Among
those who hurried on board one of the first pirogues had brought
Madame Valdez. Manoel's mother was at last able to clasp to her arms
the daughter whom her son had chosen. If the good lady had not been
able to come to Iquitos, was it not as though a portion of the
fazenda, with her new family, had come down the Amazon to her?
Before evening the pilot Araujo had securely moored the raft at the
entrance of a creek behind the arsenal. That was to be its last
resting-place, its last halt, after its voyage of eight hundred
leagues on the great Brazilian artery. There the huts of the Indians,
the cottage of the negroes, the store-rooms which held the valuable
cargo, would be gradually demolished; there the principal dwelling,
nestled beneath its verdant tapestry of flowers and foliage, and the
little chapel whose humble bell was then replying to the sounding
clangor from the steeples of Belem, would each in its turn disappear.
But, ere this was done, a ceremony had to take place on the
jangada--the marriage of Manoel and Minha, the marriage of Lina and
Fragoso.
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