veritable floating village--to
wait the time when the waters of the river, swollen by the floods, would
raise it and carry it for hundreds of leagues to the Atlantic coast.

The whole time the work was going on Joam Garral had been engaged in
superintending it. From the clearing to the bank of the fazenda he had
formed a large mound on which the portions of the raft were disposed,
and to this matter he had attended entirely himself.

Yaquita was occupied with Cybele with the preparations for the
departure, though the old negress could not be made to understand why
they wanted to go or what they hoped to see.

"But you will see things that you never saw before," Yaquita kept saying
to her.

"Will they be better than what I see now?" was Cybele's invariable
reply.

Minha and her favorite for their part took care of what more
particularly concerned them. They were not preparing for a simple
voyage; for them it was a permanent departure, and there were a thousand
details to look after for settling in the other country in which the
young mulatto was to live with the mistress to whom she was so devotedly
attached. Minha was a trifle sorrowful, but the joyous Lina was quite
unaffected at leaving Iquitos. Minha Valdez would be the same to her as
Minha Garral, and to check her spirits she would have to be separated
from her mistress, and that was never thought of.

Benito had actively assisted his father in the work, which was on the
point of completion. He commenced his apprenticeship to the trade of a
fazender, which would probably one day become his own, as he was about
to do that of a merchant on their descent of the river.

As for Manoel, he divided his time between the house, where Yaquita and
her daughter were as busy as possible, and the clearing, to which Benito
fetched him rather oftener than he thought convenient, and on the whole
the division was very unequal, as may well be imagined.

CHAPTER VII. FOLLOWING A LIANA

IT WAS a Sunday, the 26th of May, and the young people had made up
their minds to take a holiday. The weather was splendid, the heat being
tempered by the refreshing breezes which blew from off the Cordilleras,
and everything invited them out for an excursion into the country.

Benito and Manoel had offered to accompany Minha through the thick woods
which bordered the right bank of the Amazon opposite the fazenda.

It was, in a manner, a farewell visit to the charming environs of
Iqui