CHap: X. SEASONS AT EGA. 287 
as large as a full-sized peach, and when boiled almost as mealy as a 
potato; whilst at Pard it is no bigger than a walnut, and the pulp is 
fibrous. Bunches of sterile or seedless fruits sometimes occur in both 
districts. It is one of the principal articles of food at Ega when in 
season, and is boiled and 
eaten with treacle or salt. 
A dozen of the seedless 
fruits made a good nourish- 
ing meal for a grown-up 
person. It is the general 
belief that there is more 
nutriment in Pupunha than 
in fish or Vacca marina. 
The seasons in the Upper Amazons region offer 
some points of difference from those of the lower 
river and the district of Para, which two sections of 
the country we have already seen also differ con- 
siderably. The year at Ega is divided according 
to the rises and falls of the river, with which 
coincide the wet and dry periods. All the principal 
transactions of life of the inhabitants are regulated 
by these yearly recurring phenomena. ‘The pecu- 
liarity of this upper region consists in there being 
two rises and two falls within the year. The 
great annual rise commences about the end of 
February, and continues to the middle of June, 
during which the rivers and lakes, confined dur- 
ing the dry periods to their ordinary beds, gradually 
swell, and overflow all the lower lands. The 
inundation progresses gently, inch by inch, and 
is felt everywhere, even in the interior of the 
forests, of the higher lands, miles away from the 
river ; as these are traversed by numerous gullies, 
forming, in the fine season, dry spacious dells, 
which become gradually transformed by the pres- 
sure of the flood into broad creeks, navigable by 
small boats, under the shade of trees. All the 
countless swarms of turtle of various species then 
leave the main river for the inland pools: sand- 
banks go under water, and the flocks of wading 







birds then migrate northerly to the upper waters of # metal 
the tributaries which flow from that direction, or SN wy! 
to the Orinoco; which streams during the wet Pupunha Palm. 
period of the Amazons are enjoying the cloudless 
skies of their dry season. ‘The families of fishermen who have been 
employed, during the previous four or five months, in harpooning and 
salting piraruct and shooting turtle in the great lakes, now return to the 
towns and villages ; their temporarily constructed fishing establishments 
becoming gradually submerged, with the sand islets or beaches on which 
they were situated. This is the season, however, in which the Brazil 
