it could not be carried away by the current when it floated off.
Quite a tribe from one hundred and fifty to two hundred Indians,
without counting the population of the village, had come to assist at
the interesting spectacle.
They were all keenly on the watch, and silence reigned over the
impressionable crowd.
Toward five o’clock in the evening the water had reached a level
higher than that of the night before–by more than a foot–and the
bank had already entirely disappeared beneath the liquid covering.
A certain groaning arose among the planks of the enormous structure,
but there was still wanting a few inches before it was quite lifted
and detached from the ground.
For an hour the groanings increased. The joists grated on all sides.
A struggle was going on in which little by little the trunks were
being dragged from their sandy bed.
Toward half-past six cries of joy arose. The jangada floated at last,
and the current took it toward the middle of the river, but, in
obedience to the cables, it quietly took up its position near the
bank at the moment that Padre Passanha gave it his blessing, as if it
were a vessel launched into the sea whose destinies are in the hands
of the Most High!
CHAPTER X
FROM IQUITOS TO PEVAS
ON THE 6th of June, the very next day, Joam Garral and his people
bade good-by to the superintendent and the Indians and negroes who
were to stay behind at the fazenda. At six o’clock in the morning the
jangada received all its passengers, or rather inhabitants, and each
of them took possession of his cabin, or perhaps we had better say
his house.
The moment of departure had come. Araujo, the pilot, got into his
place at the bow, and the crew, armed with their long poles, went to
their proper quarters.
Joam Garral, assisted by Benito and Manoel, superintended the
unmooring.
At the command of the pilot the ropes were eased off, and the poles
applied to the bank so as to give the jangada a start. The current
was not long in seizing it, and coasting the left bank, the islands
of Iquitos and Parianta were passed on the right.
The voyage had commenced–where would it finish? In Para, at Belem,
eight hundred leagues from this little Peruvian village, if nothing
happened to modify the route. How would it finish? That was the
secret of the future.
The weather was magnificent. A pleasant _”pampero”_ tempered the
ardor of the sun–one of those winds which in June or July come from
off the Cordilleras, many hundred leagues away, after having swept
across the huge plain of the Sacramento. Had the raft been provided
with masts and sails she would have felt the effects of the breeze,
and her speed would have been greater; but owing to the sinuosities
of the river and its abrupt changes, which they were bound to follow,
they had had to renounce such assistance.
In a flat district like that through which the Amazon flows, which is
almost a boundless plain, the gradient of the river bed is scarcely
perceptible. It has been calculated that between Tabatinga on the
Brazilian frontier, and the source of this huge body of water, the
difference of level does not exceed a decimeter in each league. There
is no other river in the world whose inclination is so slight.
It follows from this that the average speed of the current cannot be
estimated at more than two leagues in twenty-four hours, and
sometimes, while the droughts are on, it is even less. However,
during the period of the floods it has been known to increase to
between thirty and forty kilometers.
Happily, it was under these latter conditions that the jangada was to
proceed; but, cumbrous in its movements, it could not keep up to the
speed of the current which ran past it. There are also to be taken
into account the stoppages occasioned by the bends in the river, the
numerous islands which had to be rounded, the shoals which had to be
avoided, and the hours of halting, which were necessarily lost when
the night was too dark to advance securely, so that we cannot allow