372 



THE UPPER AMAZONS 



of hobgoblin. Most of the masquers make themselves up 

 as animals — bulls, deer, magoary storks, jaguars, and so 

 forth, with the aid of light frameworks covered with old 

 cloth 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 all 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 jabiru 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 borrow of me an old blouse and straw 

 hat. I felt rather taken in when I saw him, on the night 

 of the performance, rigged out as an entomologist, with 

 an insect net, hunting bag, and pincushion. To make 

 the imitation complete, he had borrowed the frame of an 

 old pair of spectacles, and went about with it straddled 

 over his nose. The jaguar now and then made a raid 

 amongst the crowd of boys who were dressed as deer, 

 goats and so forth. The masquers kept generally to- 

 gether, moving from house to house, and the performances 

 were directed by an old musician, who sang the orders 

 and explained to the spectators what was going forward 

 in a kind of recitative, accompanying himself on a wire 

 guitar. The mixture of Portuguese and Indian customs 

 is partly owing to the European immigrants in these parts 

 having been uneducated men, who, instead of introducing 

 European civilization, have descended almost to the level 

 of the Indians, and adopted some of their practices. The 

 performances take place in the evening, and occupy five 

 or six hours ; bonfires are lighted along the grassy streets, 

 and the families of the better class are seated at their 

 doors, enjoying the wild but good-humoured fun. 



A purely Indian festival is celebrated the first week in 

 February, which is called the Feast of Fruits : several 

 kinds of wild fruit becoming ripe at that time, more par- 

 ticularly the Umari and the Wishi two sorts which are a 

 favourite food of the people of this province, although of 

 a bitter taste and unpalatable to Europeans. It takes 



