s as the bell of the
mission called them to the dilapidated cottage which served them for a
church.

But if existence in the village of Iquitos, as in most of the hamlets
of the Upper Amazon, was almost in a rudimentary stage, it was only
necessary to journey a league further down the river to find on the same
bank a wealthy settlement, with all the elements of comfortable life.

This was the farm of Joam Garral, toward which our two young friends
returned after their meeting with the captain of the woods.

There, on a bend of the stream, at the junction of the River Nanay,
which is here about five hundred feet across, there had been established
for many years this farm, homestead, or, to use the expression of the
country, _"fazenda,"_ then in the height of its prosperity. The Nanay
with its left bank bounded it to the north for about a mile, and for
nearly the same distance to the east it ran along the bank of the larger
river. To the west some small rivulets, tributaries of the Nanay, and
some lagoons of small extent, separated it from the savannah and the
fields devoted to the pasturage of the cattle.

It was here that Joam Garral, in 1826, twenty-six years before the date
when our story opens, was received by the proprietor of the fazenda.

This Portuguese, whose name was Magalhaes, followed the trade of
timber-felling, and his settlement, then recently formed, extended for
about half a mile along the bank of the river.

There, hospitable as he was, like all the Portuguese of the old race,
Magalhaes lived with his daughter Yaquita, who after the death of her
mother had taken charge of his household. Magalhaes was an excellent
worker, inured to fatigue, but lacking education. If he understood the
management of the few slaves whom he owned, and the dozen Indians
whom he hired, he showed himself much less apt in the various external
requirements of his trade. In truth, the establishment at Iquitos was
not prospering, and the affairs of the Portuguese were getting somewhat
embarrassed.

It was under these circumstances that Joam Garral, then twenty-two years
old, found himself one day in the presence of Magalhaes. He had arrived
in the country at the limit both of his strength and his resources.
Magalhaes had found him half-dead with hunger and fatigue in the
neighboring forest. The Portuguese had an excellent heart; he did not
ask the unknown where he came from, but what he wanted. The noble,
high-spirited look