Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/410

 was placed below the altar, which was lighted up with rows of wax candles, very lean ones, but the best the poor people could afford. All the villagers assembled soon afterwards, dressed in their best, the women with flowers in their hair, and a few simple hymns, totally irrelevant to the occasion, but probably the only ones known by them, were sung kneeling; an old half-caste, with black-spotted face, leading off the tunes. This finished, the congregation rose, and then marched in single file up one side of the church and down the other, singing together a very pretty marching chorus, and each one, on reaching the little image, stooping to kiss the end of a ribbon which was tied round its waist. Considering that the ceremony was got up of their own free-will, and at considerable expense, I thought it spoke well for the good intentions and simplicity of heart of these poor, neglected villagers.

I left Fonte Boa, for Ega, on the 25th of January, making the passage by steamer, down the middle of the current, in sixteen hours. The sight of the clean and neat little town, with its open spaces, close-cropped grass, broad lake, and white sandy shores, had a most exhilarating effect, after my trip into the wilder parts of the country. The district between Ega and Loreto, the first Peruvian village on the river, is, indeed, the most remote, thinly-peopled, and barbarous of the whole line of the Amazons, from ocean to ocean. Beyond Loreto, signs of civilisation, from the side of the Pacific, begin to be numerous, and, from Ega downwards, the improvement is felt from the side of the Atlantic.