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(21) La Jangada (Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon, 1881) (2 volumes) 93K words


The 21th Extraordinary Voyage is the first one to take place on a river. The setting is the Amazon, the fabulous fluvial system that is by far the largest in the world by discharge volume of water. This is also the first novel in the series to be fully set in South America (we had explored South America before, albeit further south, with "In Search of the Castaways", but not for the whole novel).


First read or reread?: I had read it as a kid and, even though I liked it, it was not among my favorite Vernes.


What is it about?: A Brazilian man called Joam Garral lives on a thriving plantation with his family, in Peru, by the upper Amazon. When his daughter is set to marry a Brazilian army surgeon named Manuel Valdez, the couple decide to have their wedding in Brazil, in a city called Belém at the mouth of the river at the Atlantic Ocean, so that Manuel's invalid mother can attend. Joam seems strangely reluctant to leave his plantation and set foot in Brazil, but eventually he decides to do so and confront the dark secrets in his past. The Garral family and their workers build a giant jangada (a Brazilian timber raft) to ride down the Amazon River towards their destination, carrying a large amount of trade goods from the plantation.


Before introducing the heroes, the novel starts with a couple of chapters from the point of view of the villain, which was a nice way to arouse our interest, since the first half of the story is kind of slow.

The building of the raft (so large that it's the size of a small village) and the first part of the journey are described in detail, and it's relatively uneventful in terms of adventure. The course of the river is known and, although there are certainly native tribes with little contact with western civilization living by the shores, at this point in history they are mostly content to be left alone and not be crushed by civilization, so the characters only see them from a distance. There are wild animals, of course, although there is not as much hunting as in other Verne novels.

Nevertheless, I found the details of the trip interesting. I have come to think of Verne's Extraordinary Voyages as the National Geographic documentaries of the time (the actual National Geographic Society would be founded a few years after the publication of this novel), combined with adventure stories. This first part of the novel, which seemed too slow when I read it as a kid, was now more interesting for me because it felt like a travelogue about the 19th century Amazon River. I enjoyed following the characters' progress in the maps included with the novel. Verne, of course, had not made these voyages himself, so his descriptions are not first-hand, but his documentation were the actual travelogues available at the time.

The second half of the novel is more fast-paced, becoming a gripping mystery thriller, with blackmail, old crimes, fugitives, duels and a race against time. Like in "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "In Search of the Castaways", cryptography plays a role, since deciphering a coded message becomes a central plot element. Here Verne explicitly pays homage to Edgar Allan Poe's story The Gold-Bug: one of the characters, Judge Jarriquez, is a fan of that story and tries to use a similar kind of analysis to decipher the message.

The story is basically an adventure/thriller/travelogue, again with no science fiction elements. In terms of technology, the most we find here is the use of a diving suit which must have been state-of-the-art at the time.


Enjoyment factor: I enjoyed it more than I remember enjoying it on my previous read. In his best novels, Verne finds a nice balance between adventure and his didactic/geographic exploration elements. The pace of the first half of this story is not his best, but nevertheless the adventure is quite gripping when it gets started.


Next up: Godfrey Morgan, aka School for Crusoes