Indian Festivals. 167 



take the widow to the river and wash her. They have 

 seven semi-religious feasts in a year. To us they appeared 

 to be nothing more than meaningless drunken frolics. 

 Attired in their best, with head-dresses consisting of a cir- 

 clet of short, richly-colored feathers from the breast of the 

 toucan, surmounted with the long tail-feathers of the ma- 

 caw, and with necklaces of beads, seeds, and monkeys' 

 teeth, they keep up a constant monotonous tapping on 

 little drums, and trot around a circle like dogs on a tread- 

 mill, stopping only to drink chicha. This is kept up for 

 three weeks, when they all start off, with wives and chil- 

 dren, for the forest to hunt monkeys for meat. 



Chicha, the favorite drink of all the Andean Indians, is 

 here brewed from yuca, not from corn and barley as in 

 the Quito Valley. So true is it, as Humboldt remarks, that 

 almost every where man finds means of preparing some 

 kind of beverage from the vegetable kingdom. The Chi- 

 lotans, Darwin informs us, make chicha from a species of 

 Bromelia. In every zone, too, we find nations in a low 

 degree of civilization living almost exclusively upon a sin- 

 gle animal or plant. Thus the Laplander has his reindeer, 

 the Esquimaux his seal, the Sandwich Islander his tara- 

 root, the Malay his sago-palm, the Napo Indian his yuca. 



Yuca is the staple food in this region. It is more com- 

 monly roasted, but is sometimes ground into flour. The 

 manufacture of chicha is primitive, and not a little dis- 

 gusting. A "bee," usually old women, sit around a wooden 

 trough ; each one takes a mouthful of yuca root, and, mas- 

 ticating it, throws it into the trough. The mass is then 

 transferred to large earthen jars containing water, and left 

 to ferment. The liquor is slightly acid, but not intoxica- 

 ting unless taken in excess. This is done on feast-da3'S, 

 when the poor Indian keeps his stomach so constantly dis- 

 tended for weeks that the abdominal protrusion is not only 



