“But if everything is of use in nature,” asked Minha, “what is the use of mosquitoes?”
“They minister to the happiness of entomologists,” replied Manoel; “and I should be much embarrassed to find a better explanation.”
What Manoel had said of the Loreto mosquitoes was only too true. When Benito had finished his business and returned on board, his face and hands were tattooed with thousands of red points, without counting some chigoes, which, in spite of the leather of his boots, had introduced themselves beneath his toes.
“Let us set off this very instant,” said Benito, “or these wretched insects will invade us, and the jangada will become uninhabitable!”
“And we shall take them into Para,” said Manoel, “where there are already quite enough for its own needs.”
And so, in order not to pass even the night near the banks, the jangada pushed off into the stream.
On leaving Loreto the Amazon turns slightly toward the southwest, between the islands of Arava, Cuyari, and Urucutea. The jangada then glided along the black waters of the Cajaru, as they mingled with the white stream of the Amazon. After having passed this tributary on the left, it peacefully arrived during the evening of the 23rd of June alongside the large island of Jahuma.
The setting of the sun on a clear horizon, free from all haze, announced one of those beautiful tropical nights which are unknown in the temperate zones. A light breeze freshened the air; the moon arose in the constellated depths of the sky, and for several hours took the place of the twilight which is absent from these latitudes. But even during this period the stars shone with unequaled purity. The immense plain seemed to stretch into the infinite like a sea, and at the extremity of the axis, which measures more than two hundred thousand millions of leagues, there appeared on the north the single diamond of the pole star, on the south the four brilliants of the Southern Cross.
The trees on the left bank and on the island of Jahuma stood up in sharp black outline. There were recognizable in the undecided silhouettes the trunks, or rather columns, of copahus, which spread out in umbrellas, groups of sandis, from which is extracted the thick and sugared milk, intoxicating as wine itself, and vignaticos eighty feet high, whose summits shake at the passage of the lightest currents of air. “What a magnificent sermon are these forests of the Amazon!” has been justly said. Yes; and we might add, “What a magnificent hymn there is in the nights of the tropics!”
The birds were giving forth their last evening notes—bentivis, who hang their nests on the bank-side reeds; niambus, a kind of partridge, whose song is composed of four notes, in perfect accord; kamichis, with their plaintive melody; kingfishers, whose call responds like a signal to the last cry of their congeners; canindes, with their sonorous trumpets; and red macaws, who fold their wings in the foliage of the jaquetibas, when night comes on to dim their glowing colors.
On the jangada everyone was at his post, in the attitude of repose. The pilot alone, standing in the bow, showed his tall stature, scarcely defined in the earlier shadows. The watch, with his long pole on his shoulder, reminded one of an encampment of Tartar horsemen. The Brazilian flag hung from the top of the staff in the bow, and the breeze was scarcely strong enough to lift the bunting.
At eight o’clock the three first tinklings of the Angelus escaped from the bell of the little chapel. The three tinklings of the second and third verses sounded in their turn, and the salutation was completed in the series of more rapid strokes of the little bell.
However, the family after this July day remained sitting under the veranda to breathe the fresh air from the open.
It had been so each evening, and while Joam Garral, always silent, was contented to listen, the young people gayly chatted away till bedtime.
“Ah! our splendid river! our magnificent Amazon!” exclaimed the young girl, whose enthusiasm for the immense stream never failed.
“Unequaled river, in very truth,” said Manoel; “and I do not understand all its sublime beauties. We are going down it, however, like Orellana and La Condamine did so many centuries ago, and I am not at all surprised at their marvelous descriptions.”
“A little fabulous,” replied Benito.
“Now, brother,” said Minha seriously, “say no evil of our Amazon.”
“To remind you that it has its legends, my sister, is to say no ill of it.”
“Yes, that is true; and it has some marvelous ones,” replied Minha.
“What legends?” asked Manoel. “I dare avow that they have not yet found their way into Para—or rather that, for my part, I am not acquainted with them.”
“What, then do you learn in the Belem colleges?” laughingly asked Minha.
“I begin to perceive that they teach us nothing,” replied Manoel.
“What, sir!” replied Minha, with a pleasant seriousness, “you do not know, among other fables, that an enormous reptile called the minhocao, sometimes visits the Amazon, and that the waters of the river rise or fall according as this serpent plunges in or quits them, so gigantic is he?”
“But have you ever seen this phenomenal minhocao?”
“Alas, no!” replied Lina.
“What a pity!” Fragoso thought it proper to add.
“And the ‘Mae d’Aqua,’ ” continued the girl—“that proud and redoubtable woman whose look fascinates and drags beneath the waters of the river the imprudent ones who gaze a her.”
“Oh, as for the ‘Mae d’Aqua,’ she exists!” cried the naive Lina; “they say that she still walks on the banks, but disappears like a water sprite as soon as you approach
