Those who cannot hunt and fish for themselves, and whose stomachs refuse turtle, are in a poor way at Ega. Fish, including many kinds of large and delicious salmonide, is abundant in the fine season; but each family fishes only for itself, and has no surplus for sale. An Indian fisherman remains out just long enough to draw what he thinks sufficient for a couple of days’ consumption. Vacca marina is a great resource in the wet season; it is caught by harpooning, which requires much skill, or by strong nets made of very thick hammock twine, and placed across narrow inlets. Very few Europeans are able to eat the meat of this animal. Although there is a large quantity of cattle in the neighbourhood of the town, and pasture is abundant all the year round, beef can be had only when a beast is killed by accident. The most frequent cause of death is poisoning by drinking raw Tucupi, the juice of the mandioca root. Bowls of this are placed on the ground in the sheds where the women prepare farinha; it is generally done carelessly, but sometimes intentionally, through spite, when stray oxen devastate the plantations of the poorer people. The juice is almost certain to be drunk if cattle stray near the place, and death is the certain result. The owners kill a beast which shows symptoms of having been poisoned, and retail the beef in the town. Although every one knows it cannot be wholesome, such is the scarcity of meat and the uncontrollable desire to eat beef, that it is eagerly bought, at least by those residents who come from other provinces where beef is the staple article of food. Game of all kinds is scarce in the forest near the town, except in the months of June and July, when immense numbers of a large and

handsome bird, Cuvier’s toucan (Ramphastos Cuvieri) make their appearance. They come in well-fed condition, and are shot in such quantities that every family has the strange treat of stewed and roasted toucans daily for many weeks. Curassow birds are plentiful on the banks of the Solimoens, but to get a brace or two requires the sacrifice of several days for the trip. A tapir, of which the meat is most delicious and nourishing, is sometimes killed by a fortunate hunter. I have still a lively recollection of the pleasant effects which I once experienced from a diet of fresh tapir meat for a few days, after having been brought toa painful state of bodily and mental depression by a month’s scanty rations of fish and farinha. We sometimes had fresh bread at Ega, made from American flour brought from Para, but it was sold at ninepence a pound. I was once two years without tasting wheaten bread, and attribute partly to this the gradual deterioration of health which I suffered on the Upper Amazons. Mandioca meal is a poor, weak substitute for bread; it is deficient in gluten, and consequently cannot be formed into a leavened mass or loaf, but is obliged to be roastedin hard grains in order to keep any length of time. Cakes are made of the half-roasted meal, but they become sour in a very few hours. A superior kind of meal is manufactured at Ega of the sweet mandioca (Manihot Aypi); it is generally made with a mixture of the starch of the root, and is therefore a much more wholesome article of food than the ordinary sort, which, on the Amazons, is made of the pulp after the starch has been extracted by soaking in water. When we could get neither bread nor biscuit, I found tapioca soaked in coffee the best native substitute. We were seldom without butter, as every canoe brought one or two casks on each return voyage from Para, where it is imported in considerable quantity from Liverpool. We obtained tea in the same way; it being served as a fashionable luxury at wedding and christening parties; the people were at first strangers to this article, for they used to stew it in a saucepan, mixing it up with coarse raw sugar, and stirring it with a spoon. Sometimes we had milk, but this was only when a cow calved; the yield from each cow was very small, and lasted only for a few weeks in each case, although the pasture is good, and the animals are sleek and fat.

Fruit of the ordinary tropical sorts could generally be had. I was quite surprised at the variety of the wild kinds, and of the delicious flavour of some of them. Many of these are utterly unknown in the regions nearer the Atlantic; being the peculiar productions of this highly favoured, and little known, interior country. Some have been planted by the natives in their clearings. The best was the /aduti-pihe, or tortoise foot; a scaled fruit probably of the Anonaceous order. It is about the size of an ordinary apple; when ripe, the rind is moderately thin, and encloses, with the seeds, a quantity of custardy pulp of a very rich flavour. Next to this stands the Cuma (Collophora sp.), of which there are two species, not unlike, in appearance, small round pears; but the rind is rather hard, and contains a gummy milk, and the pulpy part is almost as delicious as that of the Jabuti-puhe. The Cuma tree is of moderate height, and grows rather plentifully in the more elevated and drier situations. A third kind is the Pama, which is a stone fruit

