lOS Voyage undertaken ly the Spajt'iards 



castanets. Their organs are not sufficiently delicate to relish 

 our European music j sweetness of tone makes no impres- 

 sion on their senses j according to their taste, music, to be 

 agreeable, must be noisy and produced bv great eftbrts; one 

 c)t their chiefs, hearing the Spaniards play on their instru- 

 ment?, said to them, " This music cannot affect us j it is 

 like the singing of birds, which recreates the car with- 

 out touching the heart." Another ridiculed their cadences, 

 and the whole of their music in which the soft languor of 

 fiats prevailerl ; he said of the performer, " One would think 

 he were shivering with cold ;" and to the singer on the flat 

 key, " Me sings like a man half asleep." 



Their balls are a kind of figured combats, in which they 

 ."ippoar armed with bows, arrows, and fusees, sometimes 

 disguised as bears and stags, or covered witli masks and 

 coarse dresses, which give them the figure of aquatic birds, 

 Jare.er than nature, the motions of which they endeavour to 

 imitate; while others counterfeit hunters who are watching 

 for and pursuing the sujiposed game. At other times they 

 dance ballets, the pantomime of which, too easy to be un- 

 derstood, would scandalize the least scrupulous European; 

 some of these ballets are so obscene, that we would not of- 

 fend decency by attempting a description of them. 



Ihe Indians of Nootka have different confused methods 

 of counting the days and the months. Those whose minds 

 are more cultivated divide the year into fourteen months, of 

 twenty davs each, adding some complementary days atlhe 

 end of each month. 



In general all these people announce a good natural dis- 

 position; they are sensible to friendship, and susceptible of 

 gratitude ; they are not deficient in understanding ; they 

 readily comprehend what one intends to say to them, and 

 they invent ingenious methods of making themselves un- 

 derstood. They are benevolent, and do actions of kindness 

 with creat delicacy: Macuina, knowing one day that the 

 Spanish commandant was in want of provisions, sent or- 

 ders to his mischimis to give him, without payment, all the 

 fish thcv might catch; and having observed that the Spa- 

 niards could not easily dispense with the use of flesh, he 

 sent them a stag every week. He was never more assi- 

 duous in his attention to them than when he saw them in 

 want. Quadra, who spent a whole summer with Macuina> 

 bestows high nraise on the kindness of this chief, and the 

 security he enjoyed both from him and his people: Macuina 

 often slept soundly m the alcove of the Spanish comnian- 

 tlant, as if he had been under the protection of a friend or a 

 2 brother. 



