Joam Garral, a prosperous fazenda owner near Iquitos, builds an enormous raft of felled timber to carry his household down the Amazon to Belém. With his wife, children and servants aboard, the jangada drifts past flooded forests and river towns, but a sinister adventurer named Torres has joined the voyage carrying a document in cipher that concerns Garral’s hidden past.
Verne at his most leisurely and inventive, mixing river travelogue, cryptography and a wrongful-conviction mystery. Download the free EPUB.