THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE INC AS. 29 



Comets were used by the Inca's army at the siege of Cuzco. 

 Formerly this name was gi\-en to a rude reed instrument of tlie 

 oboe family, and it is probable that it was similar to 

 those still used in a number of tribes in the ^\mazon 

 region : a piece of cane from two to five feet long, with one end 

 closed by some gummy substance, through which is passed a split 

 quill which forms the "reed." Herrera tells us that Orellana, 

 on his voyage down the Amazon (1540-1541), was pursued by 

 130 canoes containing 8000 Indians, and that the noise of their 

 drums, comets and shouting was a thing frightful to hear.' 



STRINGED INSTRUMENTS. 



A NUMBER of modem writers have stated that the tiiiya, a 

 kind of guitar with five strings, was known to the Peruvians 

 in pre-Spanish times. ''^his seems as improbable as Rankin's 

 story of fiddlers being attached to the court of Montezuma. - 

 Garcilasso de la Vega, in his chapter entitled "Of the Geom- 

 etry, Geography, Arithmetick and Musick known to the In- 

 dians," gives no account of any stringed instrument. ' There is 

 scarcely a chapter in the "Cronica del Peru" of Cieza de Leon 

 that does not contain mention of some musical instrument, but 

 we find no hint of instruments of this class. The Peruvians 

 themselves, as we have seen, left behind them many of their 

 instruments and numerous representations of them on their pot- 

 tery vessels and metal ornaments ; but among them all, not one 

 belonging to the lyre type can be found. Professor O. T. Mason 

 says : 



"After looking over the musical collection of the United States 

 National Museum and such literature as has been collected by the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology, I have come to tlie conclusion that 

 stringed musical instruments were not known to any of the aborigines 

 of the Western Hemisphere before Columbus." •* 



' Voyage of Francisco dc Orellana. Ed. Hakluyt. p. 29. 

 ' Conquest of Peru and Mexico by the Mongols, p. 344. 



3 Royal Commentaries of Peru, Ed. Rycaut, Part I, Book II, Chap. XIV. 



4 American Anthropologist, Vol. X, No. 11, 1897. 



