a better built and better peopled village than many of
those on the Upper Amazon.

For the Indians Joam Garral had designed regular cabins--huts without
walls, with only light poles supporting the roof of foliage. The air
circulated freely throughout these open constructions and swung the
hammock suspended in the interior, and the natives, among whom were
three or four complete families, with women and children, were lodged as
if they were on shore.

The blacks here found their customary sheds. They differed from the
cabins by being closed in on their four faces, of which only one gave
access to the interior. The Indians, accustomed to live in the open
air, free and untrammeled, were not able to accustom themselves to the
imprisonment of the _ajoupas,_ which agreed better with the life of the
blacks.

In the bow regular warehouses had arisen, containing the goods which
Joam Garral was carrying to Belem at the same time as the products of
his forests.

There, in vast storerooms, under the direction of Benito, the rich cargo
had been placed with as much order as if it had been carefully stowed
away in a ship's hold.

In the first place, seven thousand arrobas of caoutchouc, each of about
thirty pounds, composed the most precious part of the cargo, for every
pound of it was worth from three to four francs. The jangada also took
fifty hundredweight of sarsaparilla, a smilax which forms an important
branch of foreign trade throughout the Amazon districts, and is getting
rarer and rarer along the banks of the river, so that the natives are
very careful to spare the stems when they gather them. Tonquin
bans, known in Brazil under the name of _"cumarus,"_ and used in
the manufacture of certain essential oils; sassafras, from which is
extracted a precious balsam for wounds; bales of dyeing plants, cases of
several gums, and a quantity of precious woods, completed a well-adapted
cargo for lucrative and easy sale in the provinces of Para.

Some may feel astonished that the number of Indians and negroes embarked
were only sufficient to work the raft, and that a larger number were not
taken in case of an attack by the riverside Indians.

Such would have been useless. The natives of Central America are not
to be feared in the least, and the times are quite changed since it was
necessary to provide against their aggressions. The Indians along the
river belong to peaceable tribes, and the fiercest of them have retired
before