the advancing civilization, and drawn further and further away
from the river and its tributaries. Negro deserters, escaped from the
penal colonies of Brazil, England, Holland, or France, are alone to be
feared. But there are only a small number of these fugitives, they
only move in isolated groups across the savannahs or the woods, and the
jangada was, in a measure, secured from any attack on the parts of the
backwoodsmen.

On the other hand, there were a number of settlements on the
river--towns, villages, and missions. The immense stream no longer
traverses a desert, but a basin which is being colonized day by day.
Danger was not taken into consideration. There were no precautions
against attacks.

To conclude our description of the jangada, we have only to speak of
one or two erections of different kinds which gave it a very picturesque
aspect.

In the bow was the cabin of the pilot--we say in the bow, and not at the
stern, where the helmsman is generally found. In navigating under such
circumstances a rudder is of no use. Long oars have no effect on a raft
of such dimensions, even when worked with a hundred sturdy arms. It was
from the sides, by means of long boathooks or props thrust against the
bed of the stream, that the jangada was kept in the current, and had
its direction altered when going astray. By this means they could range
alongside either bank, if they wished for any reason to come to a halt.
Three or four ubas, and two pirogues, with the necessary rigging, were
carried on board, and afforded easy communications with the banks. The
pilot had to look after the channels of the river, the deviations of the
current, the eddies which it was necessary to avoid, the creeks or bays
which afforded favorable anchorage, and to do this he had to be in the
bow.

If the pilot was the material director of this immense machine--for can
we not justly call it so?--another personage was its spiritual director;
this was Padre Passanha, who had charge of the mission at Iquitos.

A religious family, like that of Joam Garral's, had availed themselves
enthusiastically of this occasion of taking him with them.

Padre Passanha, then aged seventy, was a man of great worth, full of
evangelical fervor, charitable and good, and in countries where the
representatives of religion are not always examples of the virtues, he
stood out as the accomplished type of those great missionaries who have
done so much for civilization in t