404 
EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA. Chap. YI. 
standings. It is vain to try to get information out of a 
Tucuna on this subject ; they affect great mystery when 
the name is mentioned, and give very confused answers 
to questions : it was clear, however, that the idea of 
a spirit as a beneficent God or Creator had not entered 
the minds of these Indians. There is great similarity 
in all their ceremonies and mummeries, whether the 
object is a wedding, the celebration of the feast of 
fruits, the plucking of the hair from the heads of their 
children, or a holiday got up simply out of a love of 
dissipation. Some of the tribe on these occasions deck 
themselves with the bright-coloured feathers of parrots 
and macaws. The chief wears a head-dress or cap 
made by fixing the breast-feathers of the Toucan on a 
web of Bromelia twine, with erect tail plumes of 
macaws rising from the crown. The cinctures of the 
arms and legs are also then ornamented with bunches 
of feathers. Others wear masked dresses : these are 
long cloaks reaching below the knee and made of the 
thick whitish-coloured inner bark of a tree, the fibres 
of which are interlaced in so regular a manner, that 
the material looks like artificial cloth. The cloak covers 
the head ; two holes are cut out for the eyes, a large 
round piece of the cloth stretched on a rim of flexible 
wood is stitched on each side to represent ears, and 
the features are painted in exaggerated style with 
yellow, red, and black streaks. The dresses are sewn 
into the proper shapes with thread made of the inner 
bark of the Uaissima tree. Sometimes grotesque head- 
dresses, representing monkeys' busts or heads of other 
animals, made by stretching cloth or skin over a basket- 
