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 everyone else had forgotten-- just as I have known lumpish labouring men in England do, when half-fuddled.One cannot help reflecting, when witnessing these traits of manners, on the similarity of human nature everywhere, when classes are compared whose state of culture and conditions of life are pretty nearly the same.
The Indians play a conspicuous part in the amusements at St.
John's eve, and at one or two other holidays which happen about that time of the year--the end of June.In some of the sports the Portuguese element is visible, in others the Indian, but it must be recollected that masquerading, recitative singing, and so forth, are common originally to both peoples.A large number of men and boys disguise themselves to represent different grotesque figures, animals, or persons.Two or three dress themselves up as giants, with the help of a tall framework.One enacts the part of the Caypor, a kind of sylvan deity similar to the Curupira which I have before mentioned.The belief in this being seems to be common to all the tribes of the Tupi stock.According to the figure they dressed up at Ega, he is a bulky, misshapen monster, with red skin and long shaggy red hair hanging half way down his back.They believe that he has subterranean campos and hunting grounds in the forest, well stocked with pacas and deer.He is not at all an object of worship nor of fear, except to children, being considered merely as a kind of hobgoblin.Most of the masquers make themselves up as animals--bulls, deer, magoary storks, jaguars, and so forth, with the aid of light frameworks, covered with old cloth dyed or painted and shaped according to the object represented.Some of the imitations which I saw were capital.One ingenious fellow arranged an old piece of canvas in the form of a tapir, placed himself under it, and crawled about on all fours.He constructed an elastic nose to resemble that of the tapir, and made, before the doors of the principal residents, such a good imitation of the beast grazing, that peals of laughter greeted him wherever he went.Another man walked about solitarily, masked as a jabiru crane (a large animal standing about four feet high), and mimicked the gait and habits of the bird uncommonly well.One year an Indian lad imitated me, to the infinite amusement of the townsfolk.He came the previous day to borrow of me an old blouse and straw hat.I felt rather taken in when I saw him, on the night of the performance, rigged out as an entomologist, with an insect net, hunting bag, and pincushion.To make the imitation complete, he had borrowed the frame of an old pair of spectacles, and went about with it straddled over his nose.The jaguar now and then made a raid amongst the crowd of boys who were dressed as deer, goats, and so forth.The masquers kept generally together, moving from house to house, and the performances were directed by an old musician, who sang the orders and explained to the spectators what was going forward in a kind of recitative, accompanying himself on a wire guitar.The mixture of Portuguese and Indian customs is partly owing to the European immigrants in these parts having been uneducated men, who, instead of introducing European civilisation, have descended almost to the level of the Indians, and adopted some of their practices.The performances take place in the evening, and occupy five or six hours; bonfires are lighted along the grassy streets, and the families of the better class are seated at their doors, enjoying the wild but good-humoured fun.
