continual rains, but in frequent storms. These could not hinder the
progress of the raft, which offered little resistance to the wind.
Its great length rendered it almost insensible to the swell of the
Amazon, but during the torrential showers the Garral family had to
keep indoors. They had to occupy profitably these hours of leisure.
They chatted together, communicated their observations, and their
tongues were seldom idle.
It was under these circumstances that little by little Torres had
begun to take a more active part in the conversation. The details of
his many voyages throughout the whole north of Brazil afforded him
numerous subjects to talk about. The man had certainly seen a great
deal, but his observations were those of a skeptic, and he often
shocked the straightforward people who were listening to him. IT
should be said that he showed himself much impressed toward Minha.
But these attentions, although they were displeasing to Manoel, were
not sufficiently marked for him to interfere. On the other hand,
Minha felt for him an instinctive repulsion which she was at no pains
to conceal.
On the 5th of July the mouth of the Tunantins appeared on the left
bank, forming an estuary of some four hundred feet across, in which
it pours its blackish waters, coming from the west-northwest, after
having watered the territories of the Cacena Indians. At this spot
the Amazon appears under a truly grandiose aspect, but its course is
more than ever encumbered with islands and islets. It required all
the address of the pilot to steer through the archipelago, going from
one bank to another, avoiding the shallows, shirking the eddies, and
maintaining the advance.
They might have taken the Ahuaty Parana, a sort of natural canal,
which goes off a little below the mouth of the Tunantins, and
re-enters the principal stream a hundred an twenty miles further on
by the Rio Japura; but if the larger portion of this measures a
hundred and fifty feet across, the narrowest is only sixty feet, and
the raft would there have met with a difficulty.
On the 13th of July, after having touched at the island of Capuro,
passed the mouth of the Jutahy, which, coming from the
east-southeast, brings in its black waters by a mouth five hundred
feet wide, and admired the legions of monkeys, sulphur-white in
color, with cinnabar-red faces, who are insatiable lovers of the nuts
produced by the palm-trees from which the river derives its name, the
travelers arrived on the 18th of July before the little village of
Fonteboa.
At this place the jangada halted for twelve hours, so as to give a
rest to the crew.
Fonteboa, like most of the mission villages of the Amazon, has not
escaped the capricious fate which, during a lengthened period, moves
them about from one place to the other. Probably the hamlet has now
finished with its nomadic existence, and has definitely become
stationary. So much the better; for it is a charming place, with its
thirty houses covered with foliage, and its church dedicated to Notre
Dame de Guadaloupe, the Black Virgin of Mexico. Fonteboa has one
thousand inhabitants, drawn from the Indians on both banks, who rear
numerous cattle in the fields in the neighborhood. These occupations
do not end here, for they are intrepid hunters, or, if they prefer
it, intrepid fishers for the manatee.
On the morning of their arrival the young fellows assisted at a very
interesting expedition of this nature. Two of these herbivorous
cetaceans had just been signaled in the black waters of the Cayaratu,
which comes in at Fonteboa. Six brown points were seen moving along
the surface, and these were the two pointed snouts and four pinions
of the lamantins.
Inexperienced fishermen would at first have taken these moving points
for floating wreckage, but the natives of Fonteboa were not to be so
deceived. Besides, very soon loud blowings indicated that the
spouting animals were vigorously ejecting the air which had become
useless for their breathing purposes.
Two ubas, each carrying three fishermen, set off from the bank and
approached the manatees, who soon took flight. The black points at
first traced a long furrow on the top of the water, and then