Joam Garral grants his daughter's wish to travel to Belém where she wants to marry Manuel Valdez in the presence of Manuel's invalid mother. The Garrals travel down the Amazon River using a giant timber raft. At Belém, Joam plans to restore his good name, as he is still wanted in Brazil for a crime he did not perpetrate. A scoundrel named Torres offers Joam absolute proof of Joam's innocence but the price that Torres wants for this information is to marry Joam's daughter, which is inconceivable to Joam. The proof lies in an encrypted letter that will exonerate Garral. When Torres is killed, the Garral family must race to decode the letter before Joam is executed.

genre : Action & Adventure

6 hour and 48 minute

Read Eight Hundred Leagues On The Amazon Online

[Feedbooks]

Eight Hundred Leagues On The Amazon

Jules Verne

(Translator: W. J. Gordon)

Published: 1881

Categorie(s): Fiction, Action & Adventure

Source: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3091 About Verne:

Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828–March 24, 1905) was a French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre. He is best known for novels such as Journey To The Center Of The Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised. He is the third most translated author in the world, according to Index Translationum. Some of his books have been made into films. Verne, along with Hugo Gernsback and H. G. Wells, is often popularly referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction". Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks Verne:

- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

- Around the World in Eighty Days (1872)

- In the Year 2889 (1889)

- A Journey into the Center of the Earth (1877)

- The Mysterious Island (1874)

- From the Earth to the Moon (1865)

- An Antarctic Mystery (1899)

- The Master of the World (1904)

- Off on a Comet (1911)

- The Underground City (1877)

Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks

http://www.feedbooks.com

Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes.

Part 1

THE GIANT RAFT

Chapter 1 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 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 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 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."

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 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.

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Chapter 2 ROBBER AND ROBBED

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

It was not a man at all, it was a "guariba."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 to branch at the tops of the giants of the forest.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 hung by a thread.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

In an instant Torres had recognized with whom he had to deal.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"A guariba!" he cried.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And his hand seizing his manchetta, he put himself into a posture of defense.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 under the trees.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"It was time!" said Torres; "the rogue would have settled me without any ceremony!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"The beggar!" he said. "If he has not killed me, he has done what is almost as bad. He has robbed me!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Botheration!" said he.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And at the moment, cost what it might to recapture his case, Torres threw himself in pursuit of the guariba.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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, you thief! If I could only get hold of you!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And Torres recommenced the pursuit, and the monkey scuttled off with renewed vigor.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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?

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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:

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Come here! come here! you robber!" as if he could make him understand him.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Torres, driven to distraction, picked up the stones within his reach, and threw them at him, but did no harm at such a distance.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

But he hesitated to make a fresh start. On one hand, to keep on in chase 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Then he got up.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

The guariba got up too.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

He made several steps in advance.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

However, instead of retracing his steps he directed them toward the 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And all the time the miserable case rattled at his ear.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

But the monkey, who was only a humble quadruman, was simply amused at what would have revolted a representative of humanity.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 to 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Those were speaking at about twenty paces to the right of him.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

A cry followed, and the monkey, mortally wounded, fell heavily on the ground, still holding Torres' case.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"By Jove!" he muttered, "that bullet came at the right time!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And then, without fearing to be seen, he came out of the thicket, and two young gentlemen appeared from under the trees.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Torres had obviously little to fear from this meeting, and so he went on running toward the monkey's corpse.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

The latter had recovered his presence of mind.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

The hunters looked at him inquiringly, not knowing what value to attach to his thanks.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Torres explained matters in a few words.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"You thought you had killed a monkey," said he, "but as it happens you have killed a thief!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And taking several steps to the rear, he bent over the guariba, and, not without an effort, withdrew the case from his stiffened hand.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Doubtless that, sir, is what belongs to you?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"The very thing," said Torres briskly, catching hold of the case and failing to repress a huge sigh of relief.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Whom ought I to thank, gentlemen," said he, "for the service you have rendered me?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"My friend, Manoel, assistant surgeon, Brazilian army," replied the young man.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"If it was I who shot the monkey, Benito," said Manoel, "it was you that pointed him out to me."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"In that case, sirs," replied Torres, "I am under an obligation to you both, as well to you, Mr. Manoel, as to you, Mr. ——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Benito Garral," replied Manoel.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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:

