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Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon by Jules Verne
page 99 of 400 (24%)
representatives of religion are not always examples of the virtues,
he stood out as the accomplished type of those great missionaries who
have done so much for civilization in the interior of the most savage
regions of the world.

For fifty years Padre Passanha had lived at Iquitos, in the mission
of which he was the chief. He was loved by all, and worthily so. The
Garral family held him in great esteem; it was he who had married the
daughter of Farmer Magalhaƫs to the clerk who had been received at
the fazenda. He had known the children from birth; he had baptized
them, educated them, and hoped to give each of them the nuptial
blessing.

The age of the padre did not allow of his exercising his important
ministry any longer. The horn of retreat for him had sounded; he was
about to be replaced at Iquitos by a younger missionary, and he was
preparing to return to Para, to end his days in one of those convents
which are reserved for the old servants of God.

What better occasion could offer than that of descending the river
with the family which was as his own? They had proposed it to him,
and he had accepted, and when arrived at Belem he was to marry the
young couple, Minha and Manoel.

But if Padre Passanha during the course of the voyage was to take his
meals with the family, Joam Garral desired to build for him a
dwelling apart, and heaven knows what care Yaquita and her daughter
took to make him comfortable! Assuredly the good old priest had never
been so lodged in his modest parsonage!

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