nks of the Upper Amazon, going
from village to village, and putting the resources of their art at the
service of negroes, negresses, Indians and Indian women, who appreciate
them very much.

But poor Fragoso, abandoned and miserable, having eaten nothing for
forty hours, astray in the forest, had for an instant lost his head, and
we know the rest.

"My friend," said Benito to him, "you will go back with us to the
fazenda of Iquitos?"

"With pleasure," replied Fragoso; "you cut me down and I belong to you.
I must somehow be dependent."

"Well, dear mistress, don't you think we did well to continue our walk?"
asked Lina.

"That I do," returned the girl.

"Never mind," said Benito; "I never thought that we should finish by
finding a man at the end of the cipo."

"And, above all, a barber in difficulties, and on the road to hang
himself!" replied Fragoso.

The poor fellow, who was now wide awake, was told about what had passed.
He warmly thanked Lina for the good idea she had had of following the
liana, and they all started on the road to the fazenda, where Fragoso
was received in a way that gave him neither wish nor want to try his
wretched task again.

CHAPTER VIII. THE JANGADA

THE HALF-MILE square of forest was cleared. With the carpenters remained
the task of arranging in the form of a raft the many venerable trees
which were lying on the strand.

And an easy task it was. Under the direction of Joam Garral the Indians
displayed their incomparable ingenuity. In everything connected with
house-building or ship-building these natives are, it must be admitted,
astonishing workmen. They have only an ax and a saw, and they work on
woods so hard that the edge of their tools gets absolutely jagged; yet
they square up trunks, shape beams out of enormous stems, and get out of
them joists and planking without the aid of any machinery whatever, and,
endowed with prodigious natural ability, do all these things easily with
their skilled and patient hands.

The trees had not been launched into the Amazon to begin with; Joam
Garral was accustomed to proceed in a different way. The whole mass of
trunks was symmetrically arranged on a flat part of the bank, which
he had already leveled up at the junction of the Nanay with the great
river.

There it was that the jangada was to be built; thence it was that
the Amazon was to float it when the time came for it to start for its
destination.

And here an explanatory