similar in colour and appearance to the cherry, but of oblong shape. The tree is one of the loftiest in the forest, and has never, I believe, been selected for cultivation. To get at the fruit the natives are obliged to climb the height of about a hundred feet, and cut off the heavily laden branches. I have already mentioned the Umari and the Wisht: both these are now cultivated. The fatty, bitter pulp which surrounds the large stony seeds of these fruits is eaten mixed with farinha, and is very nourishing. Another cultivated fruit is the Puruma (Puruma cecropifolia, Martius), and a round juicy berry, growing in large bunches and resembling grapes in taste. The tree is deceptively like a Cecropia in the shape of its foliage. Another smaller kind, called Purumd i, grows wild in the forest close to Ega, and has not yet been planted. The most singular of all these fruits is the Uiki, which is of oblong shape, and grows apparently crosswise on the end of its stalk. When ripe, the thick green rind opens by a natural cleft across the middle, and discloses an oval seed the size of a Damascene plum, but of a vivid crimson colour. This bright hue belongs to a thin coating of pulp, which, when the seeds are mixed ina plate of stewed bananas, gives to the mess a pleasant rosy

Vik:: tint, and a rich creamy taste and consistence. iki Fruit.:: Mingau (porridge) of bananas flavoured and coloured with Uiki is a favourite dish at Ega. The fruit, like most of the others here mentioned, ripens in January. Many smaller fruits, such as Wajurt (probably a species of Achras), the size of a gooseberry, which grows singly and contains a sweet gelatinous pulp, enclosing two large shining black seeds; Cashipari-arapad, an oblong scarlet berry; two kinds of Bacuri, the Bacuri-sitima and the B. curta, sour fruits of a bright lemon colour when ripe, and a great number of others, are of less importance as articles of food.

The celebrated “Peach palm,” Pupunha of the Tupi nations (Guilielma speciosa), is a common tree at Ega. The name, I suppose, is in allusion to the colour of the fruit, and not to its flavour, for it is dry and mealy, and in taste may be compared to a mixture of chestnuts and cheese. Vultures devour it eagerly, and come in quarrelsome 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 beside 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 advanced 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 Pard, 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 Pard 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 made 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 regulated by these yearly recurring phenomena. ‘The peculiarity of this upper region consists in there being two rises and two falls within the year. The great annual rise commences 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. The inundation progresses gently, inch by inch, and is felt everywhere, even in the interior of the forests, of the higher lands, miles away from the river; as these are traversed by numerous gullies, forming, in the fine season, dry spacious dells, which become gradually transformed by the pressure of the flood into broad creeks, navigable by small boats, under the shade of trees. All the countless swarms of turtle of various species then leave the main river for the inland pools: sandbanks go under water, and the flocks of wading birds then migrate northerly to the upper waters of # metal the tributaries which flow from that direction, or SN wy! to the Orinoco; which streams during the wet Pupunha Palm. period of the Amazons are enjoying the cloudless skies of their dry season. ‘The families of fishermen who have been employed, during the previous four or five months, in harpooning and salting piraruct and shooting turtle in the great lakes, now return to the towns and villages; their temporarily constructed fishing establishments becoming gradually submerged, with the sand islets or beaches on which they were situated. This is the season, however, in which the Brazil

nut and wild cacao ripen, and many persons go out to gather these harvests, remaining absent generally throughout the months of March and April. The rains during this time are not continuous; they fall very heavily at times, but rarely last so long at a stretch as twenty-four hours, and many days intervene of pleasant, sunny weather. The sky, however, is generally overcast and gloomy, and sometimes a drizzling rain falls. About the first week in June the flood is at its highest, the water being then about forty-five feet above its lowest point; but it varies in different years to the extent of about fifteen feet. The “ enchente,” or flow, as it is called by the natives, who believe this great annual movye-ment of the waters to be of the same nature as the tide towards the mouth of the Amazons, is then completed, and all begin to look forward to the ‘‘vasante,” or ebb. The provision made for the dearth of the wet season is by this time pretty nearly exhausted; fish is difficult to procure, and many of the less provident inhabitants have become reduced to a diet of fruits and farinha porridge.

Page 92 of 120