auriferous deposits which had deceived the greedy scrutiny of the
gold-seekers turned out to be only worthless flakes of mica!
In short, Manaos has none of the fabulous splendors of the mythical
capital of El Dorado. It is an ordinary town of about five thousand
inhabitants, and of these at least three thousand are in government
employ. This fact is to be attributed to the number of its public
buildings, which consist of the legislative chamber, the government
house, the treasury, the post-office, and the custom-house, and, in
addition, a college founded in 1848, and a hospital erected in 1851.
When with these is also mentioned a cemetery on the south side of a
hill, on which, in 1669, a fortress, which has since been demolished,
was thrown up against the pirates of the Amazon, some idea can be
gained as to the importance of the official establishments of the
city. Of religious buildings it would be difficult to find more than
two, the small Church of the Conception and the Chapel of Notre Dame
des Remedes, built on a knoll which overlooks the town. These are
very few for a town of Spanish origin, though to them should perhaps
be added the Carmelite Convent, burned down in 1850, of which only
the ruins remain. The population of Manaos does not exceed the number
above given, and after reckoning the public officials and soldiers,
is principally made of up Portuguese and Indian merchants belonging
to the different tribes of the Rio Negro.
Three principal thoroughfares of considerable irregularity run
through the town, and they bear names highly characteristic of the
tone of thought prevalent in these parts–God-the-Father Street,
God-the-Son Street, and God-the-Holy Ghost Street!
In the west of the town is a magnificent avenue of centenarian orange
trees which were carefully respected by the architects who out of the
old city made the new. Round these principal thoroughfares is
interwoven a perfect network of unpaved alleys, intersected every now
and then by four canals, which are occasionally crossed by wooden
bridges. In a few places these iguarapes flow with their brownish
waters through large vacant spaces covered with straggling weeds and
flowers of startling hues, and here and there are natural squares
shaded by magnificent trees, with an occasional white-barked
sumaumeira shooting up, and spreading out its large dome-like parasol
above its gnarled branches.
The private houses have to be sought for among some hundreds of
dwellings, of very rudimentary type, some roofed with tiles, others
with interlaced branches of the palm-tree, and with prominent
miradors, and projecting shops for the most part tenanted by
Portuguese traders.
And what manner of people are they who stroll on to the fashionable
promenade from the public buildings and private residences? Men of
good appearance, with black cloth coats, chimney-pot hats,
patent-leather boots, highly-colored gloves, and diamond pins in
their necktie bows; and women in loud, imposing toilets, with
flounced dressed and headgear of the latest style; and Indians, also
on the road to Europeanization in a way which bids fair to destroy
every bit of local color in this central portion of the district of
the Amazon!
Such is Manaos, which, for the benefit of the reader, it was
necessary to sketch. Here the voyage of the giant raft, so tragically
interrupted, had just come to a pause in the midst of its long
journey, and here will be unfolded the further vicissitudes of the
mysterious history of the fazender of Iquitos.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST MOMENTS
SCARCELY HAD the pirogue which bore off Joam Garral, or rather Joam
Dacosta–for it is more convenient that he should resume his real
name-disappeared, than Benito stepped up to Manoel.
“What is it you know?” he asked.
“I know that your father is innocent! Yes, innocent!” replied Manoel,
“and that he was sentenced to death twenty-three years ago for a
crime which he never committed!”
“He has told you all about it, Manoel?”
“All about it,” replied the young man. “The noble fazender did not
wish that any part of his past life should be hidden from him who,
when he marries his daughter, is to be his second son.”
“And the proof of his innocence my father can one day produce?”