THE VILLAGE of Iquitos is situated1 on the left bank of the Amazon, near the seventy-fourth meridian2, 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 missionaries3. 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 volcanic4 eruption5, and they were obliged to come and take up their abode6 on the left of the Maranon. 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 picturesquely7 grouped on a kind of esplanade, and runs along at about sixty feet from the river. It consists of some forty miserable8 huts, whose thatched roofs only just render them worthy9 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 ascended10. Once at the top he finds himself before an inclosure admitting of slight defense11, and consisting of many different shrubs12 and arborescent plants, attached to each other by festoons of lianas, which here and there have made their way abgove the summits of the graceful13 palms and banana-trees.
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 indigenous14 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 junction15 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 rivulets16, tributaries17 of the Nanay, and some lagoons18 of small extent, separated it from the savannah and the fields devoted19 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 proprietor20 of the fazenda.
This Portuguese21, whose name was Magalha?s, 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, hospitable22 as he was, like all the Portuguese of the old race, Magalha?s lived with his daughter Yaquita, who after the death of her mother had taken charge of his household. Magalha?s was an excellent worker, inured23 to fatigue24, 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 prospering25, and the affairs of the Portuguese were getting somewhat embarrassed.
It was under these circumstances that Joam Garral, then twenty-two years old, found himself one day in the presence of Magalha?s. He had arrived in the country at the limit both of his strength and his resources. Magalha?s 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 exhaustion26 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 labor27. 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. Magalha?s, 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 hesitation28. 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 Magalha?s 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 resolutely29 into the service of the fazenda, deciding to devote to it all his powers.
Magalha?s 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 considerably31 extended under the impulse of Joam Garral. The fazenda began to grow in proportion, and to spread out along the bank of the river up to its junction with the Nanay. A delightful32 residence was made of the house; it was raised a story, surrounded by a veranda33, 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 dense34 mass of arborescent plants, were concealed35 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 aquatic36 plants, the tree-encircled house was alone visible.
A vast meadow, laboriously37 cleared along the lagoons, offered excellent pasturage. Cattle abounded38 — a new source of profit in these fertile countries, where a herd39 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 plantations40, 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 destined41 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 sterling42 qualities which her father had done. She was in love with him, but though on his side Joam had not remained insensible to the merits and the beauty of this excellent girl, he was too proud and reserved to dream of asking her to marry him.
A serious incident hastened the solution.
Magalha?s was one day superintending a clearance43 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, Magalha?s. 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 Magalha?s, 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 virtues44? Would her mind and feelings have been more delicately formed away from her home? If it was ordained45 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 possessed46 of a cheerful disposition47, 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 distinguished48 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 exempt49 men from work — he was one of those noble characters, resolute30 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 conformity50 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 passionate51 taste for that noble profession, and his intention was to enter the army, toward which he felt himself attracted.
At the time that we saw him with his friend Benito, Manoel Valdez had already obtained his first step, and he had come away on leave for some months to the fazenda, where he was accustomed to pass his holidays. Well-built, and of distinguished bearing, with a certain native pride which became him well, the young man was treated by Joam and Yaquita as another son. But if this quality of son made him the brother of Benito, the title was scarcely appreciated by him when Minha was concerned, for he soon became attached to the young girl by a bond more intimate than could exist between brother and sister.
In the year 1852 — of which four months had already passed before the commencement of this history — Joam Garral attained52 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 prematurely53 succumbed54. 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 straightforwardness55 was the leading characteristic. His calm temperament56 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 subdue57.
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 haughty58 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 aged59 twenty-one, and quick, brave, and sympathetic, contrasted outwardly with his friend Manoel, who was more serious and reflective. It was a great treat for Benito, after quite a year passed at Belem, so far from the fazenda, to return with his young friend to his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to find himself, enthusiastic hunter as he was, in the midst of these superb forests of the Upper Amazon, some of whose secrets remained after so many centuries still unsolved by man.
Minha was twenty years old. A lovely girl, brunette, and with large blue eyes, eyes which seemed to open into her very soul; of middle height, good figure, and winning grace, in every way the very image of Yaquita. A little more serious than her brother, affable, good-natured, and charitable, she was beloved by all. On this subject you could fearlessly interrogate60 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 sketch61 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 behooves62 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 Magalha?s. Of the Amazon she knew no more than what flowed before her eyes.
With her, and more specially63 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, coaxing64, 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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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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meridian
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| adj.子午线的；全盛期的 | |
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missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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volcanic
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| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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eruption
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| n.火山爆发；（战争等）爆发；（疾病等）发作 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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picturesquely
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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indigenous
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| adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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rivulets
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| n.小河，小溪( rivulet的名词复数 ) | |
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tributaries
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| n. 支流 | |
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lagoons
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| n.污水池( lagoon的名词复数 )；潟湖；（大湖或江河附近的）小而浅的淡水湖；温泉形成的池塘 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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inured
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| adj.坚强的，习惯的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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prospering
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的现在分词 ) | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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aquatic
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| adj.水生的，水栖的 | |
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laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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abounded
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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sterling
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| adj.英币的(纯粹的，货真价实的)；n.英国货币(英镑) | |
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clearance
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| n.净空；许可(证)；清算；清除，清理 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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exempt
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| adj.免除的；v.使免除；n.免税者，被免除义务者 | |
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conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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straightforwardness
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| n.坦白，率直 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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subdue
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| vt.制服，使顺从，征服；抑制，克制 | |
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haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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interrogate
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| vt.讯问，审问，盘问 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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behooves
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| n.利益，好处( behoof的名词复数 )v.适宜( behoove的第三人称单数 ) | |
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63
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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64
coaxing
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的现在分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱；“锻炼”效应 | |
参考例句： |
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