you up. You can then begin again if you like, as you will have got 
  accustomed to move about in the deeper parts of the river." 
  Benito promised to attend to these hints, of which he recognized the 
  importance. He was particularly struck with the fact that his presence 
  of mind might abandon him at the very moment he wanted it most. 
  Benito shook hands with Manoel; the sphere of the diving-dress was 
  again screwed to his neck, the pump began to work, and the diver once 
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  more disappeared beneath the stream. 
  The raft was then taken about forty feet along the left bank, but as it 
  moved toward the center of the river the current increased in strength, 
  the ubas were moored, and the rowers kept it from drifting, so as only 
  to allow it to advance with extreme slowness. 
  Benito descended very gently, and again found himself on the firm sand. 
  When his heels touched the ground it could be seen, by the length of the 
  haulage cord, that he was at a depth of some sixty-five or seventy feet. 
  He was therefore in a considerable hole, excavated far below the 
  ordinary level. 
  The liquid medium was more obscure, but the limpidity of these 
  transparent waters still allowed the light to penetrate sufficiently for 
  Benito to distinguish the objects scattered on the bed of the river, and to 
  approach them with some safety. Besides, the sand, sprinkled with mica 
  flakes, seemed to form a sort of reflector, and the very grains could be 
  counted glittering like luminous dust. 
  Benito moved on, examining and sounding the smallest cavities with his 
  spear. He continued to advance very slowly; the communication cord 
  was paid out, and as the pipes which served for the inlet and outlet of 
  the air were never tightened, the pump was worked under the proper 
  conditions. 
  Benito turned off so as to reach the middle of the bed of the Amazon, 
  where there was the greatest depression. Sometimes profound obscurity 
  thickened around him, and then he could see nothing, so feeble was the 
  light; but this was a purely passing phenomenon, and due to the raft, 
  which, floating above his head, intercepted the solar rays and made the 
  night replace the day. An instant afterward the huge shadow would be 
  dissipated, and the reflection of the sands appear again in full force. 
  All the time Benito was going deeper. He felt the increase of the 
  pressure with which his body was wrapped by the liquid mass. His 
  respiration became less easy; the retractibility of his organs no longer 
  worked with as much ease as in the midst of an atmosphere more 
  conveniently adapted for them. And so he found himself under the 
  action of physiological effects to which he was unaccustomed. The 
  rumbling grew louder in his ears, but as his thought was always lucid, 
  as he felt that the action of his brain was quite clear--even a little more 
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  so than usual--he delayed giving the signal for return, and continued to 
  go down deeper still. 
  Suddenly, in the subdued light which surrounded him, his attention was 
  attracted by a confused mass. It seemed to take the form of a corpse, 
  entangled beneath a clump of aquatic plants. Intense excitement seized 
  him. He stepped toward the mass; with his spear he felt it. It was the 
  carcass of a huge cayman, already reduced to a skeleton, and which the 
  current of the Rio Negro had swept into the bed of the Amazon. Benito 
  recoiled, and, in spite of the assertions of the pilot, the thought recurred 
  to him that some living cayman might even then be met with in the 
  deeps near the Bar of Frias! 
  But he repelled the idea, and continued his progress, so as to reach the 
  bottom of the depression. 
  And now he had arrived at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet, 
  and consequently was experiencing a pressure of three atmospheres. If, 
  then, this cavity was also drawn blank, he would have to suspend his 
  researches. 
  Experience has shown that the extreme limit for such submarine 
  explorations lies between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and 
  thirty feet, and that below this there is great danger, the human 
  organism not only being hindered from performing his functions under 
  such a pressure, but the apparatus failing to keep up a sufficient supply 
  of air with the desirable regularity. 
  But Benito was resolved to go as far as his mental powers and physical 
  energies would let him. By some strange presentiment he was drawn 
  toward this abyss; it seemed to him as though the corpse was very likely 
  to have rolled to the bottom of the hole, and that Torres, if he had any 
  heavy things about him, such as a belt containing either money or arms, 
  would have sunk to the very lowest point. Of a sudden, in a deep hollow, 
  he saw a body through the gloom! Yes! A corpse, still clothed, stretched 
  out like a man asleep, with his arms folded under his head! 
  Was that Torres? In the obscurity, then very dense, he found it difficult 
  to see; but it was a human body that lay there, less than ten paces off, 
  and perfectly motionless! 
  A sharp pang shot through Benito. His heart, for an instant, ceased to 
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  beat. He thought he was going to lose consciousness. By a supreme effort 
  he recovered himself. He stepped toward the corpse. 
  Suddenly a shock as violent as unexpected made his whole frame 
  vibrate! A logn whip seemed to twine round his body, and in spite of the 
  thick diving-dress he felt himself lashed again and again. 
  "A gymnotus!" he said. 
  It was the only word that passed his lips. 
  In fact, it was a "puraque," the name given by the Brazilians to the 
  gymnotus, or electric snake, which had just attacked him. 
  It is well known that the gymnotus is a kind of eel, with a blackish, slimy 
  skin, furnished along the back and tail with an apparatus composed of 
  plates joined by vertical lamellæ, and acted on by nerves of considerable 
  power. This apparatus is endowed with singular electrical properties, 
  and is apt to produce very formidable results. Some of these gymnotuses 
  are about the length of a common snake, others are about ten feet long, 
  while others, which, however, are rare, even reach fifteen or twenty feet, 
  and are from eight to ten inches in diameter. 
  Gymnotuses are plentiful enough both in the Amazon and its 
  tributaries; and it was one of these living coils, about ten feet long, 
  which, after uncurving itself like a bow, again attacked the diver. 
  Benito knew what he had to fear from this formidable animal. His 
  clothes were powerless to protect him. The discharges of the gymnotus, 
  at first somewhat weak, become more and more violent, and there 
  would come a time when, exhausted by the shocks, he would be 
  rendered powerless. 
  Benito, unable to resist the blows, half-dropped upon the sand. His 
  limbs were becoming paralyzed little by little under the electric 
  influences of the gymnotus, which lightly touched his body as it 
  wrapped him in its folds. His arms even he could not lift, and soon his 
  spear escaped him, and his hand had not strength enough left to pull the 
  cord and give the signal. 
  Benito felt that he was lost. Neither Manoel nor his companions could 
  suspect the horrible combat which was going on beneath them between 
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  the formidable puraque and the unhappy diver, who only fought to 
  suffer, without any power of defending himself. 
  And that at the moment when a body--the body of Torres without a 
  doubt!--had just met his view. 
  By a supreme instinct of self-preservation Benito uttered a cry. His 
  voice was lost in the metallic sphere from which not a sound could 
  escape! 
  And now the puraque redoubled its attacks; it gave forth shock after 
  shock, which made Benito writhe on the sand like the sections of a 
  divided worm, and his muscles were wrenched again and again beneath 
  the living lash. 
  Benito thought that all was over; his eyes grew dim, his limbs began to 
  stiffen. 
  But before he quite lost his power of sight and reason he became the 
  witness of a phenomenon, unexpected, inexplicable, and marvelous in 
  the extreme. 
  A deadened roar resounded through the liquid depths. It was like a 
  thunder-clap, the reverberations of which rolled along the river bed, 
  then violently agitated by the electrical discharges of the gymnotus. 
  Benito felt himself bathed as it were in the dreadful booming which 
  found an echo in the very deepest of the river depths. 
  And then a last cry escaped him, for fearful was the vision which 
  appeared before his eyes! 
  The corpse of the drowned man which had been stretched on the sand 
  arose! The undulations of the water lifted up the arms, and they swayed 
  about as if with some peculiar animation. Convulsive throbs made the 
  movement of the corpse still more alarming. 
  It was indeed the body of Torres. One of the suns rays shot down to it 
  through the liquid mass, and Benito recognized the bloated, ashy 
  features of the scoundrel who fell by his own hand, and hose last breath 
  had left him beneath the waters. 
  And while Benito could not make a single movement with his paralyzed 
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  limbs, while his heavy shoes kept him down as if he had been nailed to 
  the sand, the corpse straightened itself up, the head swayed to and fro, 
  and disentangling itself from the hole in which it had been kept by a 
  mass of aquatic weeds, it slowly ascended to the surface of the Amazon. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 31 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XI
  THE CONTENTS OF THE CASE 
  WHAT WAS it that had happened? A purely physical phenomenon, of 
  which the following is the explanation. 
  The gunboat Santa Ana, bound for Manaos, had come up the river and 
  passed the bar at Frias. Just before she reached the embouchure of the 
  Rio Negro she hoisted her colors and saluted the Brazilian flag. At the 
  report vibrations were produced along the surface of the stream, and 
  these vigrations making their way down to the bottom of the river, had 
  been sufficient to raise the corpse of Torres, already lightened by the 
  commencement of its decomposition and the distension of its cellular 
  system. The body of the drowned man had in the ordinary course risen 
  to the surface of the water. 
  This well-known phenomenon explains the reappearance of the corpse, 
  but it must be admitted that the arrival of the Santa Ana was a 
  fortunate coincidence. 
  By a shout from Manoel, repeated by all his companions, one of the 
  pirogues was immediately steered for the body, while the diver was at 
  the same time hauled up to the raft. 
  Great was Manoel's emotion when Benito, drawn on to the platform, 
  was laid there in a state of complete inertia, not a single exterior 
  movement betraying that he still lived. 
  Was not this a second corpse which the waters of the Amazon had given 
  up? 
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  As quickly as possible the diving-dress was taken off him. 
  Benito had entirely lost consciousness beneath the violent shocks of the 
  gymnotus. 
  Manoel, distracted, called to him, breathed into him, and endeavored to 
  recover the heart's pulsation. 
  "It beats! It beats!" he exclaimed. 
  Yes! Benito's heart did still beat, and in a few minutes Manoel's efforts 
  restored him to life. 
  "The body! the Body!" 
  Such were the first words, the only ones which escaped from Benito's 
  lips. 
  "There it is!" answered Fragoso, pointing to a pirogue then coming up 
  to the raft with the corpse. 
  "But what has been the matter, Benito?" asked Manoel. "Has it been 
  the want of air?" 
  "No!" said Benito; "a puraque attacked me! But the noise? the 
  detonation?" 
  "A cannon shot!" replied Manoel. "It was the cannon shot which 
  brought the corpse to the surface." 
  At this moment the pirogue came up to the raft with the body of Torres, 
  which had been taken on board by the Indians. His sojourn in the water 
  had not disfigured him very much. He was easily recognizable, and 
  there was no doubt as to his identity. 
  Fragoso, kneeling down in the pirogue, had already begun to undo the 
  clothes of the drowned man, which came away in fragments. 
  At the moment Torres' right arm, which was now left bare, attracted his 
  attention. On it there appeared the distinct scar of an old wound 
  produced by a blow from a knife. 
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  "That scar!" exclaimed Fragoso. "But--that is good! I remember now----
  " 
  "What?" demanded Manoel. 
  "A quarrel! Yes! a quarrel I witnessed in the province of Madeira three 
  years ago. How could I have forgotten it! This Torres was then a captain 
  of the woods. Ah! I know now where I had seen him, the scoundrel!" 
  "That does not matter to us now!" cried Benito. "The case! the case! 
  Has he still got that?" and Benito was about to tear away the last 
  coverings of the corpse to get at it. 
  Manoel stopped him. 
  "One moment, Benito," he said; and then, turning to the men on the 
  raft who did not belong to the jangada, and whose evidence could not be 
  suspected at any future time: 
  "Just take note, my friends," he said, "of what we are doing here, so 
  that you can relate before the magistrate what has passed." 
  The men came up to the pirogue. 
  Fragoso undid the belt which encircled the body of Torres underneath 
  the torn poncho, and feeling his breast-pocket, exclaimed: 
  "The case!" 
  A cry of joy escaped from Benito. He stretched forward to seize the case, 
  to make sure than it contained---- 
  "No!" again interrupted Manoel, whose coolness did not forsake him. 
  "It is necessary that not the slightest possible doubt should exist in the 
  mind of the magistrate! It is better that disinterested witnesses should 
  affirm that this case was really found on the corpse of Torres!" 
  "You are right," replied Benito. 
  "My friend," said Manoel to the foreman of the raft, "just feel in the 
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  pocket of the waistcoat." 
  The foreman obeyed. He drew forth a metal case, with the cover 
  screwed on, and which seemed to have suffered in no way from its 
  sojourn in the water. 
  "The paper! Is the paper still inside?" exclaimed Benito, who could not 
  contain himself. 
  "It is for the magistrate to open this case!" answered Manoel. "To him 
  alone belongs the duty of verifying that the document was found within 
  it." 
  "Yes, yes. Again you are right, Manoel," said Benito. "To Manaos, my 
  friends--to Manaos!" 
  Benito, Manoel, Fragoso, and the foreman who held the case, 
  immediately jumped into one of the pirogues, and were starting off, 
  when Fragoso said: 
  "And the corpse?" 
  The pirogue stopped. 
  In fact, the Indians had already thrown back the body into the water, 
  and it was drifting away down the river. 
  "Torres was only a scoundrel," said Benito. "If I had to fight him, it 
  was God that struck him, and his body ought not to go unburied!" 
  And so orders were given to the second pirogue to recover the corpse, 
  and take it to the bank to await its burial. 
  But at the same moment a flock of birds of prey, which skimmed along 
  the surface of the stream, pounced on the floating body. They were 
  urubus, a kind of small vulture, with naked necks and long claws, and 
  black as crows. In South America they are known as gallinazos, and 
  their voracity is unparalleled. The body, torn open by their beaks, gave 
  forth the gases which inflated it, its density increased, it sank down little 
  by little, and for the last time what remained of Torres disappeared 
  beneath the waters of the Amazon. 
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  Ten minutes afterward the pirogue arrived at Manaos. Benito and his 
  companions jumped ashore, and hurried through the streets of the 
  town. In a few minutes they had reached the dwelling of Judge Jarriuez, 
  and informed him, through one of his servants, that they wished to see 
  him immediately. 
  The judge ordered them to be shown into his study. 
  There Manoel recounted all that had passed, from the moment when 
  Torres had been killed until the moment when the case had been found 
  on his corpse, and taken from his breast-pocket by the foreman. 
  Although this recital was of a nature to corroborate all that Joam 
  Dacosta had said on the subject of Torres, and of the bargain which he 
  had endeavored to make, Judge Jarriquez could not restrain a smile of 
  incredulity. 
  "There is the case, sir," said Manoel. "For not a single instant has it 
  been in our hands, and the man who gives it to you is he who took it 
  from the body of Torres." 
  The magistrate took the case and examined it with care, turning it over 
  and over as though it were made of some precious material. Then he 
  shook it, and a few coins inside sounded with a metallic ring. Did not, 
  then, the case contain the document which had been so much sought 
  after--the document written in the very hand of the true author of the 
  crime of Tijuco, and which Torres had wished to sell at such an ignoble 
  price to Joam Dacosta? Was this material proof of the convict's 
  innocence irrevocably lost? 
  We can easily imagine the violent agitation which had seized upon the 
  spectators f this scene. Benito could scarcely utter a word, he felt his 
  heart ready to burst. "Open it, sir! open the case!" he at last exclaimed, 
  in a broken voice. 
  Judge Jarriquez began to unscrew the lid; then, when the cover was 
  removed, he turned up the case, and from it a few pieces of gold 
  dropped out and rolled on the table. 
  "But the paper! the paper!" again gasped Benito, who clutched hold of 
  the table to save himself from falling. 
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  The magistrate put his fingers into the case and drew out, not without 
  difficulty, a faded paper, folded with care, and which the water did not 
  seem to have even touched. 
