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For fifty years Padre Passanha had lived at Iquitos, in the mission of which he was the chief. He was loved by all, and worthily so. The Garral family held him in great esteem; it was he who had married the daughter of Farmer Magalhaes to the clerk who had been received at the fazenda.

Returning to the house, we sat down, a party of thirty, to an elaborate breakfast, the table being covered with all sorts of Brazilian delicacies, after which several complimentary speeches were made, and we all started off to walk round the fazenda. Our first visit was to the little schoolchildren, thirty-four in number, who sang very nicely.

Would her mind and feelings have been more delicately formed away from her home? If it was ordained that she was not to succeed her mother in the management of the fazenda, she was equal to any other position to which she might be called. With Benito it was another thing.

I want to know how you recognized him, why you were prowling about our fazenda in the forest of Iquitos, and why you were waiting for us at Tabatinga." "Well! it seems to me nothing could be clearer!" answered Torres, with a grin. "I was waiting to get a passage on the jangada, and I went on board with the intention of making him a very simple proposition which possibly he was wrong in rejecting."

I have used the freedom to say thus much to your Excellency as my friend because I am well aware that the old cry of the Portuguese faction in Rio will be set up against me the moment they hear that I have caused the Junta of Fazenda of this province to pay a part of the amount of the money and bills taken on the surrender of the Portuguese authorities at Maranham.

There were Yaquita, her daughter, Manoel Valdez, Padre Passanha, Benito, Lina, Fragoso, Cybele, and some of the servants, Indian or negro, of the fazenda. Fragoso could not keep himself still; he went and he came, he ran down the bank and ran up the plateau, he noted the points of the river gauge, and shouted "Hurrah!" as the water crept up. "It will swim, it will swim!" he shouted.

The longing to see something of that beautiful country of which Benito was often talking was not wanting, nevertheless. Two or three times Yaquita had sounded her husband in the matter. But she had noticed that the thought of leaving the fazenda, if only for a few weeks, brought an increase of sadness to his face.

It was a great treat for Benito, after quite a year passed at Belem, so far from the fazenda, to return with his young friend to his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to find himself, enthusiastic hunter as he was, in the midst of these superb forests of the Upper Amazon, some of whose secrets remained after so many centuries still unsolved by man.

Neither by horse not pirogue could he be got out of danger quickly enough, and the fazenda was no longer a safe retreat. He would not return to it as the fazender, Joam Garral, but as the convict, Joam Dacosta, continually in fear of his extradition. He could never dream of resuming his former life.

On the 8th of February, the Junta of Fazenda sent me a verbal communication to the effect that they would give the sum agreed upon in commutation of prize money due to the captors in five bills, payable in five months.