Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon is a novel by Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

, published in 1881.

Unlike many of his other novels, this story does not have any science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 elements. It is an adventure novel

Adventure novel

The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...

.

This novel involves how Joam Garral, a ranch

Ranch

A ranch is an area of landscape, including various structures, given primarily to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool. The word most often applies to livestock-raising operations in the western United States and Canada, though...

 owner who lives near the Peruvian-Brazilian border on the Amazon River

Amazon River

The Amazon of South America is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by waterflow with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers combined...

, is forced to travel down-stream when his past catches up with him. Most of the novel is situated on a large jangada (a Brazilian timber raft

Timber rafting

Timber rafting is a log transportation method in which logs are tied together into rafts and drifted or pulled across a water body or down a flatter river. It is arguably the second cheapest method of transportation of timber, next after log driving...

) that is used by Garral and his family to float to Belém

Belém

Belém is a Brazilian city, the capital and largest city of state of Pará, in the country's north region. It is the entrance gate to the Amazon with a busy port, airport and bus/coach station...

at the river's mouth. Many aspects of the raft, scenery, and journey are described in detail.

Plot summary

Joam Garral grants his daughter's wish to travel to Belém where she wants to marry Manuel Valdez in the presence of Manuel's invalid mother. The Garrals travel down the Amazon River using a giant timber raft. At Belém, Joam plans to restore his good name, as he is still wanted in Brazil for a crime he did not perpetrate. A scoundrel named Torres offers Joam absolute proof of Joam's innocence but the price that Torres wants for this information is to marry Joam's daughter, which is inconceivable to Joam. The proof lies in an encrypted letter that will exonerate Garral. When Torres is killed, the Garral family must race to decode the letter before Joam is executed.