  "The document! that is the document!" shouted Fragoso; "that is the 
  very paper I saw in the hands of Torres!" 
  Judge Jarriquez unfolded the paper and cast his eyes over it, and then 
  he turned it over so as to examine it on the back and the front, which 
  were both covered with writing. "A document it really is!" said he; 
  "there is no doubt of that. It is indeed a document!" 
  "Yes," replied Benito; "and that is the document which proves my 
  father's innocence!" 
  "I do not know that," replied Judge Jarriquez; "and I am much afraid 
  it will be very difficult to know it." 
  "Why?" exclaimed Benito, who became pale as death. 
  "Because this document is a cryptogram, and----" 
  "Well?" 
  "We have not got the key!" 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
  | Top | Next Chapter | Title Page | Litrix Reading Room | Authors | Titles |
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  http://www.litrix.com/800lgs/800lg031.htm (6 of 6) [12/3/2001 11:21:49 AM]
  
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 32 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XII
  THE DOCUMENT 
  THIS WAS a contingency which neither Joam Dacosta nor his people 
  could have anticipated. In fact, as those who have not forgotten the first 
  scene in this story are aware, the document was written in a disguised 
  form in one of the numerous systems used in cryptography. 
  But in which of them? 
  To discover this would require all the ingenuity of which the human 
  brain was capable. 
  Before dismissing Benito and his companions, Judge Jarriquez had an 
  exact copy made of the document, and, keeping the original, handed it 
  over to them after due comparison, so that they could communicate 
  with the prisoner. 
  Then, making an appointment for the morrow, they retired, and not 
  wishing to lose an instant in seeing Joam Dacosta, they hastened on to 
  the prison, and there, in a short interview, informed him of all that had 
  passed. 
  Joam Dacosta took the document and carefully examined it. Shaking his 
  head, he handed it back to his son. "Perhaps," he said, "there is therein 
  written the proof I shall never be able to produce. But if that proof 
  escapes me, if the whole tenor of my life does not plead for me, I have 
  nothing more to expect from the justice of men, and my fate is in the 
  hands of God!" 
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  And all felt it to be so. If the document remained indecipherable, the 
  position of the convict was a desperate one. 
  "We shall find it, father!" exclaimed Benito. "There never was a 
  document of this sort yet which could stand examination. Have 
  confidence--yes, confidence! Heaven has, so to speak, miraculously 
  given us the paper which vindicates you, and, after guiding our hands to 
  recover it, it will not refuse to direct our brains to unravel it." 
  Joam Dacosta shook hands with Benito and Manoel, and then the three 
  young men, much agitated, retired to the jangada, where Yaquita was 
  awaiting them. 
  Yaquita was soon informed of what had happened since the evening--
  the reappearance of the body of Torres, the discovery of the document, 
  and the strange form under which the real culprit, the companion of the 
  adventurer, had thought proper to write his confession--doubtless, so 
  that it should not compromise him if it fell into strange hands. 
  Naturally, Lina was informed of this unexpected complication, and of 
  the discovery made by Fragoso that Torres was an old captain of the 
  woods belonging to the gang who were employed about the mouths of 
  the Madeira. 
  "But under what circumstances did you meet him?" asked the young 
  mulatto. 
  "It was during one of my runs across the province of Amazones," 
  replied Fragoso, "when I was going from village to village, working at 
  my trade." 
  "And the scar?" 
  "What happened was this: One day I arrived at the mission of Aranas 
  at the moment that Torres, whom I had never before seen, had picked a 
  quarrel with one of his comrades--and a bad lot they are!--and this 
  quarrel ended with a stab from a knife, which entered the arm of the 
  captain of the woods. There was no doctor there, and so I took charge of 
  the wound, and that is how I made his acquaintance." 
  "What does it matter after all," replied the young girl, "that we know 
  what Torres had been? He was not the author of the crime, and it does 
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  not help us in the least." 
  "No, it does not," answered Fragoso; "for we shall end by reading the 
  document, and then the innocence of Joam Dacosta will be palpable to 
  the eyes of all." 
  This was likewise the hope of Yaquita, of Benito, of Manoel, and of 
  Minha, and, shut up in the house, they passed long hours in endeavoring 
  to decipher the writing. 
  But if it was their hope--and there is no need to insist on that point--it 
  was none the less that of Judge Jarriquez. 
  After having drawn up his report at the end of his examination 
  establishing the identity of Joam Dacosta, the magistrate had sent it off 
  to headquarters, and therewith he thought he had finished with the 
  affair so far as he was concerned. It could not well be otherwise. 
  On the discovery of the document, Jarriquez suddenly found himself 
  face to face with the study of which he was a master. He, the seeker after 
  numerical combinations, the solver of amusing problems, the answerer 
  of charades, rebuses, logogryphs, and such things, was at last in his true 
  element. 
  At the thought that the document might perhaps contain the 
  justification of Joam Dacosta, he felt all the instinct of the analyst 
  aroused. Here, before his very eyes, was a cryptogram! And so from 
  that moment he thought of nothing but how to discover its meaning, and 
  it is scarcely necessary to say that he made up his mind to work at it 
  continuously, even if he forgot to eat or to drink. 
  After the departure of the young people, Judge Jarriquez installed 
  himself in his study. His door, barred against every one, assured him of 
  several hours of perfect solitude. His spectacles were on his nose, his 
  snuff-box on the table. He took a good pinch so as to develop the finesse 
  and sagacity of his mind. He picked up the document and became 
  absorbed in meditation, which soon became materialized in the shape of 
  a monologue. The worthy justice was one of those unreserved men who 
  think more easily aloud than to himself. "Let us proceed with method," 
  he said. "No method, no logic; no logic, no success." 
  Then, taking the document, he ran through it from beginning to end, 
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  without understanding it in the least. 
  The document contained a hundred lines, which were divided into half a 
  dozen paragraphs. 
  "Hum!" said the judge, after a little reflection; "to try every paragraph, 
  one after the other, would be to lose precious time, and be of no use. I 
  had better select one of these paragraphs, and take the one which is 
  likely to prove the most interesting. Which of them would do this better 
  than the last, where the recital of the whole affair is probably summed 
  up? Proper names might put me on the track, among others that of 
  Joam Dacosta; and if he had anything to do with this document, his 
  name will evidently not be absent from its concluding paragraph." 
  The magistrate's reasoning was logical, and he was decidedly right in 
  bringing all his resources to bear in the first place on the gist of the 
  cryptogram as contained in its last paragraph. 
  Here is the paragraph, for it is necessary to again bring it before the 
  eyes of the reader so as to show how an analyst set to work to discover 
  its meaning. 
  "P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u g I o c y t d x 
  v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o x p h e t o z l s l e t n p 
  m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z 
  m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r 
  g c r o h e p q x u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q 
  k y u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q r y m v k 
  l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d." 
  At the outset, Judge Jarrizuez noticed that the lines of the document 
  were not divided either into words or phrases, and that there was a 
  complete absence of punctuation. This fact could but render the reading 
  of the document more difficult. 
  "Let us see, however," he said, "if there is not some assemblage of 
  letters which appears to form a word--I mean a pronounceable word, 
  whose number of consonants is in proportion to its vowels. And at the 
  beginning I see the word phy; further on the word gas. Halloo! ujugi. 
  Does that mean the African town on the banks of Tanganyika? What 
  has that got to do with all this? Further on here is the word ypo. Is it 
  Greek, then? Close by here is rym and puy, and jox, and phetoz, and 
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  jyggay, and mv, and qruz. And before that we have got red and let. That 
  is good! those are two English words. Then ohe--syk; then rym once 
  more, and then the word oto." 
  Judge Jarriquez let the paper drop, and thought for a few minutes. 
  "All the words I see in this thing seem queer!" he said. "In fact, there is 
  nothing to give a clue to their origin. Some look like Greek, some like 
  Dutch; some have an English twist, and some look like nothing at all! To 
  say nothing of these series of consonants which are not wanted in any 
  human pronunciation. Most assuredly it will not be very easy to find the 
  key to this cryptogram." 
  The magistrate's fingers commenced to beat a tattoo on his desk--a kind 
  of reveille to arouse his dormant faculties. 
  "Let us see," he said, "how many letters there are in the paragraph." 
  He counted them, pen in hand. 
  "Two hundred and seventy-six!" he said. "Well, now let us try what 
  proportion these different letters bear to each other." 
  This occupied him for some time. The judge took up the document, and, 
  with his pen in his hand, he noted each letter in alphabetical order. 
  In a quarter of an hour he had obtained the following table: 
      a =  3 times 
      b =  4  -- 
      c =  3  -- 
      d = 16  -- 
      e =  9  -- 
      f = 10  -- 
      g = 13  -- 
      h = 23  -- 
      i =  4  -- 
      j =  8  -- 
      k =  9  -- 
      l =  9  -- 
      m =  9  -- 
      n =  9  -- 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 32 
      o = 12  -- 
      p = 16  -- 
      q = 16  -- 
      r = 12  -- 
      s = 10  -- 
      t =  8  -- 
      u = 17  -- 
      v = 13  -- 
      x = 12  -- 
      y = 19  -- 
      z = 12  -- 
  ---------------- 
  Total . . . 276 times. 
  "Ah, ah!" he exclaimed. "One thing strikes me at once, and that is that 
  in this paragraph all the letters of the alphabet are not used. That is 
  very strange. If we take up a book and open it by chance it will be very 
  seldom that we shall hit upon two hundred and seventy-six letters 
  without all the signs of the alphabet figuring among them. After all, it 
  may be chance," and then he passed to a different train of thought. 
  "One important point is to see if the vowels and consonants are in their 
  normal proportion." 
  And so he seized his pen, counted up the vowels, and obtained the 
  following result: 
      a =  3 times 
      e =  9  -- 
      i =  4  -- 
      o = 12  -- 
      u = 17  -- 
      y = 19  -- 
  ---------------- 
  Total . . . 276 times. 
  "And thus there are in this paragraph, after we have done our 
  subtraction, sixty-four vowels and two hundred and twelve consonants. 
  Good! that is the normal proportion. That is about a fifth, as in the 
  alphabet, where there are six vowels among twenty-six letters. It is 
  possible, therefore, that the document is written in the language of our 
  country, and that only the signification of each letter is changed. If it 
  has been modified in regular order, and a b is always represented by an 
  l, and o by a v, a g by a k, an u by an r, etc., I will give up my judgeship 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 32 
  if I do not read it. What can I do better than follow the method of that 
  great analytical genius, Edgar Allan Poe?" 
  Judge Jarriquez herein alluded to a story by the great American 
  romancer, which is a masterpiece. Who has not read the "Gold Bug?" 
  In this novel a cryptogram, composed of ciphers, letters, algebraic signs, 
  asterisks, full-stops, and commas, is submitted to a truly mathematical 
  analysis, and is deciphered under extraordinary conditions, which the 
  admirers of that strange genius can never forget. On the reading of the 
  American document depended only a treasure, while on that of this one 
  depended a man's life. Its solution was consequently all the more 
  interesting. 
  The magistrate, who had often read and re-read his "Gold Bug," was 
  perfectly acquainted with the steps in the analysis so minutely described 
  by Edgar Poe, and he resolved to proceed in the same way on this 
  occasion. In doing so he was certain, as he had said, that if the value or 
  signification of each letter remained constant, he would, sooner or later, 
  arrive at the solution of the document. 
  "What did Edgar Poe do?" he repeated. "First of all he began by 
  finding out the sign--here there are only letters, let us say the letter--
  which was reproduced the oftenest. I see that that is h, for it is met with 
  twenty-three times. This enormous proportion shows, to begin with, that 
  h does not stand for h, but, on the contrary, that it represents the letter 
  which recurs most frequently in our language, for I suppose the 
  document is written in Portuguese. In English or French it would 
  certainly be e, in Italian it would be i or a, in Portuguese it will be a or o. 
  Now let us say that it signifies a or o." 
  After this was done, the judge found out the letter which recurred most 
  frequently after h, and so on, and he formed the following table: 
      h = 23 times 
      y = 19  -- 
      u = 17  -- 
    d p q = 16  -- 
     g v = 13  -- 
   o r x z = 12  -- 
     f s = 10  -- 
  e k l m n =  9  -- 
     j t =  8  -- 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 32 
     b i =  8  -- 
     a c =  8  -- 
  "Now the letter a only occurs thrice!" exclaimed the judge, "and it 
  ought to occur the oftenest. Ah! that clearly proves that the meaning 
  had been changed. And now, after a or o, what are the letters which 
  figure oftenest in our language? Let us see," and Judge Jarriquez, with 
  truly remarkable sagacity, which denoted a very observant mind, 
  started on this new quest. In this he was only imitating the American 
  romancer, who, great analyst as he was, had, by simple induction, been 
  able to construct an alphabet corresponding to the signs of the 
  cryptogram and by means of it to eventually read the pirate's 
  parchment note with ease. 
  The magistrate set to work in the same way, and we may affirm that he 
  was no whit inferior to his illustrious master. Thanks to his previous 
  work at logogryphs and squares, rectangular arrangements and other 
  enigmas, which depend only on an arbitrary disposition of the letters, he 
  was already pretty strong in such mental pastimes. On this occasion he 
  sought to establish the order in which the letters were reproduced--
  vowels first, consonants afterward. 
  Three hours had elapsed since he began. He had before his eyes an 
  alphabet which, if his procedure were right, would give him the right 
  meaning of the letters in the document. He had only to successively 
  apply the letters of his alphabet to those of his paragraph. But before 
  making this application some slight emotion seized upon the judge. He 
  fully experienced the intellectual gratification--much greater than, 
  perhaps, would be thought--of the man who, after hours of obstinate 
  endeavor, saw the impatiently sought-for sense of the logogryph coming 
  into view. 
  "Now let us try," he said; "and I shall be very much surprised if I have 
  not got the solution of the enigma!" 
  Judge Jarriquez took off his spectacles and wiped the glasses; then he 
  put them back again and bent over the table. His special alphabet was in 
  one hand, the cryptogram in the other. He commenced to write under 
  the first line of the paragraph the true letters, which, according to him, 
  ought to correspond exactly with each of the cryptographic letters. As 
  with the first line so did he with the second, and the third, and the 
  fourth, until he reached the end of the paragraph. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 32 
  Oddity as he was, he did not stop to see as he wrote if the assemblage of 
  letters made intelligible words. No; during the first stage his mind 
  refused all verification of that sort. What he desired was to give himself 
  the ecstasy of reading it all straight off at once. 
  And now he had done. 
  "Let us read!" he exclaimed. 
  And he read. Good heavens! what cacophony! The lines he had formed 
  with the letters of his alphabet had no more sense in them that those of 
  the document! It was another series of letters, and that was all. They 
  formed no word; they had no value. In short, they were just as 
  hieroglyphic. 
  "Confound the thing!" exclaimed Judge Jarriquez. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
  | Top | Next Chapter | Title Page | Litrix Reading Room | Authors | Titles |
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 33 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XIII
  IS IT A MATTER OF FIGURES? 
  IT WAS SEVEN o'clock in the evening. Judge Jarriquez had all the 
  time been absorbed in working at the puzzle--and was no further 
  advanced--and had forgotten the time of repast and the time of repose, 
  when there came a knock at his study door. 
  It was time. An hour later, and all the cerebral substance of the vexed 
  magistrate would certainly have evaporated under the intense heat into 
  which he had worked his head. 
  At the order to enter--which was given in an impatient tone--the door 
  opened and Manoel presented himself. 
