Cuap. X. FESTIVAL OF SANTA THERESA. 279 
dark moist night by Cardozo, to sit up with a neighbour whose wife 
had just died. I found the body laid out on a table, with crucifix and 
lighted wax candles at the head, and the room full of women and girls 
squatted on stools or on their haunches. The men were seated round 
the open door, smoking, drinking coffee, and telling stories ; the be- 
reaved husband exerting himself much to keep the people merry during 
the remainder of the night. The Ega people seem to like an excuse 
for turning night into day ; it is so cool and pleasant, and they can sit 
about during these hours in the open air, clad as usual in simple shirt 
and trousers, without streaming with perspiration. 
The patron saint is Santa Theresa ; the festival at whose anniversary 
lasts, like most of the others, ten days. It begins very quietly with 
evening litanies sung in the church, which are attended by the greater 
part of the population, all clean and gaily dressed in calicoes and 
muslins ; the girls wearing jasmines and other natural flowers in their 
hair, no other headdress being worn by females of any class. The 
evenings pass pleasantly ; the church is lighted up with wax candles, 
and illuminated on the outside by a great number of little oil lamps— 
rude clay cups, or halves of the thick rind of the bitter orange, which 
are fixed all over the front. The congregation seems very attentive, 
and the responses to the litany of Our Lady, sung by a couple of 
hundred fresh female voices, ring agreeably through the still village. 
Towards the end of the festival the fun commences. The managers of 
the feast keep open houses, and dancing, drumming, tinkling of wire 
guitars, and unbridled drinking by both sexes, old and young, are kept 
up for a couple of days and a night with little intermission. The ways 
of the people at these merry-makings, of which there are many in the 
course of the year, always struck me as being not greatly different from 
those seen at an old-fashioned village wake in retired parts of England. 
The old folks look on and get very talkative over their cups; the 
children are allowed a little extra indulgence in sitting up; the dull, 
reserved fellows become loquacious, shake one another by the hand 
or slap each other on the back, discovering, all at once, what capital 
friends they are. The cantankerous individual gets quarrelsome, and 
the amorous unusually loving. The Indian, ordinarily so taciturn, finds 
the use of his tongue, and gives the minutest details of some little 
dispute which he had with his master years ago, and which every one 
else had forgotten ; just as I have known lumpish labouring men in 
England do, when half-fuddled. One cannot help reflecting, when 
witnessing these traits of manners, on the similarity of human nature 
everywhere, when classes are compared whose state of culture and 
conditions of life are pretty nearly the same. 
The Indians play a conspicuous part in the amusements at St. John’s 
eve, and at one or two other holidays which happen about that time of 
the year—the end of June. In some of the sports the Portuguese 
element is visible, in others the Indian ; but it must be recollected that 
masquerading, recitative singing, and so forth, are common origin- 
ally to both peoples. A large number of men and boys disguise them- 
selves to represent different grotesque figures, animals or persons. 
Two or three dress themselves up as giants, with the help of a tall 
