hey hold an Irish "wake" over the body, and then
take the widow to the river and wash her. They have seven semi-religious
feasts in a year. To us they appeared to be nothing more than
meaningless drunken frolics. Attired in their best, with head-dresses
consisting of a circlet of short, richly-colored feathers from the
breast of the toucan, surmounted with the long tail-feathers of the
macaw, and with necklaces of beads, seeds, and monkeys' teeth, they keep
up a constant monotonous tapping on little drums, and trot around a
circle like dogs on a treadmill, stopping only to drink chicha. This is
kept up for three weeks, when they all start off, with wives and
children, for the forest to hunt monkeys for meat.

Chicha, the favorite drink of all the Andean Indians, is here brewed
from yuca, not from corn and barley as in the Quito Valley. So true is
it, as Humboldt remarks, that almost every where man finds means of
preparing some kind of beverage from the vegetable kingdom. The
Chilotans, Darwin informs us, make chicha from a species of _Bromelia_.
In every zone, too, we find nations in a low degree of civilization
living almost exclusively upon a single animal or plant. Thus the
Laplander has his reindeer, the Esquimaux his seal, the Sandwich
Islander his tara-root, the Malay his sago-palm, the Napo Indian his
yuca.

Yuca is the staple food in this region. It is more commonly roasted, but
is sometimes ground into flour. The manufacture of chicha is primitive,
and not a little disgusting. A "bee," usually old women, sit around a
wooden trough; each one takes a mouthful of yuca root, and, masticating
it, throws it into the trough. The mass is then transferred to large
earthen jars containing water, and left to ferment. The liquor is
slightly acid, but not intoxicating unless taken in excess. This is done
on feast-days, when the poor Indian keeps his stomach so constantly
distended for weeks that the abdominal protrusion is not only
unsightly, but alarming to a stranger. Chicha-drinking is a part of the
worship of these simple aborigines. They seem to think that the more
happy they make themselves while paying their devotions to the Creator,
the better he is satisfied. The Jesuits have found it impossible to
change this method of praise. Here, as among all rude nations, an
ancient custom is one half the religion. In eating meat (usually monkey,
sea-cow, and peccari), we observed that they did not tear or bite it,
but, put