  The young doctor had left his friends on board the jangada at work on 
  the indecipherable document, and had come to see Judge Jarriquez. He 
  was anxious to know if he had been fortunate in his researches. He had 
  come to ask if he had at length discovered the system on which the 
  cryptogram had been written. 
  The magistrate was not sorry to see Manoel come in. He was in that 
  state of excitement that solitude was exasperating to him. He wanted 
  some one to speak to, some one as anxious to penetrate the mystery as 
  he was. Manoel was just the man. 
  "Wir," said Manoel as he entered, "one question! Have you succeeded 
  better than we have?" 
  "Sit down first," exclaimed Judge Jarriquez, who got up and began to 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 33 
  pace the room. "Sit down. If we are both of us standing, you will walk 
  one way and I shall walk the other, and the room will be too narrow to 
  hold us." 
  Manoel sat down and repeated his question. 
  "No! I have not had any success!" replied the magistrate; "I do not 
  think I am any better off. I have got nothing to tell you; but I have 
  found out a certainty." 
  "What is that, sir?" 
  "That the document is not based on conventional signs, but on what is 
  known in cryptology as a cipher, that is to say, on a number." 
  "Well, sir," answered Manoel, "cannot a document of that kind always 
  be read?" 
  "Yes," said Jarriquez, "if a letter is invariably represented by the same 
  letter; if an a, for example, is always a p, and a p is always an x; if not, it 
  cannot." 
  "And in this document?" 
  "In this document the value of the letter changes with the arbitrarily 
  selected cipher which necessitates it. So a b will in one place be 
  represented by a k will later on become a z, later on an u or an n or an f, 
  or any other letter." 
  "And then?" 
  "And then, I am sorry to say, the cryptogram is indecipherable." 
  "Indecipherable!" exclaimed Manoel. "No, sir; we shall end by finding 
  the key of the document on which the man's life depends." 
  Manoel had risen, a prey to the excitement he could not control; the 
  reply he had received was too hopeless, and he refused to accept it for 
  good. 
  At a gesture from the judge, however, he sat down again, and in a 
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  calmer voice asked: 
  "And in the first place, sir, what makes you think that the basis of this 
  document is a number, or, as you call it, a cipher?" 
  "Listen to me, young man," replied the judge, "and you will be forced 
  to give in to the evidence." 
  The magistrate took the document and put it before the eyes of Manoel 
  and showed him what he had done. 
  "I began," he said, "by treating this document in the proper way, that is 
  to say, logically, leaving nothing to chance. I applied to it an alphabet 
  based on the proportion the letters bear to one another which is usual in 
  our language, and I sought to obtain the meaning by following the 
  precepts of our immortal analyst, Edgar Poe. Well, what succeeded with 
  him collapsed with me." 
  "Collapsed!" exclaimed Manoel. 
  "Yes, my dear young man, and I at once saw that success sought in that 
  fashion was impossible. In truth, a stronger man than I might have been 
  deceived." 
  "But I should like to understand," said Manoel, "and I do not----" 
  "Take the document," continued Judge Jarriquez; "first look at the 
  disposition of the letters, and read it through." 
  Manoel obeyed. 
  "Do you not see that the combination of several of the letters is very 
  strange?" asked the magistrate. 
  "I do not see anything," said Manoel, after having for perhaps the 
  hundredth time read through the document. 
  "Well! study the last paragraph! There you understand the sense of the 
  whole is bound to be summed up. Do you see anything abnormal?" 
  "Nothing." 
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  "There is, however, one thing which absolutely proves that the language 
  is subject to the laws of number." 
  "And that is?" 
  "That is that you see three h's coming together in two different places." 
  What Jarriquez said was correct, and it was of a nature to attract 
  attention. The two hundred and fourth, two hundred and fifth, and two 
  hundred and sixth letters of the paragraph, and the two hundred and 
  fifty-eight, two hundred and fifty-ninth, and two hundred and sixtieth 
  letters of the paragraph were consecutive h's. At first this peculiarity 
  had not struck the magistrate. 
  "And that proves?" asked Manoel, without divining the deduction that 
  could be drawn from the combination. 
  "That simply proves that the basis of the document is a number. It 
  shows à priori that each letter is modified in virtue of the ciphers of the 
  number and according to the place which it occupies." 
  "And why?" 
  "Because in no language will you find words with three consecutive 
  repetitions of the letter h." 
  Manoel was struck with the argument; he thought about it, and, in 
  short, had no reply to make." 
  "And had I made the observation sooner," continued the magistrate, "I 
  might have spared myself a good deal of trouble and a headache which 
  extends from my occiput to my sinciput." 
  "But, sir," asked Manoel, who felt the little hope vanishing on which he 
  had hitherto rested, "what do you mean by a cipher?" 
  "Tell me a number." 
  "Any number you like." 
  "Give me an example and you will understand the explanation better." 
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  Judge Jarriquez sat down at the table, took up a sheet of paper and a 
  pencil, and said: 
  "Now, Mr. Manoel, let us choose a sentence by chance, the first that 
  comes; for instance: 
  Judge Jarriquez has an ingenious mind. 
  I write this phrase so as to space the letters different and I get: 
  Judgejarriquezhasaningeniousmind. 
  That done" said the magistrate, to whom the phrase seemed to contain a 
  proposition beyond dispute, looking Manoel straight in the face, 
  "suppose I take a number by chance, so as to give a cryptographic form 
  to this natural succession of words; suppose now this word is composed 
  ot three ciphers, and let these ciphers be 2, 3, and 4. Now on the line 
  below I put the number 234, and repeat it as many times as are 
  necessary to get to the end of the phrase, and so that every cipher comes 
  underneath a letter. This is what we get: 
  J u d g e j a r r I q u e z h a s a n I n g e n I o u s m I n d 
  2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 
  And now, Mr. Manoel, replacing each letter by the letter in advance of 
  it in alphabetical order according to the value of the ciper, we get: 
                                j + 2 = l 
                                u + 3 = x 
                                d + 4 = h 
                                g + 2 = i 
                                e + 3 = h 
                                j + 4 = n 
                                a + 2 = c 
                                r + 3 = u 
                                r + 4 = v 
                                i + 2 = k 
                                q + 3 = t 
                                u + 4 = y 
                                e + 2 = g 
                                a + 3 = c 
                                h + 4 = t 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 33 
                                a + 2 = c 
                                s + 3 = v 
                                a + 4 = e 
                                n + 2 = p 
                                i + 3 = l 
                                n + 4 = r 
                                g + 2 = i 
                                e + 3 = h 
                                n + 4 = r 
                                i + 2 = k 
                                o + 3 = r 
                                u + 4 = y 
                                s + 2 = u 
  and so on. 
  "If, on account of the value of the ciphers which compose the number I 
  come to the end of the alphabet without having enough complementary 
  letters to deduct, I begin again at the beginning. That is what happens at 
  the end of my name when the z is replaced by the 3. As after z the 
  alphabet has no more letters, I commence to count from a, and so get 
  the c. That done, when I get to the end of this cryptographic system, 
  made up of the 234--which was arbitrarily selected, do not forget!--the 
  phrase which you recognize above is replace by 
  lxhihncuvktygclveplrihrkryupmpg.
  "And now, young man, just look at it, and do you not think it is very 
  much like what is in the document? Well, what is the consequence? 
  Why, that the signification of the letters depends on a cipher which 
  chance puts beneath them, and the cryptographic letter which answers 
  to a true one is not always the same. So in this phrase the first j is 
  represented by an l, the second by an n; the first e by an h, the second b 
  a g, the third by an h; the first d is represented by an h, the last by a g; 
  the first u by an x, the last by a y; the first and second a's by a c, the last 
  by an e; and in my own name one r is represented by a u, the other by a 
  v. and so on. Now do you see that if you do not know the cipher 234 you 
  will never be able to read the lines, and consequently if we do not know 
  the number of the document it remains undecipherable." 
  On hearing the magistrate reason with such careful logic, Manoel was at 
  first overwhelmed, but, raising his head, he exclaimed: 
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  "No, sir, I will not renounce the hope of finding the number!" 
  "We might have done so," answered Judge Jarriquez, "if the lines of 
  the document had been divided into words." 
  "And why?" 
  "For this reason, young man. I think we can assume that in the last 
  paragraph all that is written in these earlier paragraphs is summed up. 
  Now I am convinced that in it will be found the name of Joam Dacosta. 
  Well, if the lines had been divided into words, in trying the words one 
  after the other--I mean the words composed of seven letters, as the name 
  of Dacosta is--it would not have been impossible to evolve the number 
  which is the key of the document." 
  "Will you explain to me how you ought to proceed to do that, sir?" 
  asked Manoel, who probably caught a glimpse of one more hope. 
  "Nothing can be more simple," answered the judge. "Let us take, for 
  example, one of the words in the sentence we have just written--my 
  name, if you like. It is represented in the cryptogram by this queer 
  succession of letters, ncuvktygc. Well, arranging these letters in a 
  column, one under the other, and then placing against them the letters 
  of my name and deducting one from the other the numbers of their 
  places in alphabetical order, I see the following result: 
                              Between n and j we have 4 letters 
                                --    c -- a    --    2    -- 
                                --    u -- r    --    3    -- 
                                --    v -- r    --    4    -- 
                                --    k -- i    --    2    -- 
                                --    t -- q    --    3    -- 
                                --    y -- u    --    4    -- 
                                --    g -- e    --    2    -- 
                                --    c -- z    --    3    -- 
  "Now what is the column of ciphers made up of that we have got by this 
  simple operation? Look here! 423 423 423, that is to say, of repetitions 
  of the numbers 423, or 234, or 342." 
  "Yes, that is it!" answered Manoel. 
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  "You understand, then, by this means, that in calculating the true letter 
  from the false, instead of the false from the true, I have been able to 
  discover the number with ease; and the number I was in search of is 
  really the 234 which I took as the key of my cryptogram." 
  "Well, sir!" exclaimed Manoel, "if that is so, the name of Dacosta is in 
  the last paragraph; and taking successively each letter of those lines for 
  the first of the seven letters which compose his name, we ought to get----
  " 
  "That would be impossible," interrupted the judge, "except on one 
  condition." 
  "What is that?" 
  "That the first cipher of the number should happen to be the first letter 
  of the word Dacosta, and I think you will agree with me that that is not 
  probable." 
  "Quite so!" sighed Manoel, who, with this improbability, saw the last 
  chance vanish. 
  "And so we must trust to chance alone," continued Jarriquez, who 
  shook his head, "and chance does not often do much in things of this 
  sort." 
  "But still," said Manoel, "chance might give us this number." 
  "This number," exclaimed the magistrate--"this number? But how 
  many ciphers is it composed of? Of two, or three, or four, or nine, or 
  ten? Is it made of different ciphers only or of ciphers in different order 
  many times repeated? Do you not know, young man, that with the 
  ordinary ten ciphers, using all at a time, but without any repetition, you 
  can make three million two hundred and sixty-eight thousand and eight 
  hundred different numbers, and that if you use the same cipher more 
  than once in the number, these millions of combinations will be 
  enormously increased! And do you not know that if we employ every 
  one of the five hundred and twenty-five thousand and six hundred 
  minutes of which the year is composed to try at each of these numbers, 
  it would take you six years, and that you would want three centuries if 
  each operation you an hour? No! You ask the impossible!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 33 
  "Impossible, sir?" answered Manoel. "An innocent man has been 
  branded as guilty, and Joam Dacosta is to lose his life and his honor 
  while you hold in your hands the material proof of his innocence! That 
  is what is impossible!" 
  "Ah! young man!" exclaimed Jarriquez, "who told you, after all, that 
  Torres did not tell a lie? Who told you that he really did have in his 
  hands a document written by the author of the crime? that this paper 
  was the document, and that this document refers to Joam Dacosta?" 
  "Who told me so?" repeated Manoel, and his face was hidden in his 
  hands. 
  In fact, nothing could prove for certain that the document had anything 
  to do with the affair in the diamond province. There was, in fact, 
  nothing to show that it was not utterly devoid of meaning, and that it 
  had been imagined by Torres himself, who was as capable of selling a 
  false thing as a true one! 
  "It does not matter, Manoel," continued the judge, rising; "it does not 
  matter! Whatever it may be to which the document refers, I have not 
  yet given up discovering the cipher. After all, it is worth more than a 
  logogryph or a rebus!" 
  At these words Manoel rose, shook hands with the magistrate, and 
  returned to the jangada, feeling more hopeless when he went back than 
  when he set out. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 34 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XIV
  CHANCE! 
  A COMPLETE change took place in public opinion on the subject of 
  Joam Dacosta. To anger succeeded pity. The population no longer 
  thronged to the prison of Manaos to roar out cries of death to the 
  prisoner. On the contrary, the most forward of them in accusing him of 
  being the principal author of the crime of Tijuco now averred that he 
  was not guilty, and demanded his immediate restoration to liberty. Thus 
  it always is with the mob--from one extreme they run to the other. But 
  the change was intelligible. 
  The events which had happened during the last few days--the struggle 
  between Benito and Torres; the search for the corpse, which had 
  reappeared under such extraordinary circumstances; the finding of the 
  "indecipherable" document, if we can so call it; the information it 
  concealed, the assurance that it contained, or rather the wish that it 
  contained, the material proof of the guiltlessness of Joam Dacosta; and 
  the hope that it was written by the real culprit--all these things had 
  contributed to work the change in public opinion. What the people had 
  desired and impatiently demanded forty-eight hours before, they now 
  feared, and that was the arrival of the instructions due from Rio de 
  Janeiro. 
  These, however, were not likely to be delayed. 
  Joam Dacosta had been arrested on the 24th of August, and examined 
  next day. The judge's report was sent off on the 26th. It was now the 
  28th. In three or four days more the minister would have come to a 
  decision regarding the convict, and it was only too certain that justice 
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  would take its course. 
  There was no doubt that such would be the case. On the other hand, 
  that the assurance of Dacosta's innocence would appear from the 
  document, was not doubted by anybody, neither by his family nor by 
  the fickle population of Manaos, who excitedly followed the phases of 
  this dramatic affair. 
  But, on the other hand, in the eyes of disinterested or indifferent 
  persons who were not affected by the event, what value could be 
  assigned to this document? and how could they even declare that it 
  referred to the crime in the diamond arrayal? It existed, that was 
  undeniable; it had been found on the corpse of Torres, nothing could be 
  more certain. It could even be seen, by comparing it with the letter in 
  which Torres gave the information about Joam Dacosta, that the 
  document was not in the handwriting of the adventurer. But, as had 
  been suggested by Judge Jarriquez, why should not the scoundrel have 
  invented it for the sake of his bargain? And this was less unlikely to be 
  the case, considering that Torres had declined to part with it until after 
  his marriage with Dacosta's daughter--that is to say, when it would have 
  been impossible to undo an accomplished fact. 
  All these views were held by some people in some form, and we can 
  quite understand what interest the affair created. In any case, the 
  situation of Joam Dacosta was most hazardous. If trhe document were 
  not deciphered, it would be just the same as if it did not exist; and if the 
  secret of the cryptogram were not miraculously divined or revealed 
  before the end of the three days, the supreme sentence would inevitably 
  be suffered by the doomed man of Tijuco. And this miracle a man 
  attempted to perform! The man was Jarriquez, and he now really set to 
  work more in the interest of Joam Dacosta than for the satisfaction of 
  his analytical faculties. A complete change had also taken place in his 
  opinion. Was not this man, who had voluntarily abandoned his retreat 
  at Iquitos, who had come at the risk of his life to demand his 
  rehabilitation at the hands of Brazilian justice, a moral enigma worth 
  all the others put together? And so the judge had resolved never to leave 
  the document until he had discovered the cipher. He set to work at it in 
  a fury. He ate no more; he slept no more! All his time was passed in 
  inventing combinations of numbers, in forging a key to force this lock! 
