THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE INCAS. 29 
Cornets were used by the Inca’s army at the siege of Cuzco. 
Formerly this name was given to a rude reed instrument of the 
oboe family, and it is probable that it was similar to 
those still used in a number of tribes in the Amazon 
region: a piece of cane from two to five feet long, with one end 
closed by some gummy substance, through which is passed a split 
quill which forms the “reed.’’ Herrera tells us that Orellana, 
on his voyage down the Amazon (1540-1541), was pursued by 
130 canoes containing 8000 Indians, and that the noise of their 
drums, cornets and shouting was a thing frightful to hear.* 
Cornet 
STRINGED INSTRUMENTS. 
A NUMBER of modern writers have stated that the tya, a 
kind of guitar with five strings, was known to the Peruvians 
in pre-Spanish times. ‘his seems as improbable as Rankin’s 
story of fiddlers being attached to the court of Montezuma. ? 
Garcilasso de la Vega, in his chapter entitled ‘““Of the Geom- 
etry, Geography, Arithmetick and Musick known to the In- 
dians,’’ gives no account of any stringed instrument.* There is 
scarcely a chapter in the “Cronica del Peru”’ of Cieza de Leon 
that does not contain mention of some musical instrument, but 
we find no hint of instruments of this class. The Peruvians 
themselves, as we have seen, left behind them many of their 
instruments and numerous representations of them on their pot- 
tery vessels and metal ornaments; but among them all, not one 
belonging to the lyre type can be found. Professor O. T. Mason 
says: 
“After looking over the musical collection of the United States 
National Museum and such literature as has been collected by the 
Bureau of American Ethnology, I have come to the conclusion that 
stringed musical instruments were not known to any of the aborigines 
of the Western Hemisphere before Columbus.” 4 
* Voyage of Francisco de Orellana, Ed. Hakluyt, p. 29. 
? Conquest of Peru and Mexico by the Mongols, p. 344. 
3 Royal Commentaries of Peru, Ed. Rycaut, Part I, Book II, Chap. XIV. 
4 American Anthropologist, Vol. X, No. t1, 1897. 
