Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/215

 these indulgences are frequently the cause of death. They are very subject to disorders of the liver, dysentery, and other diseases of hot climates, and when any epidemic is about, they fall ill quicker, and suffer more than negroes or even whites. How different all this is with the negro, the true child of tropical climes! The impression gradually forced itself on my mind that the red Indian lives as a stranger, or immigrant in these hot regions, and that his constitution was not originally adapted, and has not since become perfectly adapted to the climate. It is a case of want of fitness; other races of men living on the earth would have been better fitted to enjoy and make use of the rich unappropriated domain. Unlike the lands peopled by Negro and Caucasian, Tropical America had no indigenous man thoroughly suited to its conditions, and was therefore peopled by an ill-suited race from another continent.

The Indian element is very prominent in the amusements of the Ega people. All the Roman Catholic holidays are kept up with great spirit; rude Indian sports being mingled with the ceremonies introduced by the Portuguese. Besides these, the aborigines celebrate their own ruder festivals: the people of different tribes combining; for, in most of their features, the merry-makings were originally alike in all the tribes. The Indian idea of a holiday is bonfires, processions, masquerading, especially the mimicry of different kinds of animals, plenty of confused drumming and fifing, monotonous dancing, kept up hour after hour without intermission, and the most important point of all, getting gradually and completely drunk. But he