RoTH] MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 451 
practice. So also at the Makusi village of Inongkong, another day’s 
walk farther on, both of a morning and of an evening there was a 
drum beaten around the settlement. 
555. For rough descriptive purposes only, the musical apphances 
of the Indians may be spoken of as wind, reed, string, percussion, 
and friction instruments, each group containing more or less varieties. 
Thus, percussion instruments include rattles, “bells,” cylinders, 
drums; wind instruments comprise trumpets, tubes, flutes, flageolets, 
panpipes, and whistles. The instruments designated as belonging 
to the flute class are all blown over an aperture along the side and 
are thus differentiated here from members of the flageolet class 
which are all blown at the one extremity. Furthermore, independ- 
ently of size, flutes and flageolets are distinguishable from trumpets 
and tubes by the possession of two or more ventholes. According to 
the sounds required, these ventholes can be closed with the fingers. 
Many instruments may be used as “music” proper on occasions of 
festivity and ceremonial, and yet be employed for signal purposes, 
and, with the exception of the jangling seed capsules, all musical in- 
struments would seem to be the perquisites of the sterner sex. 
556. Wind instruments.—Of the trumpet and tube class, first and 
foremost are the clay instruments described by Gumilla, close upon 
a couple of centuries ago, from the Orinoco. These were certain 
clay tubes, one vara long, with two or three hollow bellies (pl. 158 B), 
their convexities being larger in the former case. The mouthpiece 
was narrow, and the opposite extremity fairly wide, and the sound 
emitted was very deep, like a bassoon. These two varieties were 
sounded in pairs, and employed by the Saliva at their funeral cere- 
monies, where, as stated by the good Spanish father, they proved 
very suitable for rendering gloomy the minds of the participants 
(G, 1, 192). In later times, on the River Atabapo, upper Orinoco, 
we find Humboldt speaking of the botuto or trumpet of baked earth 
in which a tube 3 or 4 feet long communicates with several barrels 
(AVH, 11, 345), while on the River Cassiquiare, the connecting 
stream between the Amazon and Orinoco watersheds, he talks of the 
soldiers calling the Indians together by the sound of the horn, or a 
botuto of baked earth, whenever any hostile attack was dreaded 
(AVH, u, 405). It is noteworthy that on the Atabapo the same 
distinguished traveler speaks of the botuto as the sacred trumpet, 
an object of veneration, from all the ceremonies of worship of which 
the women were excluded (AVH, mn, 363), the ceremonies referred 
to being doubtless what were known on the Rio Negro as those of 
Jurupari. Similarly shaped clay trumpets have continued in use up 
to the present day among the Carib and Akawai. I obtained several 
specimens of both shapes—the two and three bellied—all gaily deco- 
