Chap, xviii.] MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 407 



The Sticks or spoons with which the chunam is carried from 

 the gourds to the mouth are often richly carved in the handle. 

 The skulls of Turtles suspended in the temples are orna- 

 mented with patterns painted in the three usual colours. The 

 human skulls are likewise decorated, and some have eyes of 

 pearl shell inserted into the orbits on a background of black 

 clay. 



The musical instruments used are the Conch shells, per- 

 forated on the side as usual, a very simple Jew's-harp, made of 

 bamboo, of the usual Melanesian pattern. Pan-pipes, of three 

 to five pipes of different lengths (the New Hebrides natives 

 have Pan-pipes with three pipes), and lastly. Drums. These 

 latter are hollowed out cylinders of wood with a narrow longi- 

 tudinal slit only opening to the exterior. Some of them are 

 small, i^ foot or so in length, and are carried sometimes in 

 the canoes. The larger drums I saw only in the temples. 

 They are cylinders 4 feet in height and i| foot in diameter, 

 and are fixed upright at the entrances of the temples. There 

 were four such at the four corners of one temple. The slit 

 in these is not more than 4 or 5 inches broad, and I do not 

 understand how the cylinders are hollowed out by the natives. 

 Very similar drums exist at the New Hebrides, at Efate, e.^t;., 

 where they are stuck upright in the ground in circles.* 



The natives seemed to have no idea of tune, they blew the 

 notes on the Pan-pipe haphazard. The chief of Wild Island 

 blew a child's tin trumpet with evident satisfaction. He appro- 

 priated it from one of his subjects, to whom I had given it, and 

 came off to the ship standing on his canoe platform and blow- 

 ing it with all his might, with three bright coloured cricket 

 belts which he had purchased, put on one above the other 

 round his middle. The drums were constantly sounded on 

 Wild Island, often in the afternoon. 



The women, both old and young, dance, moving round in 

 a ring with a quick step. The men signified that they danced 

 too, but were not seen to do so. I did not see dancing myself. 



I saw some old women performing a kind of incantation. 

 They sat on the ground in the yard of one of the houses, four 

 of them sitting facing one another in a circle, whilst two sat 

 outside the circle. They had their faces and bodies blackened. 

 They uttered at regular intervals a chant, " ai aiai aiai aiai aiai 

 umm." The commencement was shrill, in a high key, and the 

 terminal "umm" was sounded low, with the peculiar humming 

 lingering sound, just as in Fijian chants. 



Polygamy is practised. Oto, the chief, told R. Von W. Suhm 



* "A Year in the New Hebrides," by F. A. Campbell. Melbourne, 

 George Robertson, 1873, p. iii, figure Fili Id Efate. 



