256 PRIMITIVE MUSIC 



only say then that the inhabitants of Hindustan are 

 not musical, or that their music is not pleasing to 

 us Europeans; or we may go further and say that 

 music has greatly developed in the West only; that 

 compared with European music that of Asia, for all 

 its ancient surviving civilisations, is of little more 

 regard to us than that of aboriginal America, Africa 

 and Australasia. I have said in an early chapter that 

 palaeolithic man probably had teeth-gnashing musical 

 performances; we know too that he was capable of 

 higher things, that he had the artistic mind; we can 

 handle the fossilised bone flute with which he "gave 

 the soft winds a voice" not less than a thousand 

 centuries ago. And before he made him a flute of 

 bone he had doubtless piped on a reed in many forms 

 for ages, and was perhaps altogether something of a 

 cannibal Pan. 



That very ancient music is lost beyond recovery: 

 the question we are now concerned with is the origin 

 of music, especially in man. The singing of the savages 

 to which I have listened on the pampas and in Pata- 

 gonia is a monotonous chant, not unpleasing to the 

 ear, since the voice is often of an agreeable quality, 

 but after a time it palls on you, and revolting 

 against it, I have said that I would prefer to listen 

 to the howling of canines, which is quite as tuneful, 

 especially of the nobler species, heard in desert 

 lands forlorn — " the wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's 

 shore," for example. The chief point in the chanting 

 of savages is that we recognise it as a reproduction of 

 passionate speech, spoken or chanted without passion. 



