Manchurian Books

This sketch of the Garral family would not be complete, and would
lack some of its features, were we not to mention the numerous staff
of the fazenda.
In the first place, then, it behooves us to name an old negress, of
some sixty years, called Cybele, free through the will of her master,
a slave through her affection for him and his, and who had been the
nurse of Yaquita. She was one of the family. She thee-ed and thou-ed
both daughter and mother. The whole of this good creature's life was
passed in these fields, in the middle of these forests, on that bank
of the river which bounded the horizon of the farm. Coming as a child
to Iquitos in the slave-trading times, she had never quitted the
village; she was married there, and early a widow, had lost her only
son, and remained in the service of Magalha?s. Of the Amazon she knew
no more than what flowed before her eyes.
With her, and more specially attached to the service of Minha, was a
pretty, laughing mulatto, of the same age as her mistress, to whom
she was completely devoted.


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