Cap. X. A) SAIN EAST OF  FROUITS. 281 
previous night were apparent in the litter and confusion all around, and 
in the number of drunken men lying asleep under the trees and sheds. 
The women had manufactured a great quantity of spirits in rude clay 
stills, from mandioca, bananas, and pine-apples. _ I doubt whether there 
was ever much symbolic meaning attached by the aborigines to festivals 
of this kind. The harvest-time of the Umari and Wishi is one of their 
seasons of abundance, and they naturally made it the occasion of one 
of their mad, drunken holidays. They learnt the art of distilling spirits 
from the early Portuguese; it is only, however, one or two of the 
superior tribes, such as the Juris and Passés, who practise it. The 
Indians of the Upper Amazons, like those of the Lower river, mostly use 
fermented drinks (called here Caysima), made from mandioca cakes 
and different kinds of fruit. 
I did not see much fruit about. A few old women in one of the 
sheds were preparing and cooking porridge of bananas in large earthen- 
ware kettles. It was now near midday, the time when a little rest is 
taken before resuming the orgy in the evening; but a small party of 
young men and women were keeping up the dance to the accompani- 
ment of drums made of hollow logs and beaten with the hands. The 
men formed a curved line on the outside, and the women a similar line 
on the inside facing their partners. ‘Each man had in his right hand a 
long reed representing a javelin, and rested his left on the shoulders of 
his neighbour. ‘They all moved, first to the right and then to the left, 
with a slow step, singing a drawling monotonous verse, in a language which 
I did not understand. The same figure was repeated in the dreariest 
possible way for at least half an hour, and in fact constituted the whole 
of the dance. The assembled crowd included individuals of most of 
the tribes living in the region around Ega; but the majority. were 
Miranhas and Juris. They had no common chief, an active, middle- 
aged Juri, named Alexandro, in the employ of Senhor Chrysostomo of 
Ega, seeming to have the principal management. This festival of fruits 
was the only occasion in which the Indians of the neighbourhood 
assembled together or exhibited any traces of joint action. It declined 
in importance every year, and will no doubt soon be discontinued 
altogether. 
The trade of Ega, like that of all places on the Upper Amazons, consists 
in the collecting of the produce of the forests and waters, and exchang- 
ing it for European and North American goods. About a dozen large 
vessels, schooners and cubertas, owned by the merchants of the place, are 
employed in the traffic. Only one voyage a year is made to Para, which 
occupies from four to five months, and is arranged so that the vessels 
shall return before the height of the dry season, when they are sent 
with assortments of goods—cloth, hardware, salt, and a few luxuries, 
such as biscuits, wine, etc., to the fishing stations, to buy up produce for 
the next trip to the capital. Although large profits are apparently made 
both ways, the retail prices of European wares being from 4o to 80 per 
cent. higher, and the net prices of produce to the same degree lower, 
than those of Para, the traders do not get rich very rapidly. An old 
Portuguese, who had traded with success at Ega for thirty years, was 
reputed rich when he died: his savings then amounting to nine contos 