  This idea had taken possession of Judge Jarriquez's brain at the end of 
  the first day. Suppressed frenzy consumed him, and kept him in a 
  perpetual heat. His whole house trembled; his servants, black or white, 
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  dared not come near him. Fortunately he was a bachelor; had there 
  been a Madame Jarriquez she would have had a very uncomfortable 
  time of it. Never had a problem so taken possession of this oddity, and 
  he had thoroughly made up his mind to get at the solution, even if his 
  head exploded like an overheated boiler under the tension of its vapor. 
  It was perfectly clear to the mind of the worthy magistrate that the key 
  to the document was a number, composed of two or more ciphers, but 
  what this number was all investigation seemed powerless to discover. 
  This was the enterprise on which Jarriquez, in quite a fury, was 
  engaged, and during this 28th of August he brought all his faculties to 
  bear on it, and worked away almost superhumanly. 
  To arrive at the number by chance, he said, was to lose himself in 
  millions of combinations, which would absorb the life of a first-rate 
  calculator. But if he could in no respect reckon on chance, was it 
  impossible to proceed by reasoning? Decidedly not! And so it was "to 
  reason till he became unreasoning" that Judge Jarriquez gave himself 
  up after vainly seeking repose in a few hours of sleep. He who ventured 
  in upon him at this moment, after braving the formal defenses which 
  protected his solitude, would have found him, as on the day before, in 
  his study, before his desk, with the document under his eyes, the 
  thousands of letters of which seemed all jumbled together and flying 
  about his head. 
  "Ah!" he explaimed, "why did not the scoundrel who wrote this 
  separate the words in this paragraph? We might--we will try--but no! 
  However, if there is anything here about the murder and the robbery, 
  two or three words there must be in it--'arrayal,' 'diamond,' 'Tijuco,' 
  'Dacosta,' and others; and in putting down their cryptological 
  equivalents the number could be arrived at. But there is nothing--not a 
  single break!--not one word by itself! One word of two hundred and 
  seventy-six letters! I hope the wretch may be blessed two hundred and 
  seventy-six times for complicating his system in this way! He ought to be 
  hanged two hundred and seventy-six times!" 
  And a violent thump with his fist on the document emphasized this 
  charitable wish. 
  "But," continued the magistrate, "if I cannot find one of the words in 
  the body of the document, I might at least try my hand at the beginning 
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  and end of each paragraph. There may be a chance there that I ought 
  not to miss." 
  And impressed with this idea Judge Jarriquez successively tried if the 
  letters which commenced or finished the different paragraphs could be 
  made to correspond with those which formed the most important word, 
  which was sure to be found somewhre, that of Dacosta. 
  He could do nothing of the kind. 
  In fact, to take only the last paragraph with which he began, the 
  formula was: 
                          P  =  D 
                          h  =  a 
                          y  =  c 
                          f  =  o 
                          s  =  s 
                          l  =  t 
                          y  =  a 
  Now, at the very first letter Jarriquez was stopped in his calculations, 
  for the difference in alphabetical position between the d and the p gave 
  him not one cipher, but two, namely, 12, and in this kind of cryptograph 
  only one letter can take the place of another. 
  It was the same for the seven last letters of the paragraph, p s u v j h d, 
  of which the series also commences with a p, and which in no case could 
  stand for the d in Dacosta, because these letters were in like manner 
  twelve spaces apart. 
  So it was not his name that figured here. 
  The same observation applies to the words arrayal and Tijuco, which 
  were successively tried, but whose construction did not correspond with 
  the cryptographic series. 
  After he had got so far, Judge Jarriquez, with his head nearly splitting, 
  arose and paced his office, went for fresh air to the window, and gave 
  utterance to a growl, at the noise of which a flock of hummingbirds, 
  murmuring among the foliage of a mimosa tree, betook themselves to 
  flight. Then he returned to the document. 
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  He picked it up and turned it over and over. 
  "The humbig! the rascal!" he hissed; "it will end by driving me mad! 
  But steady! Be calm! Don't let our spirits go down! This is not the 
  time!" 
  And then, having refreshed himself by giving his head a thorough 
  sluicing with cold water: 
  "Let us try another way," he said, "and as I cannot hit upon the 
  number from the arrangement of the letters, let us see what number the 
  author of the document would have chosen in confessing that he was the 
  author of the crime at Tijuco." 
  This was another method for the magistrate to enter upon, and maybe 
  he was right, for there was a certain amount of logic about it. 
  "And first let us try a date! Why should not the culprit have taken the 
  date of the year in which Dacosta, the innocent man he allowed to be 
  sentenced in his own place, was born? Was he likely to forget a number 
  which was so important to him? Then Joam Dacosta was born in 1804. 
  Let us see what 1804 will give us as a cryptographical number." 
  And Judge Jarriquez wrote the first letters of the paragraph, and 
  putting over them the number 1804 repeated thrice, he obtained 
  1804    1804    1804 
  phyj    slyd    dqfd 
  Then in counting up the spaced in alphabetical order, he obtained 
  s.yf    rdy.    cif. 
  And this was meaningless! And he wanted three letters which he had to 
  replace by points, because the ciphers, 8, 4, and 4, which command the 
  three letters, h, d, and d, do not give corresponding letters in ascending 
  the series. 
  "That is not it again!" exclaimed Jarriques. "Let us try another 
  number." 
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  And he asked himself, if instead of this first date the author of the 
  document had not rather selected the date of the year in which the 
  crime was committed. 
  This was in 1826. 
  And so proceeding as above, he obtained. 
  1826    1826    1826 
  phyj    slyd    dqfd 
  and that gave 
  o.vd    rdv.    cid. 
  the same meaningless series, the same absence of sense, as many letters 
  wanting as in the former instance, and for the same reason. 
  "Bother the number!" exclaimed the magistrate. "We must give it up 
  again. Let us have another one! Perhaps the rascal chose the number of 
  contos representing the amount of the booty!" 
  Now the value of the stolen diamonds was estimated at eight hundred 
  and thirty-four contos, or about 2,500,000 francs, and so the formula 
  became 
  834    834    834    834 
  phy    jsl    ydd    qfd 
  and this gave a result as little gratifying as the others---- 
  het    bph    pa.    ic. 
  "Confound the document and him who imagined it!" shouted 
  Jarriquez, throwing down the paper, which was wafted to the other side 
  of the room. "It would try the patience of a saint!" 
  But the short burst of anger passed away, and the magistrate, who had 
  no idea of being beaten, picked up the paper. What he had done with 
  the first letters of the different paragraphs he did with the last--and to 
  no purpose. Then he tried everything his excited imagination could 
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  suggest. 
  He tried in succession the numbers which represented Dacosta's age, 
  which would have been known to the author of the crime, the date of his 
  arrest, the date of the sentence at the Villa Rica assizes, the date fixed 
  for the execution, etc., etc., even the number of victims at the affray at 
  Tijuco! 
  Nothing! All the time nothing! 
  Judge Jarriquez had worked himself into such a state of exasperation 
  that there really was some fear that his mental faculties would lose their 
  balance. He jumped about, and twisted about, and wrestled about as if 
  he really had got hold of his enemy's body. Then suddenly he cried, 
  "Now for chance! Heaven help me now, logic is powerless!" 
  His hand seized a bell-pull hanging near his table. The bell rang 
  furiously, and the magistrate strode up to the door, which he opened. 
  "Bobo!" he shouted. 
  A moment or two elapsed. 
  Bobo was a freed negro, who was the privileged servant of Jarriquez. 
  He did not appear; it was evident that Bobo was afraid to come into his 
  master's room. 
  Another ring at the bell; another call to Bobo, who, for his own safety, 
  pretended to be deaf on this occasion. And now a third ring at the bell, 
  which unhitched the crank and broke the cord. 
  This time Bobo came up. "What is it, sir?" asked Bobo, prudently 
  waiting on the threshold. 
  "Advance, without uttering a single word!" replied the judge, whose 
  flaming eyes made the negro quake again. 
  Bobo advanced. 
  "Bobo," said Jarriquez, "attend to what I say, and answer immediately; 
  do not even take time to think, or I----" 
  Bobo, with fixed eyes and open mouth, brought his feet together like a 
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  soldier and stood at attention. 
  "Are you ready?" asked his master. 
  "I am." 
  "Now, then, tell me, without a moment's thought--you understand--the 
  first number than comes into your head." 
  "76223," answered Bobo, all in a breath. Bobo thought he would please 
  his master by giving him a pretty large one! 
  Judge Jarriquez had run to the table, and, pencil in hand, had made out 
  a formula with the number given by Bobo, and which Bobo had in this 
  way only given him at a venture. 
  It is obvious that it was most unlikely that a number such as 76223 was 
  the key of the document, and it produced no other result than to bring 
  to the lips of Jarriquez such a vigorous ejaculation that Bobo 
  disappeared like a shot! 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 35 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XV
  THE LAST EFFORTS 
  THE MAGISTRATE, however, was not the only one who passed his 
  time unprofitably. Benito, Manoel, and Minha tried all they could 
  together to extract the secret from the document on which depended 
  their father's life and honor. On his part, Fragoso, aided by Lina, could 
  not remain quiet, but all their ingenuity had failed, and the number still 
  escaped them. 
  "Why don't you find it, Fragoso?" asked the young mulatto. 
  "I will find it," answered Fragoso. 
  And he did not find it! 
  Here we should say that Fragoso had an idea of a project of which he 
  had not even spoken to Lina, but which had taken full possession of his 
  mind. This was to go in search of the gang to which the ex-captain of the 
  woods had belonged, and to find out who was the probable author of 
  this cipher document, which was supposed to be the confession of the 
  culprit of Tijuco. The part of the Amazon where these people were 
  employed, the very place where Fragoso had met Torres a few years 
  before, was not very far from Manaos. He would only have to descend 
  the river for about fifty miles, to the mouth of the Madeira, a tributary 
  coming in on the right, and there he was almost sure to meet the head of 
  these "capitaes do mato," to which Torres belonged. In two days, or 
  three days at the outside, Fragoso could get into communication with 
  the old comrades of the adventurer. 
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  "Yes! I could do that," he repeated to himself; "but what would be the 
  good of it, supposing I succeeded? If we are sure that one of Torres' 
  companions has recently died, would that prove him to be the author of 
  this crime? Would that show that he gave Torres a document in which 
  he announced himself the author of this crime, and exonerated Joam 
  Dacosta? Would that give us the key of the document? No! Two men 
  only knew the cipher--the culprit and Torres! And these two men are no 
  more!" 
  So reasoned Fragoso. It was evident that his enterprise would do no 
  good. But the thought of it was too much for him. An irresistible 
  influence impelled him to set out, although he was not even sure of 
  finding the band on the Madeira. In fact, it might be engaged in some 
  other part of the province, and to come up with it might require more 
  time than Fragoso had at his disposal! And what would be the result? 
  It is none the less true, however, that on the 29th of August, before 
  sunrise, Fragoso, without saying anything to anybody, secretly left the 
  jangada, arrived at Manaos, and embarked in one of the egariteas 
  which daily descend the Amazon. 
  And great was the astonishment when he was not seen on board, and 
  did not appear during the day. No one, not even Lina, could explain the 
  absence of so devoted a servant at such a crisis. 
  Some of them even asked, and not without reason, if the poor fellow, 
  rendered desperate at having, when he met him on the frontier, 
  personally contributed to bringing Torres on board the raft, had not 
  made away with himself. 
  But if Fragoso could so reproach himself, how about Benito? In the first 
  place at Iquitos he had invited Torres to visit the fazenda; in the second 
  place he had brought him on board the jangada, to become a passenger 
  on it; and in the third place, in killing him, he had annihilated the only 
  witness whose evidence could save the condemned man. 
  And so Benito considered himself responsible for everything--the arrest 
  of his father, and the terrible events of which it had been the 
  consequence. 
  In fact, had Torres been alive, Benito could not tell but that, in some 
  way or another, from pity or for reward, he would have finished by 
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  handing over the document. Would not Torres, whom nothing could 
  compromise, have been persuaded to speak, had money been brought to 
  bear upon him? Would not the long-sought-for proof have been 
  furnished to the judge? Yes, undoubtedly! And the only man who could 
  have furnished this evidence had been killed through Benito! 
  Such was what the wretched man continually repeated to his mother, to 
  Manoel, and to himself. Such were the cruel responsibilities which his 
  conscience laid to his charge. 
  Between her husband, with whom she passed all the time that was 
  allowed her, and her son, a prey to despair which made her tremble for 
  his reason, the brave Yaquita lost none of her moral energy. In her they 
  found the valiant daughter of Magalhaës, the worthy wife of the 
  fazender of Iquitos. 
  The attitude of Joam Dacosta was well adapted to sustain her in this 
  ordeal. That gallant man, that rigid Puritan, that austere worker, whose 
  whole life had been a battle, had not yet shown a moment of weakness. 
  The most terrible blow which had struck him without prostrating him 
  had been the death of Judge Ribeiro, in whose mind his innocence did 
  not admit of a doubt. Was it not with the help of his old defender that he 
  had hoped to strive for his rehabilitation? The intervention of Torres he 
  had regarded throughout as being quite secondary for him. And of this 
  document he had no knowledge when he left Iquitos to hand himself 
  over to the justice of his country. He only took with him moral proofs. 
  When a material proof was unexpectedly produced in the course of the 
  affair, before or after his arrest, he was certainly not the man to despise 
  it. But if, on account of regrettable circumstances, the proof 
  disappeared, he would find himself once more in the same position as 
  when he passed the Brazilian frontier--the position of a man who came 
  to say, "Here is my past life; here is my present; here is an entirely 
  honest existence of work and devotion which I bring you. You passed on 
  me at first an erroneous judgment. After twenty-three years of exile I 
  have come to give myself up! Here I am; judge me again!" 
  The death of Torres, the impossibility of reading the document found on 
  him, had thus not produced on Joam Dacosta the impression which it 
  had on his children, his friends, his household, and all who were 
  interested in him. 
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  "I have faith in my innocence," he repeated to Yaquita, "as I have faith 
  in God. If my life is still useful to my people, and a miracle is necessary 
  to save me, that miracle will be performed; if not, I shall die! God alone 
  is my judge!" 
  The excitement increased in Manaos as the time ran on; the affair was 
  discussed with unexampled acerbity. In the midst of this enthralment of 
  public opinion, which evoked so much of the mysterious, the document 
  was the principal object of conversation. 
  At the end of this fourth day not a single person doubted but that it 
  contained the vindication of the doomed man. Every one had been given 
  an opportunity of deciphering its incomprehensible contents, for the 
  "Diario d'o Grand Para" had reproduced it in facsimile. Autograph 
  copies were spread about in great numbers at the suggestion of Manoel, 
  who neglect nothing that might lead to the penetration of the mystery--
  not even chance, that "nickname of Providence," as some one has called 
  it. 
  In addition, a reward of one hundred contos (or three hundred 
  thousand francs) was promised to any one who could discover the 
  cipher so fruitlessly sought after--and read the document. This was 
  quite a fortune, and so people of all classes forgot to eat, drink, or sleep 
  to attack this unintelligible cryptogram. 
