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.
Under such conditions it was that Joam Garral was introduced to the
farm at Iquitos.
Brazilian by birth, Joam Garral was without family or fortune.
Trouble, he said, had obliged him to quit his country and abandon all
thoughts of return. He asked his host to excuse his entering on his
past misfortunes–misfortunes as serious as they were unmerited. What
he sought, and what he wished, was a new life, a life of 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Portuguese did not wait so long to acknowledge what he owed to
Joam Garral. In order to recompense him in proportion to his merits
he had from the first given him an interest in the profits of his
business, and four years after his arrival he had made him a partner
on the same footing as himself, and with equal shares.
But there was more that he had in store for him. Yaquita, his
daughter, had, in this silent young man, so gentle to others, so
stern to himself, recognized the sterling qualities which her father