the borders of the lake as the setting sun gilded it with its rays;
then they rejoined their pirogue, somewhat disillusioned perhaps as
to the magnificence of a town which one hour would give time enough
to visit, and a little tired with walking about its stifling streets
which were not nearly so pleasant as the shady pathways of Iquitos.
The inquisitive Lina’s enthusiasm alone had not been damped.
They all took their places in the pirogue. The wind remained in the
northwest, and had freshened with the evening. The sail was hoisted.
They took the same course as in the morning, across the lake fed by
the black waters of the Rio Teffe, which, according to the Indians,
is navigable toward the southwest for forty days’ journey. At eight
o’clock the priogue regained the mooring-place and hailed the
jangada.
As soon as Lina could get Fragoso aside–
“Have you seen anything suspicious?” she inquired.
“Nothing, Miss Lina,” he replied; “Torres has scarcely left hi cabin,
where he has been reading and writing.”
“He did not get into the house or the dining-room, as I feared?”
“No, all the time he was not in his cabin he was in the bow of the
raft.”
“And what was he doing?”
“Holding an old piece of paper in his hand, consulting it with great
attention, and muttering a lot of incomprehensible words.”
“All that is not so unimportant as you think, Mr. Fragoso. These
readings and writings and old papers have their interest! He is
neither a professor nor a lawyer, this reader and writer!”
“You are right!”
“Still watch him, Mr. Fragoso!”
“I will watch him always, Miss Lina,” replied Fragoso.
On the morrow, the 27th of July, at daybreak, Benito gave the pilot
the signal to start.
Away between the islands, in the Bay of Arenapo, the mouth of the
Japura, six thousand six hundred feet wide, was seen for an instant.
This large tributary comes into the Amazon through eight mouths, as
if it were pouring into some gulf or ocean. But its waters come from
afar, and it is the mountains of the republic of Ecuador which start
them on a course that there are no falls to break until two hundred
and ten leagues from its junction with the main stream.
All this day was spent in descending to the island of Yapura, after
which the river, less interfered with, makes navigation much easier.
The current is not so rapid and the islets are easily avoided, so
that there were no touchings or groundings.
The next day the jangada coasted along by vast beaches formed by
undulating high domes, which served as the barriers of immense
pasture grounds, in which the whole of the cattle in Europe could be
raised and fed. These sand banks are considered to be the richest
turtle grounds in the basin of the Upper Amazon.
On the evening of the 29th of July they were securely moored off the
island of Catua, so as to pass the night, which promised to be dark.
On this island, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, there
appeared a party of Muras Indians, the remains of that ancient and
powerful tribe, which formerly occupied more than a hundred leagues
of the river bank between the Teffe and the Madeira.
These Indians went and came, watching the raft, which remained
stationary. There were about a hundred of them armed with blow-tubes
formed of a reed peculiar to these parts, and which is strengthened
outside by the stem of a dwarf palm from which the pith has been
extracted.
Joam Garral quitted for an instand the work which took up all his
time, to warn his people to keep a good guard and not to provoke
these Indians.
In truth the sides were not well matched. The Muras are remarkably
clever at sending through their blow-tubes arrows which cause
incurable wounds, even at a range of three hundred paces.
These arrows, made of the leaf of the _”coucourite”_ palm, are
feathered with cotton, and nine or ten inches long, with a point like
a needle, and poisoned with _”curare.”_
Curare, or _”wourah,”_ the liquor “which kills in a whisper,” as the