“Yes, Minha; yes,” replied Joam. “It is rather as if we were returning from exile—voluntary exile! Do your best; I approve beforehand of what you do.”
On Minha and Lina, to whom were added of their own free will Manoel on the one side and Fragoso on the other, devolved the care of decorating the inside of the house. With some imagination and a little artistic feeling the result was highly satisfactory.
The best furniture of the fazenda naturally found its place within, as after arriving in Para they could easily return it by one of the igariteos. Tables, bamboo easy-chairs, cane sofas, carved wood shelves, everything that constituted the charming furniture of the tropics, was disposed with taste about the floating home. No one is likely to imagine that the walls remained bare. The boards were hidden beneath hangings of most agreeable variety. These hangings were made of valuable bark, that of the tuturis, which is raised up in large folds like the brocades and damasks and softest and richest materials of our modern looms. On the floors of the rooms were jaguar skins, with wonderful spots, and thick monkey furs of exquisite fleeciness. Light curtains of the russet silk, produced by the sumauma, hung from the windows. The beds, enveloped in mosquito curtains, had their pillows, mattresses, and bolsters filled with that fresh and elastic substance which in the Upper Amazon is yielded by the bombax.
Throughout on the shelves and side-tables were little odds and ends, brought from Rio Janeiro or Belem, those most precious to Minha being such as had come from Manoel. What could be more pleasing in her eyes than the knickknacks given by a loving hand which spoke to her without saying anything?
In a few days the interior was completed, and it looked just like the interior of the fazenda. A stationary house under a lovely clump of trees on the borders of some beautiful river! Until it descended between the banks of the larger stream it would not be out of keeping with the picturesque landscape which stretched away on each side of it.
We may add that the exterior of the house was no less charming than the interior.
In fact, on the outside the young fellows had given free scope to their taste and imagination.
From the basement to the roof it was literally covered with foliage. A confused mass of orchids, bromelias, and climbing plants, all in flower, rooted in boxes of excellent soil hidden beneath masses of verdure. The trunk of some ficus or mimosa was never covered by a more startlingly tropical attire. What whimsical climbers—ruby red and golden yellow, with variegated clusters and tangled twigs—turned over the brackets, under the ridges, on the rafters of the roof, and across the lintels of the doors! They had brought them wholesale from the woods in the neighborhood of the fazenda. A huge liana bound all the parasites together; several times it made the round of the house, clinging on to every angle, encircling every projection, forking, uniting, it everywhere threw out its irregular branchlets, and allowed not a bit of the house to be seen beneath its enormous clusters of bloom.
As a delicate piece of attention, the author of which can be easily recognized, the end of the cipo spread out before the very window of the young mulatto, as though a long arm was forever holding a bouquet of fresh flowers across the blind.
To sum up, it was as charming as could be; and as Yaquita, her daughter, and Lina were content, we need say no more about it.
“It would not take much to make us plant trees on the jangada,” said Benito.
“Oh, trees!” ejaculated Minha.
“Why not?” replied Manoel. “Transported on to this solid platform, with some good soil, I am sure they would do well, and we would have no change of climate to fear for them, as the Amazon flows all the time along the same parallel.”
“Besides,” said Benito, “every day islets of verdure, torn from the banks, go drifting down the river. Do they not pass along with their trees, bushes, thickets, rocks, and fields, to lose themselves in the Atlantic eight hundred leagues away? Why, then, should we not transform our raft into a floating garden?”
“Would you like a forest, miss?” said Fragoso, who stopped at nothing.
“Yes, a forest!” cried the young mulatto; “a forest with its birds and its monkeys—”
“Its snakes, its jaguars!” continued Benito.
“Its Indians, its nomadic tribes,” added Manoel, “and even its cannibals!”
“But where are you going to, Fragoso?” said Minha, seeing the active barber making a rush at the bank.
“To look after the forest!” replied Fragoso.
“Useless, my friend,” answered the smiling Minha. “Manoel has given me a nosegay and I am quite content. It is true,” she added, pointing to the house hidden beneath the flowers, “that he has hidden our house in his betrothal bouquet!”
IX
The Evening of the Fifth of June
While the master’s house was being constructed, Joam Garral was also busied in the arrangement of the outbuildings, comprising the kitchen, and offices in which provisions of all kinds were intended to be stored.
In the first place, there was an important stock of the roots of that little tree, some six or ten feet in height, which yields the manioc, and which form the principal food of the inhabitants of these inter-tropical countries. The root, very much like a long black radish, grows in clumps like potatoes. If it is not poisonous in Africa, it is certain that in South America it contains a more noxious juice, which it is necessary to previously get rid of by pressure. When this result is obtained, the root is reduced to flour, and is then used in many ways, even in the form of tapioca, according to the fancy of the natives.
On board the jangada there was a huge pile of this useful product destined for general consumption.
As for preserved
