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<h2> CHAPTER III. THE GARRAL FAMILY </h2>
<p>THE VILLAGE of Iquitos is situated on the left bank of the Amazon, near
the seventy-fourth meridian, on that portion of the great river which
still bears the name of the Mar�non, and of which the bed separates Peru
from the republic of Ecuador. It is about fifty-five leagues to the west
of the Brazilian frontier.</p>
<p>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 Mar�non. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This was the farm of Joam Garral, toward which our two young friends
returned after their meeting with the captain of the woods.</p>
<p>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,
<i>"fazenda,"</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This Portuguese, whose name was Magalha�s, followed the trade of
timber-felling, and his settlement, then recently formed, extended for
about half a mile along the bank of the river.</p>
<p>There, hospitable as he was, like all the Portuguese of the old race,
Magalha�s lived with his daughter Yaquita, who after the death of her
mother had taken charge of his household. Magalha�s was an excellent
worker, 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.</p>
<p>It was under these circumstances that Joam Garral, then twenty-two years
old, found himself one day in the presence of Magalha�s. He had arrived in
the country at the limit both of his strength and his resources. Magalha�s
had found him half-dead with hunger and fatigue in the neighboring forest.
The Portuguese had an excellent heart; he did not ask the unknown where he
came from, but what he wanted. The noble, high-spirited look which Joam
Garral bore in spite of his 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.</p>
<p>Under such conditions it was that Joam Garral was introduced to the farm
at Iquitos.</p>
<p>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.
Magalha�s, quite taken with him, asked him to remain at the farm, where he
would, in a measure, supply that which was wanting in the worthy farmer.</p>
<p>Joam Garral accepted the offer without hesitation. His intention had been
to join a <i>"seringal,"</i> or caoutchouc concern, in which in those days
a good workman could earn from five to six piastres a day, and could hope
to become a master if he had any luck; but Magalha�s very truly observed
that if the pay was good, work was only found in the seringals at harvest
time—that is to say, during only a few months of the year—and
this would not constitute the permanent position that a young man ought to
wish for.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Magalha�s had no cause to regret his generous action. His business
recovered. His wood trade, which extended by means of the Amazon up to
Para, was soon 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>"sitios,"</i>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A serious incident hastened the solution.</p>
<p>Magalha�s 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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"I can continue her devoted servant, her brother, her protector, without
being her husband," Joam Garral had at first replied. "I owe you all,
Magalha�s. I will never forget it, but the price you would pay for my
endeavors is out of all proportion to what they are worth."</p>
<p>The old man insisted. Death would not allow him to wait; he demanded the
promise, and it was made to him.</p>
<p>Yaquita was then twenty-two years old, Joam was twenty-six. They loved
each other and they were married some hours before the death of Magalha�s,
who had just strength left to bless their union.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The prosperity of the settlement could not do otherwise than grow when
these two minds were thus united.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Benito and Minha responded with an affection unbounded and unceasing for
the love which their parents bore them.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 Magalha�s. Of the Amazon she knew no more than what flowed
before her eyes.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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