missionaries. Up to the seventeenth year of the century the Iquito
Indians, who then formed the entire population, were settled in the
interior of the province at some distance from the river. But one day
the springs in their territory all dried up under the influence of a
volcanic eruption, and they were obliged to come and take up their
abode on the left of the Marânon. The race soon altered through the
alliances which were entered into with the riverine Indians, Ticunas,
or Omaguas, mixed descent with a few Spaniards, and to-day Iquitos
has a population of two or three families of half-breeds.
The village is most picturesquely grouped on a kind of esplanade, and
runs along at about sixty feet from the river. It consists of some
forty miserable huts, whose thatched roofs only just render them
worthy of the name of cottages. A stairway made of crossed trunks of
trees leads up to the village, which lies hidden from the traveler’s
eyes until the steps have been ascended. Once at the top he finds
himself before an inclosure admitting of slight defense, and
consisting of many different shrubs and arborescent plants, attached
to each other by festoons of lianas, which here and there have made
their way abgove the summits of the graceful palms and banana-trees.
At the time we speak of the Indians of Iquitos went about in almost a
state of nudity. The Spaniards and half-breeds alone were clothed,
and much as they scorned their indigenous fellow-citizens, wore only
a simple shirt, light cotton trousers, and a straw hat. All lived
cheerlessly enough in the village, mixing little together, and if
they did meet occasionally, it was only at such times as the bell of
the mission called them tot he dilapidated cottage which served them
for a church.
But if existence in the village of Iquitos, as in most of the hamlets
of the Upper Amazon, was almost in a rudimentary stage, it was only
necessary to journey a league further down the river to find on the
same bank a wealthy settlement, with all the elements of comfortable
life.
This was the farm of Joam Garral, toward which our two young friends
returned after their meeting with the captain of the woods.
There, on a bend of the stream, at the junction of the River Nanay,
which is here about five hundred feet across, there had been
established for many years this farm, homestead, or, to use the
expression of the country, _”fazenda,”_ then in the height of its
prosperity. The Nanay with its left bank bounded it to the north for
about a mile, and for nearly the same distance to the east it ran
along the bank of the larger river. To the west some small rivulets,
tributaries of the Nanay, and some lagoons of small extent, separated
it from the savannah and the fields devoted to the pasturage of the
cattle.
It was here that Joam Garral, in 1826, twenty-six years before the
date when our story opens, was received by the proprietor of the
fazenda.
This Portuguese, whose name was Magalhaës, followed the trade of
timber-felling, and his settlement, then recently formed, extended
for about half a mile along the bank of the river.
There, hospitable as he was, like all the Portuguese of the old race,
Magalhaës lived with his daughter Yaquita, who after the death of her
mother had taken charge of his household. Magalhaës was an excellent
worker, inured to fatigue, but lacking education. If he understood
the management of the few slaves whom he owned, and the dozen Indians
whom he hired, he showed himself much less apt in the various
external requirements of his trade. In truth, the establishment at
Iquitos was not prospering, and the affairs of the Portuguese were
getting somewhat embarrassed.
It was under these circumstances that Joam Garral, then twenty-two
years old, found himself one day in the presence of Magalhaës. He had
arrived in the country at the limit both of his strength and his
resources. Magalhaës had found him half-dead with hunger and fatigue
in the neighboring forest. The Portuguese had an excellent heart; he
did not ask the unknown where he came from, but what he wanted. The