“Ho, ho!” laughed Jule, “there are no twenty-dollar gold pieces down in the mines of Peru. All that gold he brought out saw the little old U. S. long before it saw Peru!”
The boys held many such conversations as this as they proceeded up the river of their dreams. They never forgot those days and nights on the Amazon, the splendid panorama of forest and stream ever before their eyes, the perfect freedom from the restraints of city life.
They were nearly under the equator, it is true, and the heat was almost unbearable at times. The insects were numerous and annoying. But, after all, they were out in the open, and they were free! The average lad of seventeen will endure many privations and suffer many physical penalties just to be free—to be brother for a time to the woods, the blue sky, and the running water!
Many an evening, in spite of the heat, they built great cooking fires in some alluring cove and made a supper of fish, turtle eggs dug out of the sand, and the flesh of a fowl resembling wild turkey. The boy dearly loves to cook by a campfire! Often they got into territory which the ants seemed to claim as their own, and now and then an anaconda or an alligator supplied a mark for their revolvers.
Those were entrancing moonlit nights. Often natives came from small villages and visited with them. Traders are numerous along the Amazon, and in nearly every settlement of natives there are some who speak English and Spanish. As a rule the Indians were friendly and willing to assist in the capture of game, but now and then the boys were glad to get away from the vicinity of a town or a plantation because of the vicious nature of the natives.
The owners of the plantations they visited were usually Spanish, or of Spanish descent. Their workmen were invariably natives. There are more villages and cities on the banks of the upper Amazon than the maps show, and the boys made a point of stopping at most of them. In fact, Frank seemed determined to hold a conversation with someone in every settlement they came to. Sometimes he would go ashore alone in the row-boat and remain for a long time in conference with a planter or one employed thereabouts.
“He’s asking questions about Cloud island!” Jule explained, whenever this strange habit of the boy’s was referred to.
However, the boys liked best to get away from all civilization and tie up at night in a little creek or bay, or in a channel forming one side of an island.
Here they caught fish, fought ants, captured opossums, and beat the thickets for monkeys and snakes.
The opossums of Brazil are not much larger than a good-sized rat, but they are very good eating. Fish are plentiful, and there is plenty of small game in the forests, so the boys had lots of fresh food to eat. In that hot climate, however, it was necessary to procure fresh game every day, as putrefaction soon sets in. Fish taken from the river soon becomes offensive unless cut into thin strips and dried in the sunshine.