roTH ] MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 461 
fixed at its larger end with a ring of beeswax (w) over the pencil, 
its smaller end being rendered funnel shaped by means of another 
ring of the same material. That portion of the pencil projecting 
from outside the gourd is next inclosed in a 2 or 3 foot length of 
trumpet wood (7), which in turn is attached to the base of the 
gourd, independently of the pencil, again with beeswax: The 
oboe described by Schomburgk as met with among the Warrau 
almost tallies with the description just given, save that no men- 
tion is made of any covering gourd. The passage referred to in 
his travels is this: As a matter of fact every Warrau settlement 
has its own music master, hoho-hit, who teaches the young boys 
and men of the place to blow on a kind of oboe made out of a 
longer or shorter piece of bamboo, into the upper end of which is 
spliced a thin reed made of cane with a longer or shorter glottis. 
The sound produced is very like that of the Russian national instru- 
ment. Almost every evening the young men collect around their 
teacher, and under his guidance hold a concert in the middle of the 
settlement. According to the size of the bamboo stem and its reed, 
the height or depth of the sound varies. A movement of the hand, 
a nod with the head, or a time beat with the instrument from the 
side of the hoho-hit to that of the musicians, either to commence or 
to chime in, regulates the whole concert. Although ... each in- 
strument only gives one note, the musical director knows the tone 
of the combined instruments so exactly, and gives his directions so 
correctly, that a basis of harmony rules the sound, just as those Rus- 
sian players perform the most difficult pieces with their reeds 
(SR, 1, 152). A somewhat similar reed instrument is found among 
the Waiwai (JO). Fermin, in French Guiana, talks of flutes which 
are close upon 24 feet long, have only a single hole, and for 
mouthpiece a reed like the “haut boy” so that but one note results 
(FE, 89). And on the lower Amazons, there is the turé, a horn 
made of long and thick bamboo, with a split reed in the mouthpiece. 
This is the war trumpet of many tribes of Indians, with which the 
sentinels of predatory hordes, mounted on a lofty tree, give the 
signal for attack to their comrades (HWB, 184). 
571. Hilhouse drew attention to what may be called a stringed 
instrument among the Warrau: “ This general dancing was merely 
stamping round in a ring to a simple monotonous song by the women, 
accompanied by beating on a monochord, being the skin of the arm 
of an ite leaf, raised by a bridge from the pith ” (HiB, 329). I have 
obtained from the old Moruca River Warrau a monochord, known 
to them and to the Arawak as tarimba (fig. 239 C), where the ite 
leafstalk of the instrument above described is replaced by a length 
of arrowgrass and its raised fiber by a strong piece of kuraua twine. 
