The wine or beer is made in a very disgusting manner, but its manufacture, strangely enough, is not confined to Bolivia. I have seen much the same liquor in tropical Africa, made by the Somali Indians, and in precisely the same way.
The old women or hags of the village are assembled at, say, a chief's house, and large quantities of cocoanuts and various other fruits are heaped together in the centre of a hut, as well as large, tub-like vessels and chattees of water.
Down the old and almost toothless hags squat, and, helping themselves to lumps of cocoa-nut, &c., they commence to mumble and chew these, now and then moistening their mouths with a little water, the juice is spit out into calabashes, and when these are full of the awful mess they are emptied into the big bin.
It is a great gala-day with these hideous old hags, a meeting that they take advantage of not only for making wine but for abusing their neighbours.
How they cackle and grin, to be sure, as their mouths work to and fro! How they talk and chatter, and how they chew! It is chatter and chew, chew and chatter, all the time, and the din they make with teeth and tongues would deafen a miller.
When all is finished, the bins are left to settle and ferment, and in three days' time, the supernatant liquor is poured off and forms the wine called chicaga.
Had anyone doubted the intoxicating power of this vilest of all vile drinks, a glance at the scene which soon ensued around the fire would speedily have convinced him.
Benee lay there watching these fiends as they gradually merged from one phase of drunkenness to another, and fain would he have sent half a dozen revolver bullets into the centre of the group, but his life depended on his keeping still.
The savages first confined themselves to merry talking, with coarse jokes and ribaldry, and frequent outbursts of laughter. But when they had quaffed still more, they must seize their knives and get up to dance. Round and round the blazing fire they whirled and staggered through the smoke and through it again, with demoniacal shouts and awful yells, that awakened echoes among the forest wild beasts far and near.
Then they pricked their bodies with their knives till the blood ran, and with this they splashed each other in hideous wantonness till faces and clothes were smeared in gore.