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
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 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 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.
But when the heavy work, so to speak, had been completed, Minha
intervened with:
"Father, now your care has inclosed and covered us, you must allow us
to arrange our dwelling to please ourselves. The outside belongs to
you, the inside to us. Mother and I would like it to be as though our
house at the fazenda went with us on the journey, so as to make you
fancy that we had never left Iquitos!"
"Do just as you like, Minha," replied Joam Garral, smiling in the sad
way he often did.
"That will be nice!"
"I leave everything to your good taste."
"And that will do us honor, father. It ought to, for the sake of the
splendid country we are going through--which is yours, by the way,
and into which you are to enter after so many years' absence."
"Yes, Minha; yes," replied Joam. "It is rather as if we were
returning from exile--voluntary exile! Do your best; I approve
beforehand of what you do."
On Minha and Lina, to whom were added of their own free will Manoel
on the one side and Fragoso on the other, devolved the care of
decorating the inside of the house. With some imagination and a
little artistic feeling the result was highly satisfactory.
The best furniture of the fazenda naturally found its place within,
as after arriving in Para they could easily return it by one of the
_igariteos_. Tables, bamboo easy-chairs, cane sofas, carved wood
shelves, everything that constituted the charming furniture of the
tropics, was disposed with taste about the floating home. No one is
likely to imagine that the walls remained bare. The boards were
hidden beneath hangings of most agreeable variety. These hangings
were made of valuable bark, that of the _"tuturis,"_ which is raised
up in large folds like the brocades and damasks and softest and
richest materials of our modern looms. On the floors of the rooms
were jaguar skins, with wonderful spots, and thick monkey furs of
exquisite fleeciness. Light curtains of the russet silk, produced by
the _"sumauma,"_ hung from the windows. The beds, enveloped in
mosquito curtains, had their pillows, mattresses, and bolsters filled
with that fresh and elastic substance which in the Upper Amazon is
yielded by the bombax.
Throughout on the shelves and side-tables were little odds and ends,
brought from Rio Janeiro or Belem, those most precious to Minha being
such as had come from Manoel. What could be more pleasing in her eyes
than the knickknacks given by a loving hand which spoke to her
without saying anything?
In a few days the interior was completed, and it looked just like the
interior of the fazenda. A stationary house under a lovely clump of
trees on the borders of some beautiful river! Until it descended
between the banks of the larger stream it would not be out of keeping
with the picturesque landscape which stretched away on each side of
it.
We may add that the exterior of the house was no less charming than
the interior.
In fact, on the outside the young fellows had given free scope to
their taste and imagination.
From the basement to the roof it was literally covered with foliage.
A confused mass of orchids, bromelias, and climbing plants, all in
flower, rooted in boxes of excellent soil hidden beneath masses of
verdure. The trunk of some ficus or mimosa was never covered by a
more startlingly tropical attire. What whimsical climbers--ruby red
and golden yellow, with variegated clusters and tangled twigs--turned
over the brackets, under the ridges, on the rafters of the roof, and
across the lintels of the doors! They had brought them wholesale from
the woods in the neighborhood of the fazenda. A huge liana bound all
the parasites together; several times it made the round of the house,
clinging on to every angle, encircling every projection, forking,
uniting, it everywhere threw out its irregular branchlets, and
allowed not a bit of the house to be seen beneath its enormous
clusters of bloom.
As a delicate piece of attention, the author of which can be easily
recognized, the end of the cipo spread out before the very window of
the young mulatto, as though a long arm was forever holding a bouquet
of fresh flowers across the blind.
To sum up, it was as charming as could be; and as Yaquita, her
daughter, and Lina were content, we need say no more about it.
"It would not take much to make us plant trees on the jangada," said
Benito.
"Oh, trees!" ejaculated Minha.
"Why not?" replied Manoel. "Transported on to this solid platform,
with some good soil, I am sure they would do well, and we would have
no change of climate to fear for them, as the Amazon flows all the
time along the same parallel."
"Besides," said Benito, "every day islets of verdure, torn from the
banks, go drifting down the river. Do they not pass along with their
trees, bushes, thickets, rocks, and fields, to lose themselves in the
Atlantic eight hundred leagues away? Why, then, should we not
transform our raft into a floating garden?"
"Would you like a forest, miss?" said Fragoso, who stopped at
nothing.
"Yes, a forest!" cried the young mulatto; "a forest with its birds
and its monkeys----"
"Its snakes, its jaguars!" continued Benito.
"Its Indians, its nomadic tribes," added Manoel, "and even its
cannibals!"
"But where are you going to, Fragoso?" said Minha, seeing the active
barber making a rush at the bank.
"To look after the forest!" replied Fragoso.
"Useless, my friend," answered the smiling Minha. "Manoel has given
me a nosegay and I am quite content. It is true," she added, pointing
to the house hidden beneath the flowers, "that he has hidden our
house in his betrothal bouquet!"
