Chap. III. RUSTIC FESTIVALS. 203 



church, which are attended* by the greater part of the 

 population, all clean and gaily dressed in calicos and 

 muslins ; the girls wearing jasmines and other natural 

 flowers in their 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 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 com- 

 mences. 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 inter- 

 mission. 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 be- 

 come 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 dis- 

 pute which he had with his master years ago, and which 



