726 



THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



dancing, kept up hour after hour without in- 

 te'rmis&ion, and, the most important point of 

 all, getting gradually and completely drunk. 

 But he attaches a kind of superstitious sig- 

 nificance to these acts, and thinks that the 

 amusements appended to the Roman Catho- 

 lic holidays, as celebrated by the descendants 

 of the Portuguese, are also an essential part 

 of the religious ceremonies. But in this re- 

 spect the uneducated whites and half-breeds 

 are not a bit more enlightened than the poor 

 dull-souled Indian. All look upon a religious 

 holiday as an amusement, in which the priest 

 takes the part of director or chief actor. 



Almost every unusual event, independent 

 of saints' days, is made the occasion of a 

 holiday by the sociable, easy-going people of 

 the white and mameluco classes ; funerals, 

 christenings, weddings, the arrival of stran- 

 gers, and so forth. The custom of " wak- 

 ing" the dead is also kept up. A few days 

 after I arrived I was awoke in the middle of 

 a dark moist night by Cardozo, to sit up with 

 a neighbor whose wife had just died. I 

 found the body laid out on a table, with cru- 

 cifix and lighted wax caudles at the head, 

 arid the room full of women and giils squat- 

 ted on stools or on their haunches. The men 

 were seated round the open door, smoking, 

 drinking coffee, and telling stories, the be- 

 reaved husband exciting 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 gayly 

 dressed in calicoes and muslins ; the girls 

 wearing jasmines and other natural flowers 

 in the hair, no other head-dress 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 seem very atten- 

 tive, and the responses to the litany of Our 

 Lady, sung by a couple of hundred fresh 

 female voices, ring agreeably through the 

 still village. Toward the end of the festival 

 the fun commences. The managers of the 

 feast keep open houses, and dancing, drum- 

 ming, 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 o-f the year, always struck 

 me as being not very greatly different frcm 

 those seen at an old-fashioned village wake 

 in retired parts of England. Th old folks 

 look on and get very talkative over 



cups ; the children are allowed a little extra,, 

 indulgence in sitting up; the dull, reseiveu? 

 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 gels- 

 quarrelsome, and the amorous unusually ) iv- 

 irig. The Indian, ordinarily so taciturn " limls 

 the use of his tongue, and gives the minrU'^t 

 details of some little dispute which he hail 

 with his master years ago, and which every 

 one else had forgotten ; just aslhave known-;, 

 lumpish laboring men in England do, when 

 half-fuddled. One cannot help reflecting, 

 when witnessing these traits of manners, or> 

 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. lu some 

 of the sports the Portuguese element is visi- 

 ble, in others the Indian, ; but it must be 

 recollected that masquerading, recitative 

 singing, and so forth are common originally 

 to both peoples. A large number of men and 

 boys disguise themselves to represent differ, 

 ent grotesque figures, animals, or pel sous. 

 Two or three dress themselves up as giants, 

 with the help of a tall framework. One en- 

 acts the part of the Caypor, a kind of sylvan 

 deity similar to the Curupira which I have 

 before mentioned. The belief in this being 

 seems to be common to all the tribes of tho 

 Tupi stock. According to the figure they 

 dressed up at Ega, he is a bulky, misshapen 

 monster, with red skin and Jong shaggy reel 

 hair hanging half way down is back. They 

 believe that he has subterranean campos and 

 hunting-grounds in the forest, well stocked 

 with pacas and deer. He is not at all an ob- 

 ject of worship, nor of fear, except to < h 1- 

 dren, being considered merely as a kind i>f 

 hobgoblin. Most of the maskers make them- 

 selves up as animals bulls, deer, magoary, 

 storks, jaguars, and so forth, with the aid of 

 light frameworks, covered with old clotli 

 dyed or painted, and shaped according to the 

 object represented. Some of the imitations- 

 which I saw were capital. One ingenious . 

 fellow arranged an old piece of canvas in the 

 form of a tapir, placed himself under it, and 

 crawled about on aU fours. He constructed 

 an elastic nose to resemble that of the tapir, 

 and made, before the doors of the principal 

 residents, such a good imitation of the beast 

 grazing, that peals of laughter greeted him 

 wherever he went. Another man walked 

 about solitarily, masked as a jabiiu crane (a 

 large animal standing about four feet high), 

 and mimicked the gait and habits of the bird 

 uncommonly well. One year an Indian lad 

 imitated me, to the infinite amusement of the 

 townsfolk. He came the previous day to bor- 

 row of me an old blouse and si raw hat. I 

 felt rather taken in when I saw him, on the 

 night of the performance, ligged out as an., 

 eutomologist 4 willi an. inject net, 