  Up to the present, however, all had been useless, and probably the most 
  ingenious analysts in the world would have spent their time in vain. It 
  had been advertised that any solution should be sent, without delay, to 
  Judge Jarriquez, to his house in God-the-Son Street; but the evening of 
  the 29th of August came and none had arrived, nor was any likely to 
  arrive. 
  Of all those who took up the study of the puzzle, Judge Jarriquez was 
  one of the most to be pitied. By a natural association of ideas, he also 
  joined in the general opinion that the document referred to the affair at 
  Tijuco, and that it had ben written by the hand of the guilty man, and 
  exonerated Joam Dacosta. And so he put even more ardor into his 
  search for the key. It was not only the art for art's sake which guided 
  him, it was a sentiment of justice, of pity toward a man suffering under 
  an unjust condemnation. If it is the fact that a certain quantity of 
  phosphorus is expended in the work of the brain, it would be difficult to 
  say how many milligrammes the judge had parted with to excite the 
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  network of his "sensorium," and after all, to find out nothing, 
  absolutely nothing. 
  But Jarriquez had no idea of abandoning the inquiry. If he could only 
  now trust to chance, he would work on for that chance. He tried to 
  evoke it by all means possible and impossible. He had given himself over 
  to fury and anger, and, what was worse, to impotent anger! 
  During the latter part of this day he had been trying different numbers--
  numbers selected arbitrarily--and how many of them can scarcely be 
  imagined. Had he had the time, he would not have shrunk from 
  plunging into the millions of combinations of which the ten symbols of 
  numeration are capable. He would have given his whole life to it at the 
  risk of going mad before the year was out. Mad! was he not that 
  already? He had had the idea that the document might be read through 
  the paper, and so he turned it round and exposed it to the light, and 
  tried it in that way. 
  Nothing! The numbers already thought of, and which he tried in this 
  new way, gave no result. Perhaps the document read backward, and the 
  last letter was really the first, for the author would have done this had 
  he wished to make the reading more difficult. 
  Nothing! The new combination only furnished a series of letters just as 
  enigmatic. 
  At eight o'clock in the evening Jarriquez, with his face in his hands, 
  knocked up, worn out mentally and physically, had neither strength to 
  move, to speak, to think, or to associate one idea with another. 
  Suddenly a noise was heard outside. Almost immediately, 
  notwithstanding his formal orders, the door of his study was thrown 
  open. Benito and Manoel were before him, Benito looking dreadfully 
  pale, and Manoel supporting him, for the unfortunate young man had 
  hardly strength to support himself. 
  The magistrate quickly arose. 
  "What is it, gentlemen? What do you want?" he asked. 
  "The cipher! the cipher!" exclaimed Benito, mad with grief--"the cipher 
  of the document." 
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  "Do you know it, then?" shouted the judge. 
  "No, sir," said Manoel. "But you?" 
  "Nothing! nothing!" 
  "Nothing?" gasped Benito, and in a paroxysm of despair he took a knife 
  from his belt and would have plunged it into his breast had not the 
  judge and Manoel jumped forward and managed to disarm him. 
  "Benito," said Jarriquez, ina voice which he tried to keep calm, "if you 
  father cannot escape the expiation of a crime which is not his, you could 
  do something better than kill yourself." 
  "What?" said Benito. 
  "Try and save his life!" 
  "How?" 
  "That is for you to discover," answered the magistrate, "and not for me 
  to say." 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 36 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XVI
  PREPARATIONS 
  ON THE FOLLOWING day, the 30th of August, Benito and Manoel 
  talked matters over together. They had understood the thought to which 
  the judge had not dared to give utterance in their presence, and were 
  engaged in devising some means by which the condemned man could 
  escape the penalty of the law. 
  Nothing else was left for them to do. It was only too certain that for the 
  authorities at Rio Janeiro the undeciphered document would nave no 
  value whatever, that it would be a dead letter, that the first verdict 
  which declared Joam Dacosta the perpetrator of the crime at Tijuco 
  would not be set aside, and that, as in such cases no commutation of the 
  sentence was possible, the order for his execution would inevitably be 
  received. 
  Once more, then, Joam Dacosta would have to escape by flight from an 
  unjust imprisonment. 
  It was at the outset agreed between the two young men that the secret 
  should be carefully kept, and that neither Yaquita nor Minha should be 
  informed of preparations, which would probably only give rise to hopes 
  destined never to be realized. Who could tell if, owing to some 
  unforeseen circumstance, the attempt at escape would not prove a 
  miserable failure? 
  The presence of Fragoso on such an occasion would have been most 
  valuable. Discreet and devoted, his services would have been most 
  welcome to the two young fellows; but Fragoso had not reappeared. 
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  Lina, when asked, could only say that she knew not what had become of 
  him, nor why he had left the raft without telling her anything about it. 
  And assuredly, had Fragoso foreseen that things would have turned out 
  as they were doing, he would never have left the Dacosta family on an 
  expedition which appeared to promise no serious result. Far better for 
  him to have assisted in the escape of the doomed man than to have 
  hurried off in search of the former comrades of Torres! 
  But Fragoso was away, and his assistance had to be dispensed with. 
  At daybreak Benito and Manoel left the raft and proceeded to Manaos. 
  They soon reached the town, and passed through its narrow streets, 
  which at that early hour were quite deserted. In a few minutes they 
  arrived in front of the prison. The waste ground, amid which the old 
  convent which served for a house of detention was built, was traversed 
  by them in all directions, for they had come to study it with the utmost 
  care. 
  Fifty-five feet from the ground, in an angle of the building, they 
  recognized the window of the cell in which Joam Dacosta was confined. 
  The window was secured with iron bars in a miserable state of repair, 
  which it would be easy to tear down or cut through if they could only 
  get near enough. The badly jointed stones in the wall, which were 
  crumbled away every here and there, offered many a ledge for the feet 
  to rest on, if only a rope could be fixed to climb up by. One of the bars 
  had slipped out of its socket, and formed a hook over which it might be 
  possible to throw a rope. That done, one or two of the bars could be 
  removed, so as to permit a man to get through. Benito and Manoel 
  would then have to make their way into the prisoner's room, and 
  without much difficulty the escape could be managed by means of the 
  rope fastened to the projecting iron. During the night, if the sky were 
  very cloudy, none of these operations would be noticed before the day 
  dawned. Joam Dacosta could get safely away. 
  Manoel and Benito spent an hour about the spot, taking care not to 
  attract attention, but examining the locality with great exactness, 
  particularly as regarded the position of the window, the arrangement of 
  the iron bars, and the place from which it would be best to throw the 
  line. 
  "That is agreed," said Manoel at length. "And now, ought Joam 
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  Dacosta to be told about this?" 
  "No, Manoel. Neither to him, any more than to my mother, ought we to 
  impart the secret of an attempt in which there is such a risk of failure." 
  "We shall succeed, Benito!" continued Manoel. "However, we must 
  prepare for everything; and in case the chief of the prison should 
  discover us at the moment of escape----" 
  "We shall have money enough to purchase his silence," answered 
  Benito. 
  "Good!" replied Manoel. "But once your father is out of prison he 
  cannot remain hidden in the town or on the jangada. Where is he to find 
  refuge?" 
  This was the second question to solve: and a very difficult one it was. 
  A hundred paces away from the prison, however, the waste land was 
  crossed by one of those canals which flow through the town into the Rio 
  Negro. This canal afforded an easy way of gaining the river if a pirogue 
  were in waiting for the fugitive. From the foot of the wall to the canal 
  side was hardly a hundred yards. 
  Benito and Manoel decided that about eight o'clock in the evening one 
  of the pirogues, with two strong rowers, under the command of the pilot 
  Araujo, should start from the jangada. They could ascend the Rio 
  Negro, enter the canal, and, crossing the waste land, remain concealed 
  throughout the night under the tall vegetation on the banks. 
  But once on board, where was Joam Dacosta to seek refuge? To return 
  to Iquitos was to follow a road full of difficulties and peril, and a long 
  one in any case, should the fugitive either travel across the country or 
  by the river. Neither by horse not pirogue could he be got out of danger 
  quickly enough, and the fazenda was no longer a safe retreat. He would 
  not return to it as the fazender, Joam Garral, but as the convict, Joam 
  Dacosta, continually in fear of his extradition. He could never dream of 
  resuming his former life. 
  To get away by the Rio Negro into the north of the province, or even 
  beyond the Brazilian territory, would require more time than he could 
  spare, and his first care must be to escape from immediate pursuit. 
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  To start again down the Amazon? But stations, village, and towns 
  abounded on both sides of the river. The description of the fugitive 
  would be sent to all the police, and he would run the risk of being 
  arrested long before he reached the Atlantic. And supposing he reached 
  the coast, where and how was he to hide and wait for a passage to put 
  the sea between himself and his pursuers? 
  On consideration of these various plans, Benito and Manoel agreed that 
  neither of them was practicable. One, however, did offer some chance of 
  safety, and that was to embark in the pirogue, follow the canal into the 
  Rio Negro, descend this tributary under the guidance of the pilot, reach 
  the confluence of the rivers, and run down the Amazon along its right 
  bank for some sixty miles during the nights, resting during the daylight, 
  and so gaining the embouchure of the Madeira. 
  This tributary, which, fed by a hundred affluents, descends from the 
  watershed of the Cordilleras, is a regular waterway opening into the 
  very heart of Bolivia. A pirogue could pass up it and leave no trace of its 
  passage, and a refuge could be found in some town or village beyond the 
  Brazilian frontier. There Joam Dacosta would be comparatively safe, 
  and there for several months he could wait for an opportunity of 
  reaching the Pacific coast and taking passage in some vessel leaving one 
  of its ports; and if the ship were bound for one of the States of North 
  America he would be free. Once there, he could sell the fazenda, eave 
  his country forever, and seek beyond the sea, in the Old World, a final 
  retreat in which to end an existence so cruelly and unjustly disturbed. 
  Anywhere he might go, his family--not excepting Manoel, who was 
  bound to him by so many ties--would assuredly follow without the 
  slightest hesitation. 
  "Let us go," said Benito; "we must have all ready before night, and we 
  have no time to lose." 
  The young men returned on board by way of the canal bank, which led 
  along the Rio Negro. They satisfied themselves that the passage of the 
  pirogue would be quite possible, and that no obstacles such as locks or 
  boats under repair were there to stop it. They then descended the left 
  bank of the tributary, avoiding the slowly-filling streets of the town, and 
  reached the jangada. 
  Benito's first care was to see his mother. He felt sufficiently master of 
  himself to dissemble the anxiety which consumed him. He wished to 
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  assure her that all hope was not lost, that the mystery of the document 
  would be cleared up, that in any case public opinion was in favor of 
  Joam, and that, in face of the agitation which was being made in his 
  favor, justice would grant all the necessary time for the production of 
  the material proof his innocence. "Yes, mother," he added, "before to-
  morrow we shall be free from anxiety." 
  "May heaven grant it so!" replied Yaquita, and she looked at him so 
  keenly that Benito could hardly meet her glance. 
  On his part, and as if by pre-arrangement, Manoel had tried to reassure 
  Minha by telling her that Judge Jarriquez was convinced of the 
  innocence of Joam, and would try to save him by every means in his 
  power. 
  "I only wish he would, Manoel," answered she, endeavoring in vain to 
  restrain her tears. 
  And Manoel left her, for the tears were also welling up in his eyes and 
  witnessing against the words of hope to which he had just given 
  utterance. 
  And now the time had arrived for them to make their daily visit to the 
  prisoner, and Yaquita and her daughter set off to Manaos. 
  For an hour the young men were in consultation with Araujo. They 
  acquainted him with their plan in all its details, and they discussed not 
  only the projected escape, but the measures which were necessary for 
  the safety of the fugitive. 
  Araujo approved of everything; he undertook during the approaching 
  night to take the pirogue up the canal without attracting any notice, and 
  he knew its course thoroughly as far as the spot where he was to await 
  the arrival of Joam Dacosta. To get back to the mouth of the Rio Negro 
  was easy enough, and the pirogue would be able to pass unnoticed 
  among the numerous craft continually descending the river. 
  Araujo had no objection to offer to the idea of following the Amazon 
  down to its confluence with the Madeira. The course of the Madeira was 
  familiar to him for quite two hundred miles up, and in the midst of 
  these thinly-peopled provinces, even if pursuit took place in their 
  direction, all attempts at capture could be easily frustrated; they could 
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  reach the interior of Bolivia, and if Joam decided to leave his country he 
  could procure a passage with less danger on the coast of the Pacific than 
  on that of the Atlantic. 
  Araujo's approval was most welcome to the young fellows; they had 
  great faith in the practical good sense of the pilot, and not without 
  reason. His zeal was undoubted, and he would assuredly have risked 
  both life and liberty to save the fazender of Iquitos. 
  With the utmost secrecy Araujo at once set about his preparations. A 
  considerable sum in gold was handed over to him by Benito to meet all 
  eventualities during the voyage on the Madeira. In getting the pirogue 
  ready, he announced his intention of going in search of Fragoso, whose 
  fate excited a good deal of anxiety among his companions. He stowed 
  away in the boat provisions for many days, and did not forget the ropes 
  and tools which would be required by the young men when they reached 
  the canal at the appointed time and place. 
  These preparations evoked no curiosity on the part of the crew of the 
  jangada, and even the two stalwart negroes were not let into the secret. 
  They, however, could be absolutely depended on. Whenever they 
  learned what the work of safety was in which they were engaged--when 
  Joam Dacosta, once more free, was confided to their charge--Araujo 
  knew well that they would dare anything, even to the risk of their own 
  lives, to save the life of their master. 
  By the afternoon all was ready, and they had only the night to wait for. 
  But before making a start Manoel wished to call on Judge Jarriquez for 
  the last time. The magistrate might perhaps have found out something 
  new about the document. Benito preferred to remain on the raft and 
  wait for the return of his mother and sister. 
  Manoel then presented himself at the abode of Judge Jarriquez, and 
  was immediately admitted. 
  The magistrate, in the study which he never quitted, was still the victim 
  of the same excitement. The document crumpled by his impatient 
  fingers, was still there before his eyes on the table. 
  "Sir," said Manoel, whose voice trembled as he asked the question, 
  "have you received anything from Rio de Janeiro." 
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  "No," answered the judge; "the order has not yet come to hand, but it 
  may at any moment." 
  "And the document?" 
  "Nothing yet!" exclaimed he. "Everything my imagination can suggest I 
  have tried, and no result." 
  "None?" 
  "Nevertheless, I distinctly see one word in the document--only one!" 
  "What is that--what is the word?" 
  "'Fly'!" 
  Manoel said nothing, but he pressed the hand which Jarriquez held out 
  to him, and returned to the jangada to wait for the moment of action. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
  | Top | Next Chapter | Title Page | Litrix Reading Room | Authors | Titles |
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
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  http://www.litrix.com/800lgs/800lg036.htm (7 of 7) [12/3/2001 11:22:01 AM]
  
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 37 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XVII
  THE LAST NIGHT 
  THE VISIT of Yaquita and her daughter had been like all such visits 
  during the few hours which each day the husband and wife spent 
  together. In the presence of the two beings whom Joam so dearly loved 
  his heart nearly failed him. But the husband--the father--retained his 
  self-command. It was he who comforted the two poor women and 
  inspired them with a little of the hope of which so little now remained to 
  him. They had come with the intention of cheering the prisoner. Alas! 
  far more than he they themselves were in want of cheering! But when 
  they found him still bearing himself unflinchingly in the midst of his 
  terrible trial, they recovered a little of their hope. 
