Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/217

church, which are attended by the greater part of the population, all clean and gaily dressed in calicos and muslins; the girls wearing jasmines and other natural flowers in their hair, no other head-dress being worn by females of any class. The evenings pass pleasantly; the church is lighted up with wax candles, and illuminated on the outside by a great number of little oil lamps—rude clay cups, or halves of the thick rind of the bitter orange, which are fixed all over the front. The congregation seem very attentive, and the responses to the litany of Our Lady, sung by a couple of hundred fresh female voices, ring agreeably through the still village. Towards the end of the festival the fun commences. The managers of the feast keep open houses, and dancing, drumming, tinkling of wire guitars, and unbridled drinking by both sexes, old and young, are kept up for a couple of days and a night with little intermission. The ways of the people at these merry-makings, of which there are many in the course of the year, always struck me as being not greatly different from those seen at an old-fashioned village wake in retired parts of England. The old folks look on and get very talkative over their cups; the children are allowed a little extra indulgence in sitting up; the dull, reserved fellows become loquacious, shake one another by the hand or slap each other on the back, discovering, all at once, what capital friends they are. The cantankerous individual gets quarrelsome, and the amorous unusually loving. The Indian, ordinarily so taciturn, finds the use of his tongue, and gives the minutest details of some little dispute which he had with his master years ago, and which