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"My father, Joam Garral, has his farm about three miles from here. If you would like, Mr. ——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Torres," replied the adventurer.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"If you would like to accompany us there, Mr. Torres, you will be hospitably received."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"I do not know that I can," said Torres, who, surprised by this 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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Ah!" said Torres sharply, "your father is thinking of recrossing the Brazilian frontier?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Yes, for a voyage of some months," replied Benito. "At least we hope to make him decide so. Don't we, Manoel?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Manoel nodded affirmatively.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And having said so, Torres saluted the young men, who in turn saluted him, and set out on their way to the farm.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

As for Torres he looked after them as they got further and further away, and when he had lost sight of them—

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Chapter 3 THE GARRAL FAMILY

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 Marânon, 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 to the dilapidated cottage which served them for a church.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

This was the farm of Joam Garral, toward which our two young friends returned after their meeting with the captain of the woods.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 embarrassed.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

A serious incident hastened the solution.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Chapter 4 HESITATION

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Half an hour afterward he had done so.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Benito had nothing to tell his mother which she did not know; Yaquita had already divined the young people's secret.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

The answer almost came before the question; that was obvious. Benito did not ask for more.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

There could be little doubt as to Joam Garral's consent. But if Yaquita 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?

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 felt to be a very serious matter.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

The products of the farm, of the forest, and of the fields, the fazender sold on the spot. He had no wish, either with thought or look, to go beyond the horizon which bounded his Eden.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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:

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Why leave our home? Are we not comfortable here?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And Yaquita, in the presence of the man whose active kindness and unchangeable tenderness rendered her so happy, had not the courage to persist.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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?

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Yaquita took her husband's hand, and with that gentle voice which had been to him all the music of his life:

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Joam," she said, "I am going to talk to you about something which we ardently wish, and which will make you as happy as we are."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"What is it about, Yaquita?" asked Joam.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Manoel loves your daughter, he is loved by her, and in this union they will find the happiness——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"What is the matter with you?" asked she.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Minha? To get married!" murmured Joam.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Yes; and a year since——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Yaquita took his hand.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Yes," answered Joam. "All! Certainly. But, Yaquita, this wedding—this wedding that we are both thinking of—when is it coming off? Shortly?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"It will come off when you choose, Joam."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"And it will take place here—at Iquitos?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

At these words of Yaquita Joam made a movement which he could not repress.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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 life."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

This time Joam had fixed his eyes on his wife and looked at her for some time without saying anything.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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. His manager would be able to take his place without any hitch in the fazenda. And yet all this time he hesitated.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Yaquita had taken both her husband's hands in hers, and pressed them tenderly.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"You are right," he said, in a firm voice. "The journey is necessary. When shall we start?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Ah! Joam! my Joam!" cried Yaquita, in her joy. "Thank you for me! Thank you for them!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And tears of affection came to her eyes as her husband clasped her to his heart.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

At this moment happy voices were heard outside at the door of the house.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Manoel and Benito appeared an instant after at the threshold, almost at the same moment as Minha entered the room.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Children! your father consents!" cried Yaquita. "We are going to Belem!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

With a grave face, and without speaking a word, Joam Garral received the congratulations of his son and the kisses of his daughter.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"And what date, father," asked Benito, "have you fixed for the wedding?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Date?" answered Joam. "Date? We shall see. We will fix it at Belem."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And the young enthusiast, whose imagination was already stirred, continued to her brother and to Manoel:

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Chapter 5 THE AMAZON

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"THE LARGEST river in the whole world!" said Benito to Manoel Valdez, on the morrow.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"And the river which carries to the sea the largest volume of water," replied Manoel.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"A river whose course is developed over more than thirty degrees of latitude."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"And in a basin which from south to north does not comprise less than twenty-five degrees."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"And along its flanks canals, lagoons, and lakes, such as cannot be met with even in Switzerland, Lombardy, Scotland, or Canada."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"And what a mouth! An arm of the sea in which one island, Marajo, has a circumference of more than five hundred leagues!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"In short, the biggest and most admirable river system which we have in the world."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

From its commencement the Amazon is recognizable as destined to 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 to south, scarcely varied with a few knolls, whose whole extent the atmospheric currents can traverse unchecked.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Professor Agassiz very properly protested against the pretended 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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

The vast plain which serves for its valley is accessible over its whole extent to the generous breezes which come from off the Atlantic.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

And how can we say that the hydrographical system of the Amazon is not known?