  Once more had Joam spoken encouraging words to them. His 
  indomitable energy was due not only to the feeling of his innocence, but 
  to his faith in that God, a portion of whose justice yet dwells in the 
  hearts of men. No! Joam Dacosta would never lose his life for the crime 
  of Tijuco! 
  Hardly ever did he mention the document. Whether it were apocryphal 
  or no, whether it were in the handwriting of Torres or in that of the real 
  perpetrator of the crime, whether it contained or did not contain the 
  longed-for vindication, it was on no such doubtful hypothesis that Joam 
  Dacosta presumed to trust. No; he reckoned on a better argument in his 
  favor, and it was to his long life of toil and honor that he relegated the 
  task of pleading for him. 
  This evening, then, his wife and daughter, strengthened by the manly 
  words, which thrilled them to the core of their hearts, had left him more 
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  confident than they had ever been since his arrest. For the last time the 
  prisoner had embraced them, and with redoubled tenderness. It seemed 
  as though the dénouement was nigh. 
  Joam Dacosta, after they had left, remained for some time perfectly 
  motionless. His arms rested on a small table and supported his head. Of 
  what was he thinking? Had he at last been convinced that human 
  justice, after failing the first time, would at length pronounce his 
  acquittal? 
  Yes, he still hoped. With the report of Judge Jarriquez establishing his 
  identity, he knew that his memoir, which he had penned with so much 
  sincerity, would have been sent to Rio Janeiro, and was now in the 
  hands of the chief justice. This memoir, as we know, was the history of 
  his life from his entry into the offices of the diamond arrayal until the 
  very moment when the jangada stopped before Manaos. Joam Dacosta 
  was pondering over his whole career. He again lived his past life from 
  the moment when, as an orphan, he had set foot in Tijuco. There his 
  zeal had raised him high in the offices of the governor-general, into 
  which he had been admitted when still very young. The future smiled on 
  him; he would have filled some important position. Then this sudden 
  catastrophe; the robbery of the diamond convoy, the massacre of the 
  escort, the suspicion directed against him as the only official who could 
  have divulged the secret of the expedition, his arrest, his appearance 
  before the jury, his conviction in spite of all the efforts of his advocate, 
  the last hours spent in the condemned cell at Villa Rica, his escape 
  under conditions which betokened almost superhuman courage, his 
  flight through the northern provinces, his arrival on the Peruvian 
  frontier, and the reception which the starving fugitive had met with 
  from the hospitable fazender Magalhaës. 
  The prisoner once more passed in review these events, which had so 
  cruelly amrred his life. And then, lost in his thoughts and recollections, 
  he sat, regardless of a peculiar noise on the outer wall of the convent, of 
  the jerkings of a rope hitched on to a bar of his window, and of grating 
  steel as it cut through iron, which ought at once to have attracted the 
  attention of a less absorbed man. 
  Joam Dacosta continued to live the years of his youth after his arrival in 
  Peru. He again saw the fazender, the clerk, the partner of the old 
  Portuguese, toiling hard for the prosperity of the establishment at 
  Iquitos. Ah! why at the outset had he not told all to his benefactor? He 
  would never have doubted him. It was the only error with which he 
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  could reproach himself. Why had he not confessed to him whence he 
  had come, and who he was--above all, at the moment when Magalhaës 
  had place in his hand the hand of the daughter who would never have 
  believed that he was the author of so frightful a crime. 
  And now the noise outside became loud enough to attract the prisoner's 
  attention. For an instant Joam raised his head; his eyes sought the 
  window, but with a vacant look, as though he were unconscious, and the 
  next instant his head again sank into his hands. Again he was in thought 
  back at Iquitos. 
  There the old fazender was dying; before his end he longed for the 
  future of his daughter to be assured, for his partner to be the sole 
  master of the settlement which had grown so prosperous under his 
  management. Should Dacosta have spoken then? Perhaps; but he dared 
  not do it. He again lived the happy days he had spent with Yaquita, and 
  again thought of the birth of his children, again felt the happiness which 
  had its only trouble in the remembrances of Tijuco and the remorse that 
  he had not confessed his terrible secret. 
  The chain of events was reproduced in Joam's mind with a clearness 
  and completeness quite remarkable. 
  And now he was thinking of the day when his daughter's marriage with 
  Manoel had been decided. Could he allow that union to take place 
  under a false name without acquainting the lad with the mystery of his 
  life? No! And so at the advice of Judge Ribeiro he resolved to come and 
  claim the revision of his sentence, to demand the rehabilitation which 
  was his due! He was starting with his people, and then came the 
  intervention of Torres, the detestable bargain proposed by the 
  scoundrel, the indignant refusal of the father to hand over his daughter 
  to save his honor and his life, and then the denunciation and the arrest! 
  Suddenly the window flew open with a violent push from without. 
  Joam started up; the souvenire of the past vanished like a shadow. 
  Benito leaped into the room; he was in the presence of his father, and 
  the next moment Manoel, tearing down the remaining bars, appeared 
  before him. 
  Joam Dacosta would have uttered a cry of surprise. Benito left him no 
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  time to do so. 
  "Father," he said, "the window grating is down. A rope leads to the 
  ground. A pirogue is waiting for you on the canal not a hundred yards 
  off. Araujo is there ready to take you far away from Manaos, on the 
  other bank of the Amazon where your track will never be discovered. 
  Father, you must escape this very moment! It was the judge's own 
  suggestion!" 
  "It must be done!" added Manoel. 
  "Fly! I!--Fly a second time! Escape again?" 
  And with crossed arms, and head erect, Joam Dacosta stepped forward. 
  "Never!" he said, in a voice so firm that Benito and Manoel stood 
  bewildered. 
  The young men had never thought of a difficulty like this. They had 
  never reckoned on the hindrances to escape coming from the prisoner 
  himself. 
  Benito advanced to his father, and looking him straight in the face, and 
  taking both his hands in his, not to force him, but to try and convince 
  him, said: 
  "Never, did you say, father?" 
  "Never!" 
  "Father," said Manoel--"for I also have the right to call you father--
  listen to us! If we tell you that you ought to fly without losing an instant, 
  it is because if you remain you will be guilty toward others, toward 
  yourself!" 
  "To remain," continued Benito, "is to remain to die! The order for 
  execution may come at any moment! If you imagine that the justice of 
  men will nullify a wrong decision, if you think it will rehabilitate you 
  whom it condemned twenty years since, you are mistaken! There is hope 
  no longer! You must escape! Come!" 
  By an irresistible impulse Benito seized his father and drew him toward 
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  the window. 
  Joam Dacosta struggled from his son's grasp and recoiled a second time. 
  "To fly," he answered, in the tone of a man whose resolution was 
  unalterable, "is to dishonor myself, and you with me! It would be a 
  confession of my guilt! Of my own free will I surrendered myself to my 
  country's judges, and I will await their decision, whatever that decision 
  may be!" 
  "But the presumptions on which you trusted are insufficient," replied 
  Manoel, "and the material proof of your innocence is still wanting! If 
  we tell you that you ought to fly, it is because Judge Jarriquez himself 
  told us so. You have now only this one chance left to escape from 
  death!" 
  "I will die, then," said Joam, in a calm voice. "I will die protesting 
  against the decision which condemned me! The first time, a few hours 
  before the execution--I fled! Yes! I was then young. I had all my life 
  before me in which to struggle against man's injustice! But to save 
  myself now, to begin again the miserable existence of a felon hiding 
  under a false name, whose every effort is required to avoid the pursuit 
  of the police, again to live the life of anxiety which I have led for twenty-
  three years, and oblige you to share it with me; to wait each day for a 
  denunciation which sooner or later must come, to wait for the claim for 
  extradition which would follow me to a foreign country! Am I to live for 
  that? No! Never!" 
  "Father," interrupted Benito, whose mind threatened to give way 
  before such obstinacy, "you shall fly! I will have it so!" And he caught 
  hold of Joam Dacosta, and tried by force to drag him toward the 
  window. 
  "No! no!" 
  "You wish to drive me mad?" 
  "My son," exclaimed Joam Dacosta, "listen to me! Once already I 
  escaped from the prison at Villa Rica, and people believed I fled from 
  well-merited punishment. Yes, they had reason to think so. Well, for the 
  honor of the name which you bear I shall not do so again." 
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  Benito had fallen on his knees before his father. He held up his hands to 
  him; he begged him: 
  "But this order, father," he repeated, "this order which is due to-day--
  even now--it will contain your sentence of death." 
  "The order may come, but my determination will not change. No, my 
  son! Joam Dacosta, guilty, might fly! Joam Dacosta, innocent, will not 
  fly!" 
  The scene which followed these words was heart-rending. Benito 
  struggled with his father. Manoel, distracted, kept near the window 
  ready to carry off the prisoner--when the door of the room opened. 
  On the threshold appeared the chief of the police, accompanied by the 
  head warder of the prison and a few soldiers. The chief of the police 
  understood at a glance that an attempt at escape was being made; but 
  he also understood from the prisoner's attitude that he it was who had 
  no wish to go! He said nothing. The sincerest pity was depicted on his 
  face. Doubtless he also, like Judge Jarriquez, would have liked Dacosta 
  to have escaped. 
  It was too late! 
  The chief of the police, who held a paper in his hand, advanced toward 
  the prisoner. 
  "Before all of you," said Joam Dacosta, "let me tell you, sir, that it only 
  rested with me to get away, and that I would not do so." 
  The chief of the police bowed his head, and then, in a voice which he 
  vainly tried to control" 
  "Joam Dacosta," he said, "the order has this moment arrived from the 
  chief justice at Rio Janeiro." 
  "Father!" exclaimed Manoel and Benito. 
  "This order," asked Joam Dacosta, who had crossed his arms, "this 
  order requires the execution of my sentence?" 
  "Yes!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 37 
  "And that will take place?" 
  "To-morrow." 
  Benito threw himself on his father. Again would he have dragged him 
  from his cell, but the soldiers came and drew away the prisoner from his 
  grasp. 
  At a sign from the chief of the police Benito and Manoel were taken 
  away. An end had to be put to this painful scene, which had already 
  lasted too long. 
  "Sir," said the doomed man, "before to-morrow, before the hour of my 
  execution, may I pass a few moments with Padre Passanha, whom I ask 
  you to tell?" 
  "It will be forbidden." 
  "May I see my family, and embrace for a last time my wife and 
  children?" 
  "You shall see them." 
  "Thank you, sir," answered Joam; "and now keep guard over that 
  window; it will not do for them to take me out of here against my will." 
  And then the chief of the police, after a respectful bow, retired with the 
  warder and the soldiers. 
  The doomed man, who had now but a few hours to live, was left alone. 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 37 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 38 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  or  Reel.Com for the movie
  CHAPTER XVIII
  FRAGOSO 
  AND SO the order had come, and, as Judge Jarriquez had foreseen, it 
  was an order requiring the immediate execution of the sentence 
  pronounced on Joam Dacosta. No proof had been produced; justice 
  must take its course. 
  It was the very day--the 31st of August, at nine o'clock in the morning of 
  which the condemned man was to perish on the gallows. 
  The death penalty in Brazil is generally commuted except in the case of 
  negroes, but this time it was to be suffered by a white man. 
  Such are the penal arrangements relative to crimes in the diamond 
  arrayal, for which, in the public interest, the law allows no appear to 
  mercy. 
  Nothing could now save Joam Dacosta. It was not only life, but honor 
  that he was about to lose. 
  But on the 31st of August a man was approaching Manaos with all the 
  speed his horse was capable of, and such had been the pace at which he 
  had come that half a mile from the town the gallant creature fell, 
  incapable of carrying him any further. 
  The rider did not even stop to raise his steed. Evidently he had asked 
  and obtained from it all that was possible, and, despite the state of 
  exhaustion in which he found himself, he rushed off in the direction of 
  the city. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 38 
  The man came from the eastern provinces, and had followed the left 
  bank of the river. All his means had gone in the purchase of this horse, 
  which, swifter far than any pirogue on the Amazon, had brought him to 
  Manaos. 
  It was Fragoso! 
  Had, then, the brave fellow succeeded in the enterprise of which he had 
  spoken to nobody? Had he found the party to which Torres belonged? 
  Had he discovered some secret which would yet save Joam Dacosta? 
  He hardly knew. But in any case he was in great haste to acquaint Judge 
  Jarriquez with what he had ascertained during his short excursion. 
  And this is what had happened. 
  Fragoso had made no mistake when he recognized Torres as one of the 
  captains of the party which was employed in the river provinces of the 
  Madeira. 
  He set out, and on reaching the mouth of that tributary he learned that 
  the chief of these capitaes da mato was then in the neighborhood. 
  Without losing a minute, Fragoso started on the search, and, not 
  without difficulty, succeeded in meeting him. 
  To Fragoso's questions the chief of the party had no hesitation in 
  replying; he had no interest in keeping silence with regard to the few 
  simple matters on which he was interrogated. In fact, three questions 
  only of importance were asked him by Fragoso, and these were: 
  "Did not a captain of the woods named Torres belong to your party a 
  few months ago?" 
  "Yes." 
  "At that time had he not one intimate friend among his companions 
  who has recently died?" 
  "Just so!" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 38 
  "And the name of that friend was?" 
  "Ortega." 
  This was all that Fragoso had learned. Was this information of a kind to 
  modify Dacosta's position? It was hardly likely. 
  Fragoso saw this, and pressed the chief of the band to tell him what he 
  knew of this Ortega, of the place where he came from, and of his 
  antecedents generally. Such information would have been of great 
  importance if Ortega, as Torres had declared, was the true author of the 
  crime of Tijuco. But unfortunately the chief could give him no 
  information whatever in the matter. 
  What was certain was that Ortega had been a member of the band for 
  many years, that an intimate friendship existed between him and 
  Torres, that they were always seen together, and that Torres had 
  watched at his bedside when he died. 
  This was all the chief of the band knew, and he could tell no more. 
  Fragoso, then, had to be contented with these insignificant details, and 
  departed immediately. 
  But if the devoted fellow had not brought back the proof that Ortega 
  was the author of the crime of Tijuco, he had gained one thing, and that 
  was the knowledge that Torres had told the truth when he affirmed that 
  one of his comrades in the band had died, and that he had been present 
  during his last moments. 
  The hypothesis that Ortega had given him the document in question had 
  now become admissible. Nothing was more probable than that this 
  document had reference to the crime of which Ortega was really the 
  author, and that it contained the confession of the culprit, accompanied 
  by circumstances which permitted of no doubt as to its truth. 
  And so, if the document could be read, if the key had been found, if the 
  cipher on which the system hung were known, no doubt of its truth 
  could be entertained. 
  But this cipher Fragoso did not know. A few more presumptions, a half-
  certainty that the adventurer had invented nothing, certain 
  circumstances tending to prove that the secret of the matter was 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 38 
  contained in the document--and that was all that the gallant fellow 
  brought back from his visit to the chief of the gang of which Torres had 
  been a member. 
  Nevertheless, little as it was, he was in all haste to relate it to Judge 
  Jarriquez. He knew that he had not an hour to lose, and that was why 
  on this very morning, at about eight o'clock, he arrived, exhausted with 
  fatigue, within half a mile of Manaos. The distance between there and 
  the town he traversed in a few minutes. A kind of irresistible 
  presentiment urged him on, and he had almost come to believe that 
  Joam Dacosta's safety rested in his hands. 
  Suddenly Fragoso stopped as if his feet had become rooted in the 
  ground. He had reached the entrance to a small square, on which 
  opened one of the town gates. 
  There, in the midst of a dense crowd, arose the gallows, towering up 
  some twenty feet, and from it there hung the rope! 
