5 84 Voyage of the Novara. 



Occasionally they throw tlieir arms out, snap their fingers, 

 and then clap the hands together. Every movement is 

 performed witli extraordinary precision, and at the same 

 moment by all the dancers. Their sole musical instrument 

 is a small flute made of bamboo-cane, the notes of which 

 they draw forth by inserting one end in the nostril and blow- 

 ing gently, while tlieir hands are busy fingering the holes in 

 the usual way. 



Their drum is a piece of hollowed-out wood with the skin 

 of a shark stretched over it, of the shape of a sand-glass. 

 This is struck with the fingers of the right hand, the instru- 

 ment being hung on the left side. The sound somewhat 

 resembles the Tom-tom of the Hindoos. The drummer sits 

 cross-legged on the ground, and accompanies the beat of the 

 drum with apposite words. 



As to the monumental ruins of the interior of Puynipet 

 which have never yet been visited and described by scientific 

 travellers, we were informed that they consisted of nothing 

 more than a large number of colossal rough-hewn blocks of 

 basalt in the heart of the forest, near Metelenia harbour. 

 The simplicity of the native, in the absence of all means of 

 accounting for them naturally, sees in these the grand forms of 

 the spirits of departed chiefs. Experienced travellers, on the 

 other hand, are of opinion that in this primeval forest, where 

 now only rocky d(5bris lie scattered about, there once stood 

 strong fortifications, such as indeed no savage people could 

 have erected, and that the character of the ruins evidences a 



