~~ 
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“ A TRAMP WITH REDSKINS.” 241 
book | could find on the subjeét. Some of the writers 
had mentioned certain remarkable and loud deto- 
nating noises which are said to be occasionally pro- 
duced by some unexplained natural causes among the 
adjacent mountain range. Happy in my supposed oppor- 
tunity for studying a most interesting natural phenome- 
non, | lay in the hammock making eager mental notes of 
the frequency, direction, and other aspeéts of these 
mysterious sounds. It was a little disappointing when 
I had mentally put together an interesting record of the 
phenomenon, and when daylight came, to see that the 
real explanation was that my Redskinned friends had 
been firing guns close to my ear, with a view of attracting 
their friends to help them in the carrying of the loads. 
I may as well incidentally add that never since, in all 
my journeys, have I heard any sounds which in any way 
answer to the description given by SCHOMBURGK and 
BARRINGTON BROWN of these supposed natural canno- 
nadings among the mountains of Guiana. 
But on the occasion of which I am now telling, I had to 
wait patiently for some days, until, in family parties of 
three or four, rarely more, the summoned Redmen began 
to drop in. Would that I could give some idea of the 
picturesqueness of these arrivals. Sometimes the first 
thing to attraét attention was the thin piping of a 
flute—made of jaguar bone or perhaps human—more 
and more distinétly heard as its player approached. At 
other times it was the sound, not of the flute but the 
charaéteristic monotonous beat of a drum, made of skin 
stretched across a hollow piece of palm trunk, that 
heralded the arrivals. At last the new-comers appeared 
in sight in single file, approaching along one of the 