  Fragoso felt his consciousness abandon him. He fell; his eyes 
  involuntarily closed. He did not wish to look, and these words escaped 
  his lips: "Too late! too late!" But by a superhuman effort he raised 
  himself up. No; it was not too late, the corpse of Joam Dacosta was not 
  hanging at the end of the rope! 
  "Judge Jarriquez! Judge Jarriquez!" shouted Fragoso, and panting and 
  bewildered he rushed toward the city gate, dashed up the principal 
  street of Manaos, and fell half-dead on the threshold of the judge's 
  house. The door was shut. Fragoso had still strength enough left to 
  knock at it. 
  One of the magistrate's servants came to open it; his master would see 
  no one. 
  In spite of this denial, Fragoso pushed back the man who guarded the 
  entrance, and with a bound threw himself into the judge's study. 
  "I come from the province where Torres pursued his calling as captain 
  of the woods!" he gasped. "Mr. Judge, Torres told the truth. Stop--stop 
  the execution?" 
  "You found the gang?" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 38 
  "Yes." 
  "And you have brought me the cipher of the document?" 
  Fragoso did not reply. 
  "Come, leave me alone! leave me alone!" shouted Jarriquez, and, a prey 
  to an outburst of rage, he grasped the document to tear it to atoms. 
  Fragoso seized his hands and stopped him. "The truth is there!" he said. 
  "I know," answered Jarriquez; "but it is a truth which will never see 
  the light!" 
  "It will appear--it must! it must!" 
  "Once more, have you the cipher?" 
  "No," replied Fragoso; "but, I repeat, Torres has not lied. One of his 
  companions, with whom he was very intimate, died a few months ago, 
  and there can be no doubt but that this man gave him the document he 
  came to sell to Joam Dacosta." 
  "No," answered Jarriquez--"no, there is no doubt about it--as far as we 
  are concerned; but that is not enough for those who dispose of the 
  doomed man's life. Leave me!" 
  Fragoso, repulsed, would not quit the spot. Again he threw himself at 
  the judge's feet. "Joam Dacosta is innocent!" he cried; "you will not 
  leave him to die? It was not he who committed the crime of Tijuco; it 
  was the comrade of Torres, the author of that document! It was 
  Ortega!" 
  As he uttered the name the judge bounded backward. A kind of calm 
  swiftly succeeded to the tempest which raged within him. He dropped 
  the document from his clenched hand, smoothed it out on the table, sat 
  down, and, passing his hand over his eyes--"That name?" he said--
  "Ortega? Let us see," and then he proceeded with the new name 
  brought back by Fragoso as he had done with the other names so vainly 
  tried by himself. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 38 
  After placing it above the first six letters of the paragraph he obtained 
  the following formula: 
  O r t e g a 
  P h y j s l 
  "Nothing!" he said. "That give us--nothing!" 
  And in fact the h placed under the r could not be expressed by a cipher, 
  for, in alphabetical order, this letter occupies an earlier position to that 
  of the r. 
  The p, the y, the j, arranged beneath the letters o, t, e, disclosed the 
  cipher 1, 4, 5, but as for the s and the l at the end of the word, the 
  interval which separated them from the g and the a was a dozen letters, 
  and hence impossible to express by a single cipher, so that they 
  corresponded to neither g nor a. 
  And here appalling shouts arose in the streets; they were the cries of 
  despair. 
  Fragoso jumped to one of the windows, and opened it before the judge 
  could hinder him. 
  The people filled the road. The hour had come at which the doomed 
  man was to start from the prison, and the crowd was flowing back to 
  the spot where the gallows had been erected. 
  Judge Jarriquez, quite frightful to look upon, devoured the lines of the 
  document with a fixed stare. 
  "The last letters!" he muttered. "Let us try once more the last letters!" 
  It was the last hope. 
  And then, with a hand whose agitation nearly prevented him from 
  writing at all, he placed the name of Ortega over the six last letters of 
  the paragraph, as he had done over the first. 
  An exclamation immediately escaped him. He saw, at first glance, that 
  the six last letters were inferior in alphabetical order to those which 
  composed Ortega's name, and that consequently they might yield the 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 38 
  number. 
  And when he reduced the formula, reckoning each later letter from the 
  earlier letter of the word, he obtained. 
  O r t e g a 
  4 3 2 5 1 3 
  S u v j h d 
  The number thus disclosed was 432513. 
  But was this number that which had been used in the document? Was it 
  not as erroneous as those he had previously tried? 
  At this moment the shouts below redoubled--shouts of pity which 
  betrayed the sympathy of the excited crowd. A few minutes more were 
  all that the doomed man had to live! 
  Fragoso, maddened with grief, darted from the room! He wished to see, 
  for the last time, his benefactor who was on the road to death! He 
  longed to throw himself before the mournful procession and stop it, 
  shouting, "Do not kill this just man! do not kill him!" 
  But already Judge Jarriquez had placed the given number above the 
  first letters of the paragraph, repeating them as often as was necessary, 
  as follows: 
  4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 
  P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h 
  And then, reckoning the true letters according to their alphabetical 
  order, he read: 
  "Le véritable auteur du vol de----"
  A yell of delight escaped him! This number, 432513, was the number 
  sought for so long! The name of Ortega had enabled him to discover it! 
  At length he held the key of the document, which would incontestably 
  prove the innocence of Joam Dacosta, and without reading any more he 
  flew from his study into the street, shouting: 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 38 
  "Halt! Halt!" 
  To cleave the crowd, which opened as he ran, to dash to the prison, 
  whence the convict was coming at the last moment, with his wife and 
  children clinging to him with the violence of despair, was but the work 
  of a minute for Judge Jarriquez. 
  Stopping before Joam Dacosta, he could not speak for a second, and 
  then these words escaped his lips: 
  "Innocent! Innocent!" 
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 39 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER XIX
  THE CRIME OF TIJUCO 
  ON THE ARRIVAL of the judge the mournful procession halted. A 
  roaring echo had repeated after him and again repeated the cry which 
  escaped from every mouth: 
  "Innocent! Innocent!" 
  Then complete silence fell on all. The people did not want to lose one 
  syllable of what was about to be proclaimed. 
  Judge Jarriquez sat down on a stone seat, and then, while Minha, 
  Benito, Manoel, and Fragoso stood round him, while Joam Dacosta 
  clasped Yaquita to his heart, he first unraveled the last paragraph of the 
  document by means of the number, and as the words appeared by the 
  institution of the true letters for the cryptological ones, he divided and 
  punctuated them, and then read it out in a loud voice. And this is what 
  he read in the midst of profound silence: 
  Le véritable auteur du vol des diamants et de 
  43 251343251 343251 34 325 134 32513432 51 34 
  Ph yjslyddf dzxgas gz zqq ehx gkfndrxu ju gi 
  l'assassinat des soldats qui escortaient le convoi, 
  32513432513 432 5134325 134 32513432513 43 251343 
  ocytdxvksbx bhu ypohdvy rym huhpuydkjox ph etozsl 
  commis dans la nuit du vingt-deux janvier mil 
  251343 2513 43 2513 43 251343251 3432513 432 
  etnpmv ffov pd pajx hy ynojyggay meqynfu q1n 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 39 
  huit-cent vingt-six, n'est donc pas Joam Dacosta, 
  5134 3251 3425 134 3251 3432 513 4325 1343251 
  mvly fgsu zmqiz tlb qgyu gsqe uvb nrcc edgruzb 
  injustement condamné à mort, c'est moi, les misérable 
  34325134325 13432513 4 3251 3432 513 43 251343251 
  l4msyuhqpz drrgcroh e pqxu fivv rpl ph onthvddqf 
  employé de l'administration du district diamantin, 
  3432513 43 251343251343251 34 32513432 513432513 
  hqsntzh hh nfepmqkyuuexkto gz gkyuumfv ijdqdpzjq 
  out, moi seul, qui signe de mon vrai nom, Ortega. 
  432 513 4325 134 32513 43 251 3432 513 432513 
  syk rpl xhxq rym vkloh hh oto zvdk spp suvjhd. 
  "The real author of the robbery of the diamonds and of the murder of 
  the soldiers who escorted the convoy, committed during the night of the 
  twenty-second of January, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six, 
  was thus not Joam Dacosta, unjustly condemned to death; it was I, the 
  wretched servant of the Administration of the diamond district; yes, I 
  alone, who sign this with my true name, Ortega." 
  The reading of this had hardly finished when the air was rent with 
  prolonged hurrahs. 
  What could be more conclusive than this last paragraph, which 
  summarized the whole of the document, and proclaimed so absolutely 
  the innocence of the fazender of Iquitos, and which snatched from the 
  gallows this victim of a frightful judicial mistake! 
  Joam Dacosta, surrounded by his wife, his children, and his friends, was 
  unable to shake the hands which were held out to him. Such was the 
  strength of his character that a reaction occurred, tears of joy escaped 
  from his eyes, and at the same instant his heart was lifted up to that 
  Providence which had come to save him so miraculously at the moment 
  he was about to offer the last expiation to that God who would not 
  permit the accomplishment of that greatest of crimes, the death of an 
  innocent man! 
  Yes! There could be no doubt as to the vindication of Joam Dacosta. 
  The true author of the crime of Tijuco confessed of his own free will, 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 39 
  and described the circumstances under which it had been perpetrated! 
  By means of the number Judge Jarriquez interpreted the whole of the 
  cryptogram. 
  And this was what Ortega confessed. 
  He had been the colleague of Joam Dacosta, employed, like him, at 
  Tijuco, in the offices of the governor of the diamond arrayal. He had 
  been the official appointed to accompany the convoy to Rio de Janeiro, 
  and, far from recoiling at the horrible idea of enriching himself by 
  means of murder and robbery, he had informed the smugglers of the 
  very day the convoy was to leave Tijuco. 
  During the attack of the scoundrels, who awaited the convoy just 
  beyond Villa Rica, he pretended to defend himself with the soldiers of 
  the escort, and then, falling among the dead, he was carried away by his 
  accomplices. Hence it was that the solitary soldier who survived the 
  massacre had reported that Ortega had perished in the struggle. 
  But the robbery did not profit the guilty man in the long run, for, a little 
  time afterward, he was robbed by those whom he had helped to commit 
  the crime. 
  Penniless, and unable to enter Tijuco again, Ortega fled away to the 
  provinces in the north of Brazil, to those districts of the Upper Amazon 
  where the capitaes da mato are to be found. He had to live somehow, and 
  so he joined this not very honorable company; they neither asked him 
  who he was nor whence he came, and so Ortega became a captain of the 
  woods, and for many years he followed the trade of a chaser of men. 
  During this time Torres, the adventurer, himself in absolute want, 
  became his companion. Ortega and he became most intimate. But, as he 
  had told Torres, remorse began gradually to trouble the scoundrel's life. 
  The remembrance of his crime became horrible to him. He knew that 
  another had been condemned in his place! He knew subsequently that 
  the innocent man had escaped from the last penalty, but that he would 
  never be free from the shadow of the capital sentence! And then, during 
  an expedition of his party for several months beyond the Peruvian 
  frontier, chance caused Ortega to visit the neighborhood of Iquitos, and 
  there in Joam Garral, who did not recognize him, he recognized Joam 
  Dacosta. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 39 
  Henceforth he resolved to make all the reparation he could for the 
  injustice of which is old comrade had been the victim. He committed to 
  the document all the facts relative to the crime of Tijuco, writing it first 
  in French, which had been his mother's native tongue, and then putting 
  it into the mysterious form we know, his intention being to transmit it to 
  the fazender of Iquitos, with the cipher by which it could be read. 
  Death prevented his completing his work of reparation. Mortally 
  wounded in a scuffle with some negroes on the Madeira, Ortega felt he 
  was doomed. His comrade Torres was then with him. He thought he 
  could intrust to his friend the secret which had so grievously darkened 
  his life. He gave him the document, and made him swear to convey it to 
  Joam Dacosta, whose name and address he gave him, and with his last 
  breath he whispered the number 432513, without which the document 
  would remain undecipherable. 
  Ortega dead, we know how the unworthy Torres acquitted himself of 
  his mission, how he resolved to turn to his own profit the secret of which 
  he was the possessor, and how he tried to make it the subject of an 
  odious bargain. 
  Torres died without accomplishing his work, and carried his secret with 
  him. But the name of Ortega, brought back by Fragoso, and which was 
  the signature of the document, had afforded the means of unraveling the 
  cryptogram, dtanks to the sagacity of Judge Jarriquez. Yes, the material 
  proof sought after for so long was the incontestable witness of the 
  innocence of Joam Dacosta, returned to life, restored to honor. 
  The cheers redoubled when the worthy magistrate, in a loud voice, and 
  for the edification of all, read from the document this terrible history. 
  And from that moment Judge Jarriquez, whoo possessed this 
  indubitable proof, arranged with the chief of the police, and declined to 
  allow Joam Dacosta, while waiting new instructions from Rio Janeiro, 
  to stay in any prison but his own house. 
  There could be no difficulty about this, and in the center of the crowd of 
  the entire population of Manaos, Joam Dacosta, accompanied by all his 
  family, beheld himself conducted like a conquerer to the magistrate's 
  residence. 
  And in that minute the honest fazender of Iquitos was well repaid for all 
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  that he had suffered during the long years of exile, and if he was happy 
  for his family's sake more than for his own, he was none the less proud 
  for his country's sake that this supreme injustice had not been 
  consummated! 
  And in all this what had become of Fragoso? 
  Well, the good-hearted fellow was covered with caresses! Benito, 
  Manoel, and Minha had overwhelmed him, and Lina had by no means 
  spared him. He did not know what to do, he defended himself as best he 
  could. He did not deserve anything like it. Chance alone had done it. 
  Were any thanks due to him for having recognized Torres as a captain 
  of the woods? No, certainly not. As to his idea of hurrying off in search 
  of the band to which Torres had belonged, he did not think it had been 
  worth much, and as to the name of Ortega, he did not even know its 
  value. 
  Gallant Fragoso! Whether he wished it or no, he had none the less saved 
  Joam Dacosta! 
  And herein what a strange succession of different events all tending to 
  the same end. The deliverance of Fragoso at the time when he was dying 
  of exhaustion in the forest of Iquitos; the hospitable reception he had 
  met with at the fazenda, the meeting with Torres on the Brazilian 
  frontier, his embarkation on the jangada; and lastly, the fact that 
  Fragoso had seen him somewhere before. 
  "Well, yes!" Fragoso ended by exclaiming; "but it is not to me that all 
  this happiness is due, it is due to Lina!" 
  "To me?" replied the young mulatto. 
  "No doubt of it. Without the liana, without the idea of the liana, could I 
  ever have been the cause of so much happiness?" 
  So that Fragoso and Lina were praised and petted by all the family, and 
  by all the new friends whom so many trials had procured them at 
  Manaos, need hardly be insisted on. 
  But had not Judge Jarriquez also had his share in this rehabilitation of 
  an innocent man? If, in spite of all the shrewdness of his analytical 
  talents, he had not been able to read the document, which was 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 39 
  absolutely undecipherable to any one who had not got the key, had he 
  not at any rate discovered the system on which the cryptogram was 
  composed? Without him what could have been done with only the name 
  of Ortega to reconstitute the number which the author of the crime and 
  Torres, both of whom were dead, alone knew? 
  And so he also received abundant thanks. 
