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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“But you will see things that you never saw before,” Yaquita kept
saying to her.
“Will they be better than what I see now?” was Cybele’s invariable
reply.
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