20^ 
THE UPPER AMAZONS. 
Chap. III. 
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 
particularly the Umari and the Wishi, two sorts which 
are a favourite food of the people of this pi evince, 
although of a bitter taste and unpalatable to Europeans. 
It takes place at the houses of a few families of the 
Juri tribe, hidden in the depths of the forest on the 
banks of a creek about three miles from Ega. I saw a 
little of it one year, when hunting in the neighbourhood 
with an Indian attendant. There were about 150 people 
assembled, nearly all red-skins, and signs of the orgy 
having been very rampant the previous night were appa- 
rent in the litter and confusion all around, and in the 
number of drunken men lying asleep under the trees and 
sheds. The women had manufactured a great quantity of 
spirits in rude clay stills, from mandioca, bananas, and 
pine-apples. I doubt whether there was ever much 
symbolic meaning attached by the aborigines to festivals 
of this kind. The harvest-time of the Umiri and Wishi 
is one of their seasons of abundance, and they naturally 
made it the occasion of one of their mad, drunken 
holidays. They learnt the art of distilling spirits from 
the early Portuguese ; it is only, however, one or two of 
the superior tribes, such as the Juris and Passes, who 