  Needless to say that the same day there was sent to Rio de Janeiro a 
  detailed report of the whole affair, and with it the original document 
  and the cipher to enable it to be read. New instructions from the 
  minister of justice had to be waited for, though there could be no doubt 
  that they would order the immediate discharge of the prisoner. A few 
  days would thus have to be passed at Manaos, and then Joam Dacosta 
  and his people, free from all constraint, and released from all 
  apprehension, would take leave of their host to go on board once more 
  and continue their descent of the Amazon to Para, where the voyage was 
  intended to terminate with the double marriage of Minha and Manoel 
  and Lina and Fragoso. 
  Four days afterward, on the fourth of September, the order of discharge 
  arrived. The document had been recognized as authentic. The 
  handwriting was really that of Ortega, who had been formerly 
  employed in the diamond district, and there could be no doubt that the 
  confession of his crime, with the minutest details that were given, had 
  been entirely written with his own hand. 
  The innocence of the convict of Villa Rica was at length admitted. The 
  rehabilitation of Joam Dacosta was at last officially proclaimed. 
  That very day Judge Jarriquez dined with the family on board the giant 
  raft, and when evening came he shook hands with them all. Touching 
  were the adieus, but an engagement was made for them to see him again 
  on their return at Manaos, and later on the fazenda of Iquitos. 
  On the morning of the morrow, the fifth of September, the signal for 
  departure was given. Joam Dacosta and Yaquita, with their daughter 
  and sons, were on the deck of the enormous raft. The jangada had its 
  moorings slackened off and began to move with the current, and when it 
  disappeared round the bend of the Rio Negro, the hurrahs of the whole 
  population of Manaos, who were assembled on the bank, again and 
  again re-echoed across the stream. 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 39 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 40 
  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
  By Jules Verne
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  CHAPTER XX
  THE LOWER AMAZON 
  LITTLE REMAINS to tell of the second part of the voyage down the 
  mighty river. It was but a series of days of joy. Joam Dacosta returned 
  to a new life, which shed its happiness on all who belonged to him. 
  The giant raft glided along with greater rapidity on the waters now 
  swollen by the floods. On the left they passed the small village of Don 
  Jose de Maturi, and on the right the mouth of that Madeira which owes 
  its name to the floating masses of vegetable remains and trunks 
  denuded of their foliage which it bears from the depths of Bolivia. They 
  passed the archipelago of Caniny, whose islets are veritable boxes of 
  palms, and before the village of Serpa, which, successively transported 
  from one back to the other, has definitely settled on the left of the river, 
  with its little houses, whose thresholds stand on the yellow carpet of the 
  beach. 
  The village of Silves, built on the left of the Amazon, and the town of 
  Villa Bella, which is the principal guarana market in the whole 
  province, were soon left behind by the giant raft. And so was the village 
  of Faro and its celebrated river of the Nhamundas, on which, in 1539, 
  Orellana asserted he was attacked by female warriors, who have never 
  been seen again since, and thus gave us the legend which justifies the 
  immortal name of the river of the Amazons. 
  Here it is that the province of Rio Negro terminates. The jurisdiction of 
  Para then commences; and on the 22d of September the family, 
  marveling much at a valley which has no equal in the world, entered 
  that portion of the Brazilian empire which has no boundary to the east 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 40 
  except the Atlantic. 
  "How magnificent!" remarked Minha, over and over again. 
  "How long!" murmured Manoel. 
  "How beautiful!" repeated Lina. 
  "When shall we get there?" murmured Fragoso. 
  And this was what might have been expected of these folks from the 
  different points of view, though time passed pleasantly enough with 
  them all the same. Benito, who was neither patient nor impatient, had 
  recovered all his former good humor. 
  Soon the jangada glided between interminable plantations of cocoa-
  trees with their somber green flanked by the yellow thatch or ruddy 
  tiles of the roofs of the huts of the settlers on both banks from Obidos 
  up to the town of Monto Alegre. 
  Then there opened out the mouth of the Rio Trombetas, bathing with its 
  black waters the houses of Obidos, situated at about one hundred and 
  eighty miles from Belem, quite a small town, and even a "citade" with 
  large streets bordered with handsome habitations, and a great center 
  for cocoa produce. Then they saw another tributary, the Tapajos, with 
  its greenish-gray waters descending from the south-west; and then 
  Santarem, a wealthy town of not less than five thousand inhabitants, 
  Indians for the most part, whose nearest houses were built on the vast 
  beach of white sand. 
  After its departure from Manaos the jangada did not stop anywhere as 
  it passed down the much less encumbered course of the Amazon. Day 
  and night it moved along under the vigilant care of its trusty pilot; no 
  more stoppages either for the gratification of the passengers or for 
  business purposes. Unceasingly it progressed, and the end rapidly grew 
  nearer. 
  On leaving Alemquer, situated on the left bank, a new horizon appeared 
  in view. In place of the curtain of forests which had shut them in up to 
  then, our friends beheld a foreground of hills, whose undulations could 
  be easily descried, and beyond them the faint summits of veritable 
  mountains vandyked across the distant depth of sky. Neither Yaquita, 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 40 
  nor her daughter, nor Lina, nor old Cybele, had ever seen anything like 
  this. 
  But in this jurisdiction of Para, Manoel was at home, and he could tell 
  them the names of the double chain which gradually narrowed the 
  valley of the huge river. 
  "To the right," said he, "that is the Sierra de Paracuarta, which curves 
  in a half-circle to the south! To the left, that is the Sierra de Curuva, of 
  which we have already passed the first outposts." 
  "Then they close in?" asked Fragoso. 
  "They close in!" replied Manoel. 
  And the two young men seemed to understand each other, for the same 
  slight but significant nodding of the head accompanied the question and 
  reply. 
  At last, notwithstanding the tide, which since leaving Obidos had begun 
  to be felt, and which somewhat checked the progress of the raft, the 
  town of Monto Alegre was passed, then that of Pravnha de Onteiro, 
  then the mouth of the Xingu, frequented by Yurumas Indians, whose 
  principal industry consists in preparing their enemies' heads for natural 
  history cabinets. 
  To what a superb size the Amazon had now developed as already this 
  monarch of rivers gave signs of opening out like a sea! Plants from eight 
  to ten feet high clustered along the beach, and bordered it with a forest 
  of reeds. Porto de Mos, Boa Vista, and Gurupa, whose prosperity is on 
  the decline, were soon among the places left in the rear. 
  Then the river divided into two important branches, which flowed off 
  toward the Atlantic, one going away northeastward, the other eastward, 
  and between them appeared the beginning of the large island of Marajo. 
  This island is quite a province in itself. It measures no less than a 
  hundred and eighty leagues in circumference. Cut up by marshes and 
  rivers, all savannah to the east, all forest to the west, it offers most 
  excellent advantages for the raising of cattle, which can here be seen in 
  their thousands. This immense barricade of Marajo is the natural 
  obstacle which has compelled the Amazon to divide before precipitating 
  its torrents of water into the sea. Following the upper branch, the 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 40 
  jangada, after passing the islands of Caviana and Mexiana, would have 
  found an embouchure of some fifty leagues across, but it would also 
  have bet with the bar of the prororoca, that terrible eddy which, for the 
  three days preceding the new or full moon, takes but two minutes 
  instead of six hours to raise the river from twelve to fifteen feet above 
  ordinary high-water mark. 
  This is by far the most formidable of tide-races. Most fortunately the 
  lower branch, known as the Canal of Breves, which is the natural area 
  of the Para, is not subject to the visitations of this terrible phenomenon, 
  and its tides are of a more regular description. Araujo, the pilot, was 
  quite aware of this. He steered, therefore, into the midst of magnificent 
  forests, here and there gliding past island covered with muritis palms; 
  and the weather was so favorable that they did not experience any of the 
  storms which so frequently rage along this Breves Canal. 
  A few days afterward the jangada passed the village of the same name, 
  which, although built on the ground flooded for many months in the 
  year, has become, since 1845, an important town of a hundred houses. 
  Throughout these districts, which are frequented by Tapuyas, the 
  Indians of the Lower Amazon become more and more commingled with 
  the white population, and promise to be completely absorbed by them. 
  And still the jangada continued its journey down the river. Here, at the 
  risk of entanglement, it grazed the branches of the mangliers, whose 
  roots stretched down into the waters like the claws of gigantic 
  crustaceans; then the smooth trunks of the paletuviers, with their pale-
  green foliage, served as the resting-places for the long poles of the crew 
  as they kept the raft in the strength of the current. 
  Then came the Tocantins, whose waters, due to the different rivers of 
  the province of Goyaz, mingle with those of the Amazon by an 
  embouchure of great size, then the Moju, then the town of Santa Ana. 
  Majestically the panorama of both banks moved along without a pause, 
  as though some ingenious mechanism necessitated its unrolling in the 
  opposite direction to that of the stream. 
  Already numerous vessels descending the river, ubas, egariteas, 
  vigilandas, pirogues of all builds, and small coasters from the lower 
  districts of the Amazon and the Atlantic seaboard, formed a procession 
  with the giant raft, and seemed lke sloops beside some might man-of-
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 40 
  war. 
  At length here appeared on the left Santa Maria de Belem do Para--the 
  "town" as they call it in that country--with its picturesque lines of white 
  houses at many different levels, its convents nestled among the palm-
  trees, the steeples of its cathedral and of Nostra Senora de Merced, and 
  the flotilla of its brigantines, brigs, and barks, which form its 
  commercial communications with the old world. 
  The hearts of the passengers of the giant raft beat high. At length they 
  were coming to the end of the voyage which they had thought they 
  would never reach. While the arrest of Joam detained them at Manaos, 
  halfway on their journey, could they ever have hoped to see the capital 
  of the province of Para? 
  It was in the course of this day, the 15th of October--four months and a 
  half after leaving the fazenda of Iquitos--that, as they rounded a sharp 
  bend in the river, Belem came into sight. 
  The arrival of the jangada had been signaled for some days. The whole 
  town knew the story of Joam Dacosta. They came forth to welcome him, 
  and to him and his people accorded a most sympathetic reception. 
  Hundreds of craft of all sorts conveyed them to the fazender, and soon 
  the jangada was invaded by all those who wished to welcome the return 
  of their compatriot after his long exile. Thousands of sight-seers--or 
  more correctly speaking, thousands of friends crowded on to the 
  floating village as soon as it came to its moorings, and it was vast and 
  solid enough to support the entire population. Among those who 
  hurried on board one of the first pirogues had brought Madame Valdez. 
  Manoel's mother was at last able to clasp to her arms the daughter 
  whom her son had chosen. If the good lady had not been able to come to 
  Iquitos, was it not as though a portion of the fazenda, with her new 
  family, had come down the Amazon to her? 
  Before evening the pilot Araujo had securely moored the raft at the 
  entrance of a creek behind the arsenal. That was to be its last resting-
  place, its last halt, after its voyage of eight hundred leagues on the great 
  Brazilian artery. There the huts of the Indians, the cottage of the 
  negroes, the store-rooms which held the valuable cargo, would be 
  gradually demolished; there the principal dwelling, nestled beneath its 
  verdant tapestry of flowers and foliage, and the little chapel whose 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 40 
  humble bell was then replying to the sounding clangor from the steeples 
  of Belem, would each in its turn disappear. 
  But, ere this was done, a ceremony had to take place on the jangada--
  the marriage of Manoel and Minha, the marriage of Lina and Fragoso. 
  To Father Passanha fell the duty of celebrating the double union which 
  promised so happily. In that little chapel the two couples were to receive 
  the nuptial benediction from his hands. 
  If it happened to be so small as to be only capable of holding the 
  members of Dacosta's family, was not the giant raft large enough to 
  receive all those who wished to assist at the ceremony? and if not, and 
  the crowd became swo great, did not the ledges of the river banks afford 
  sifficient room for as many others of the sympathizing crowd as were 
  desirous of welcoming him whom so signal a reparation had made the 
  hero of the day? 
  It was on the morrow, the 16th of October, that with great pomp the 
  marriages were celebrated. 
  It was a magnificent day, and from about ten o'clock in the morning the 
  raft began to receive its crowd of guests. On the bank could be seen 
  almost the entire population of Belem in holiday costume. On the river, 
  vessels of all sorts crammed with visitors gathered round the enormous 
  mass of timber, and the waters of the Amazon literally disappeared even 
  up to the left bank beneath the vast flotilla. 
  When the chapel bell rang out its opening note it seemed like a signal of 
  joy to ear and eye. In an instant the churches of Belem replied to the 
  bell of the jangada. The vessels in the port decked themselves with flags 
  up to their mastheads, and the Brazilian colors were saluted by the 
  many other national flags. Discharges of musketry reverberated on all 
  sides, and it was only with difficulty that their joyous detonations could 
  cope with the loud hurrahs from the assembled thousands. 
  The Dacosta family came forth from their house and moved through the 
  crowd toward the little chapel. Joam was received with absolutely 
  frantic applause. He gave his arm to Madame Valdez; Yaquita was 
  escorted by the governor of Belem, who, accompanied by the friends of 
  the young army surgeon, had expressed a wish to honor the ceremony 
  with his presence. Manoel walked by the side of Minha, who looked 
  most fascinating in her bride's costume, and then came Fragoso, holding 
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  the hand of Lina, who seemed quite radiant with joy. Then followed 
  Benito, then old Cybele and the servants of the worthy family between 
  the double ranks of the crew of the jangada. 
  Padre Passanha awaited the two couples at the entrance of the chapel. 
  The ceremony was very simple, and the same bands which had formerly 
  blessed Joam and Yaquita were again stretched forth to give the nuptial 
  benediction to their child. 
  So much happiness was not likely to be interrupted by the sorrow of 
  long separation. In fact, Manoel Valdez almost immediately sent in his 
  resignation, so as to join the family at Iquitos, where he is still following 
  the profession of a country doctor. 
  Naturally the Fragosos did not hesitate to go back with those who were 
  to them friends rather than masters. 
  Madame Valdez had no desire to separate so happy a group, but she 
  insisted on one thing, and that was that they should often come and see 
  her at Belem. Nothing could be easier. Was not the mighty river a bond 
  of communication between Belem and Iquitos? In a few days the first 
  mail steamer was to begin a regular and rapid service, and it would then 
  only take a week to ascend the Amazon, on which it had taken the giant 
  raft so many months to drift. The important commercial negotiations, 
  ably managed by Benito, were carried through under the best of 
  conditions, and soon of what had formed this jangada--that is to say, the 
  huge raft of timber constructed from an entire forest at Iquitos--there 
  remained not a trace. 
  A month afterward the fazender, his wife, his son, Manoel and Minha 
  Valdez, Lina and Fragoso, departed by one of the Amazon steamers for 
  the immense establishment at Iquitos of which Benito was to take the 
  management. 
  Joam Dacosta re-entered his home with his head erect, and it was 
  indeed a family of happy hearts which he brought back with him from 
  beyond the Brazilian frontier. As for Fragoso, twenty times a day was 
  he heard to repeat, "What! without the liana?" and he wound up by 
  bestowing the name on the young mulatto who, by her affection for the 
  gallant fellow, fully justified its appropriateness. "If it were not for the 
  one letter," he said, "would not Lina and Liana be the same?" 
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  Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon -- Chapter 40 
  The End
  The text of this work is in the public domain and is not copyrighted. 
  However, the HTML tags and other computer code used to create this 
  presentation are Copyright 2000 by Litrix Reading Room. It may not be 
  reproduced, reposted or otherwise distributed without written permission 
  of Litrix Reading Room.
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  Shop Amazon.com for inexpensive printed version 
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/V/VERNE, Jules/VERNE,_Jules_-_Eight_Hundred_Leagues_on_the_Amazon.pdf