What better occasion could offer than that of descending the river
with the family which was as his own? They had proposed it to him,
and he had accepted, and when arrived at Belem he was to marry the
young couple, Minha and Manoel.
But if Padre Passanha during the course of the voyage was to take his
meals with the family, Joam Garral desired to build for him a
dwelling apart, and heaven knows what care Yaquita and her daughter
took to make him comfortable! Assuredly the good old priest had never
been so lodged in his modest parsonage!
The parsonage was not enough for Padre Passanha; he ought to have a
chapel.
The chapel then was built in the center of the jangada, and a little
bell surmounted it.
It was small enough, undoubtedly, and it could not hold the whole of
the crew, but it was richly decorated, and if Joam Garral found his
own house on the raft, Padre Passanha had no cause to regret the
poverty-stricken church of Iquitos.
Such was the wonderful structure which was going down the Amazon. It
was then on the bank waiting till the flood came to carry it away.
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