Chapter Fifty Two.
The Massaranduba.
They advanced at the rate of about a mile an hour. Could they have kept on steadily, this would have given them ten or twelve miles a day, and two or three days might have brought them to the other side of the lagoon. It was necessary, however, that they should stop at intervals to obtain rest; and their progress was further impeded by the piosoca plants,—the huge water-lilies already described,—whose broad, circular leaves, lying along the surface like gigantic frying-pans, came directly in their course. Here and there they had to traverse a tract of these lilies several acres in extent, where the rims of the rounded leaves almost touched each other; and the thick succulent stalks formed a tangle underneath, through which it was very difficult for a swimmer to make way. More than once they were compelled to go around these watery gardens for a distance of many hundreds of yards, but thus shortening the journey made in the right direction.
On account of such impediments they had not gone more than three miles from their point of starting, when the Mundurucú recommended a halt for the night, although it could not have been later than six o’clock, as could be told by the sun, still high up in the heavens.
“I am hungry, patron,” said the Indian at last; “so are you all. We must have some supper, else how can we go on?”
“Supper!” echoed Trevannion. “Yes, sure enough, we are hungry. I knew that an hour ago. But upon what do you propose to sup? I see nothing but trees with plenty of leaves, but no fruit. We cannot live upon leaves like the sloth. We must be starving before we take to that.”
“We shall sup upon milk, master, if you don’t object to our making a camping-place close by.”
“Milk!” exclaimed Tom. “What div yez say, Misther Munday? Div yez mane milk? Och! don’t be after temptin’ wan’s stomach with a dilicacy that can’t be obtained in this land av wather! Shure now we’re not only a hundred modes from the tail av a cow, but a thousand, may be, from that same.”
“You may be wrong there,” interrupted the Paraense. “There are cows in the Gapo, as well as upon land. You have seen them yourself as we came down the river?”
“Troth, yis,—if yez mane the fish-cow,” (the Irishman alluded to the Vaca marina, or manatee,—the peixe-boi or fish-cow of the Portuguese, several species of which inhabit the Amazon waters). “But shure the great brute could not be milked, if we did cotch wan av them; an’ if we did we should not take the throuble, when by sthrippin’ the skin av her carcass we’d get somethin’ far betther for our suppers, in the shape av a fat steak.”
“Yonder is what the Mundurucú means!” said the guide. “Yonder stands the cow that can supply us with milk for our supper,—ay, and with bread too to go along with it; don’t you see the Massaranduba?”
At first they could see nothing that particularly claimed attention. But by following the instructions of the guide, and raising their heads a little, they at length caught sight of a tree, standing at some distance from the forest edge, and so far overtopping the others as to appear like a giant among pygmies. It was in reality a vegetable giant,—the great massaranduba of the Amazon,—one of the most remarkable trees to be found even in a forest where more strange species abound than in any other part of the world. To Tom and some others of the party the words of the Mundurucú were still a mystery. How was a tree to supply them with a supper of bread and milk?
Trevannion and Richard required no further explanation. The former had heard of this singular tree; the latter had seen it,—nay, more, had drank of its milk, and eaten of its fruit. It was with great joy the young Paraense now looked upon its soaring leafy top, as it not only reminded him of a spectacle he had often observed in the woods skirting the suburbs of his native city, but promised, as the tapuyo had declared, to relieve the pangs of hunger, that had become agonisingly keen.