390 
EXCUKSIONS BEYOND EGA. Chap. YI. 
was placed below the altar, which was lighted up with 
rows of wax candles, very lean ones, but the best the poor 
people could afford. All the villagers assembled soon 
afterwards, dressed in their best, the women with flowers 
in their hair, and a few simple hymns, totally irrelevant 
to the occasion, but probably the only ones known by 
them, were sung kneeling ; an old half-caste, with black- 
spotted face, leading off the tunes. This finished, the 
congregation rose, and then marched in single file up 
one side of the church and down the other, singing to- 
gether a very pretty marching chorus, and each one, 
on reaching the little image, stooping to kiss the end 
of a ribbon which was tied round its waist. Consider- 
ing that the ceremony was got up of their own free- 
will, and at considerable expense, I thought it spoke 
well for the good intentions and simplicity of heart of 
these poor, neglected villagers. 
I left Fonte Boa, for Ega, on the 25th of January, 
making the passage by steamer, down the middle of the 
current, in sixteen hours. The sight of the clean and 
neat little town, with its open spaces, close-cropped 
grass, broad lake, and white sandy shores, had a most 
exhilarating effect, after my trip into the wilder parts 
of the country. The district between Ega and Loreto, 
the first Peruvian village on the river, is, indeed, the 
most remote, thinly-peopled, and barbarous of the 
whole line of the Amazons, from ocean to ocean. Be- 
yond Loreto, signs of civilisation, from the side of the 
Pacific, begin to be numerous, and, from Ega down- 
wards, the improvement is felt from the side of the 
Atlantic, 
