MU SONGS 



culiivatcd ear. appeared to inc to be in consonance with the wild 

 character of these islanders Often vvdien I liave stopped to rest and 

 enjo}' a pipe in the midst of my excursions, it may liave been beside 

 a stream in the wood or on the edofe of a tal] cliff overlookincr the 

 sea, my native companions have sat down and commenced their 

 monotonous chanting, which, discordant as it may have sometimes 

 seemed to me, appeared to be in unison with my surroundings. 

 Now raised to a high key, now sinlcing to v. low, subdued drone, 

 now hurried, now slow and measured, these rude notes recalled to 

 my mind rather the sounds of the inanimate world around me, such 

 as the siohino- of the wind among the trees or the shrill whistle of 

 the gale, the noise of the surf on the reef or the rippling of the 

 waves on the beach, the rushing of a mountain torrent or the mur- 

 muring of a rivulet in its bed. My thoughts at such times recurred 

 to those unpolished ages in the history of nations when the bard 

 attuned his melody to the voices of the waves, the streams, and the 

 wind, and found in the mist or in the cloud his expression for the 

 shadow}^ unknown. At no time have the poems of Ossian appeared 

 to my mind to be invested with greater beauty than when I have 

 been standing in solitude in some inland dell or on some lofty hill- 

 top in these regions. The song of the bard of Selma, des[)ite its 

 ruggedness, on such occasions, appealed more powerfully to my 

 imagination than many more finished verses, and seemed more in 

 keeping with scenes that owed to man nothing, remaining as they 

 had been for ages. Nature's handiwork. 



Frequently whilst descending some steep hill-slope or whilst 

 following the downward course of a ravine, my natives were wont 

 to make the woods echo witli their shouts and their wild songs. 

 The natural impulse to make use of the vocal organs whilst descend- 

 ing a mountain is worth a moment's remark. Often I found my- 

 self involuntarily shouting with my savage companions, when their 

 loud peals of laughter attracted my attention. Some years ago, 

 when visiting the Si-shan Mountains which lie behind the city of 

 Kiukiang on the south bank of the Yang-tse, I remember listening 

 to the cries of the Chinese wood-cutters as they returned in the 

 evening down the narrow gorges that led to their homes. As their 

 shouts died away in the higher parts of the mountain, the echo was 

 caught by the wood-cutters below, and was answered back in such 

 a manner that the men further down the gorges took up the cry. 



The training of natives of these islands by the Melanesian 



