SEASONS 



381 



in taste may be compared to a mixture of chestnuts and 

 cheese. Vultures devour it eagerly, and come in quarrel- 

 some flocks to the trees when it is ripe. Dogs will also 

 eat it : I do not recollect seeing cats do the same, although 

 they go voluntarily to the woods to eat Tucuma, another 

 kind of palm fruit. The tree, as it grows in clusters be- 

 side the palm-thatched huts, is a noble ornament, being, 

 when full grown, from fifty to sixty feet in height and often 

 as straight as a scaffold-pole. A bunch of fruit when ripe 

 is a load for a strong man, and each tree bears several of 

 them. The Pupunha grows wild nowhere on the Amazons. 

 It is one of those few vegetable productions (including 

 three kinds of mandioca and the American species of 

 Banana) which the Indians have cultivated from time 

 immemorial, and brought with them in their original 

 migration to Brazil. It is only, however, the more ad- 

 vanced tribes who have kept up the cultivation. The 

 superiority of the fruit on the Solimoens to that grown 

 on the Lower Amazons and in the neighbourhood of Para 

 is very striking. At Ega it is generally as large as a full- 

 sized peach, and when boiled almost as mealy as a potato ; 

 whilst at Para 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 makes 

 a good nourishing 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 considerably. 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 regu- 

 lated by these yearly recurring phenomena. The peculi- 

 arity of this upper region consists in there being two rises 

 and two falls within the year. The great annual rise com- 

 mences about the end of February, and continues to 

 the middle of June, during which the rivers and lakes, 

 confined during the dry periods to their ordinary 

 beds, gradually swell and overflow all the lower lands. 



