THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 



401 



The principal display in the dancing consisted in the very 

 slow and gradual movement of the arms, wrists, and hands. 

 One arm was maintained directed forwards and 

 somewhat upwards, the other at about the same 

 angle downwards, and the position of the two 

 was at intervals gradually reversed; the hands 

 were turned slowly round upon the wrists, and 

 often the dancing consisted for some interval 

 merely in the graceful pose of the body, and tins 

 movement of the hands. 



The main point in the dancing seemed to 

 be that all the motions should follow and pass 

 one into the other with perfect gradation in 

 time, and without any jerk or quickening. The 

 thumbs were always maintained extended at 

 right angles to the palms of the hands, as at 

 the Ke Islands. 



A young boy danced a somewhat similar 

 dance to that of the girls. During his perform- 

 ance, he at one time put forward one leg and 

 curved the sole of his foot so that only the toe 

 and heel touched the floor, and turned round 

 with the foot in that position. At another time 

 he shuffled along slowly with the heel of one 

 foot in the hollow of the other. 



I obtained from a Moro boy a Jew's-harp 

 made of bamboo, on which he was playing. 

 The instrument is most ingeniously cut out of 

 a single splinter of bamboo, the vibrating tongue 

 being extremely delicately shaped ; the tongue 

 is cleverly weighted by means of a knob of the 

 wood left projecting on its back. The instru- 

 ment produces a tone indistinguishable from 

 that of a metal Jew's-harp ; it is quite unlike 

 Melanesian bamboo Jew's-harps in its form. 



A sharp tide runs in the channel between 

 Zamboanga and the Island of Santa Cruz Major, 

 which lies just opposite the town. In the tide-way, whilst 



D D 



MORO JEWS-HARP, CUT 

 OCT OF A SINGLE PIECE 

 OF BAMBOO. 