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

In 1636 and 1637 the Portuguese Pedro Texeira ascended the Amazon to Napo, with a fleet of forty-seven pirogues.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Since this period the Amazon itself and all its principal tributaries have been frequently visited.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

But to this medal of the future there is a reverse. No progress can be accomplished without detriment to the indigenous races.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

In face, on the Upper Amazon many Indian tribes have already disappeared, among others the Curicicurus and the Sorimaos. On the 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Hence this observation of Benito, while the two friends were watching the river as it gently flowed at their feet:

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Yes, Benito," said Manoel, "and very long as well, for Minha cannot by my wife until the end of the voyage."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Chapter 6 A FOREST ON THE GROUND

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Moreover, the few weeks that were to precede his departure had been well employed.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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, 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

These three kinds of craft formed the lesser flotilla of the Amazon, and were only suited for a moderate traffic of passengers or merchandise.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

The settlement of Iquitos included a part of those magnificent forests which, in the central districts of South America, are practically inexhaustible.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Joam Garral thoroughly understood the management of these woods, which were rich in the most precious and diverse species adapted for joinery, cabinet work, ship building, and carpentry, and from them he annually drew considerable profits.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Excellent idea!" had cried Minha, clapping her hands, when she learned her father's scheme.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Yes," said Yaquita, "and in that way we shall reach Belem without danger or fatigue."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"And during the stoppages we can have some hunting in the forests which line the banks," added Benito.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Won't it take rather long?" observed Manoel; "could we not hit upon some quicker way of descending the Amazon?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

It would take some time, obviously, but the interested observation of the young doctor received no attention from any one.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Joam Garral then called in an Indian who was the principal manager of the fazenda.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"In a month," he said to him, "the jangada must be built and ready to launch."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"We'll set to work this very day, sir."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 humid soil which perhaps its shots had never before caressed.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"But you will see things that you never saw before," Yaquita kept saying to her.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Will they be better than what I see now?" was Cybele's invariable reply.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Chapter 7 FOLLOWING A LIANA

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

Benito and Manoel had offered to accompany Minha through the thick woods which bordered the right bank of the Amazon opposite the fazenda.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 between the islands of Iquitos and Parianta, they reached the right bank of the Amazon.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Not for an hour—not for an instant!" said Manoel.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Perhaps you will if Minha orders you?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Minha will not order me."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Who knows?" said Lina, laughing.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"To be sure," said Benito.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Bravo! bravo! there are only strangers here," said the young mulatto, clapping her hands.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Strangers who see each other for the first time," added the girl; "who meet, bow to——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Mademoiselle!" said Manoel, turning to Minha.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"To whom have I the honor to speak, sir?" said she in the most serious manner possible.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"To Manoel Valdez, who will be glad if your brother will introduce me."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Always!" said Minha, from whom the word escaped so naturally that Lina's peals of laughter redoubled.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

A grateful glance from Manoel repaid Minha for the imprudence of her tongue.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Come along," said Benito, so as to get his sister out of her embarrassment; "if we walk on we shall not talk so much."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Forget what?"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"That you are a sportsman!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"What! you forbid me to——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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——"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"But——" said Benito.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"If not, I will take Manoel's arm, and we shall save or lose ourselves, and you will be obliged to run after us."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Would you not like me to refuse, eh?" asked Benito, looking at Manoel.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"I think I should!" replied the young man.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Well then—no!" said Benito; "I do not refuse; I will obey and annoy you. Come on!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"What wonders!" repeated the enthusiastic girl.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"You are at home, Minha, or at least you say so," said Benito, "and that is the way you talk of your riches!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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!"

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"Then be a poet now," replied the girl.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"I am a poet," said Benito. "O! Nature-enchanting, etc."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 four 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"We ought to respect the seriemas," said Manoel, "for they are great destroyers of the snakes."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

"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."

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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 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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

His gun almost burned his fingers, but faithful to his promise he kept it quiet.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir

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.

دنیای رمان مرجع رمان های ایرانی و خارجی. https://novelonline.ir