At the end of a few days children, relations, and servants, were all dead!"
"What an unfortunate woman!" said Lina.
"Madame des Odonais alone remained," continued Manoel. "There she was, at a thousand leagues from the ocean which she was trying to reach! It was no longer a mother who continued her journey toward the river--the mother had lost her shildren; she had buried them with her own hands! It was a wife who wished to see her husband once again! She traveled night and day, and at length regained the Bobonasa. She was there received by some kind-hearted Indians, who took her to the missions, where the escort was waiting. But she arrived alone, and behind her the stages of the route were marked with graves! Madame des Odonais reached Loreto, where we were a few days back. From this Peruvian village she descended the Amazon, as we are doing at this moment, and at length she rejoined her husband after a separation of nineteen years."
"Poor lady!" said Minha.
"Above all, poor mother!" answered Yaquita.
At this moment Araujo, the pilot, came aft and said:
"Joam Garral, we are off the Ronde Island. We are passing the frontier!"
"The frontier!" replied Joam.
And rising, he went to the side of the jangada, and looked long and earnestly at the Ronde Island, with the waves breaking up against it. Then his hand sought his forehead, as if to rid himself of some remembrance.
"The frontier!" murmured he, bowing his head by an involuntary movement.
But an instant after his head was raised, and his expression was that of a man resolved to do his duty to the last.
CHAPTER XII
FRAGOSO AT WORK
"BRAZA" (burning embers) is a word found in the Spanish language as far back as the twelfth century. It has been used to make the word "brazil," as descriptive of certain woods which yield a reddish dye. From this has come the name "Brazil," given to that vast district of South America which is crossed by the equator, and in which these products are so frequently met with. In very early days these woods were the object of considerable trade. Although correctly called _"ibirapitunga,"_ from the place of production, the name of _"brazil"_ stuck to them, and it has become that of the country, which seems like an immense heap of embers lighted by the rays of the tropical sun.
Brazil was from the first occupied by the Portuguese. About the commencement of the sixteenth century, Alvarez Cabral, the pilot, took possession of it, and although France and Holland partially established themselves there, it has remained Portuguese, and possesses all the qualities which distinguish that gallant little nation. It is to-day the largest state of South America, and has at its head the intelligent artist-king Dom Pedro.
"What is your privilege in the tribe?" asked Montaigne of an Indian whom he met at Havre.
"The privilege of marching first to battle!" innocently answered the Indian.
War, we know, was for a long time the surest and most rapid vehicle of civilization. The Brazilians did what this Indian did: they fought, they defended their conquests, they enlarged them, and we see them marching in the first rank of the civilizing advance.
It was in 1824, sixteen years after the foundation of the Portugo-Brazilian Empire, that Brazil proclaimed its independence by the voice of Don Juan, whom the French armies had chased from Portugal.
It remained only to define the frontier between the new empire and that of its neighbor, Peru. This was no easy matter.
If Brazil wished to extend to the Rio Napo in the west, Peru attempted to reach eight degrees further, as far as the Lake of Ega.
But in the meantime Brazil had to interfere to hinder the kidnaping of the Indians from the Amazon, a practice which was engaged in much to the profit of the Hispano-Brazilian missions. There was no better method of checking this trade than that of fortifying the Island of the Ronde, a little above Tabatinga, and there establishing a post.
This afforded the solution, and from that time the frontier of the two countries passed through the middle of this island.