547 



praise the docility and intelligence of this people % 

 The Salivas have a great taste for music ; in the 

 most remote times they had trumpets of baked 

 earth, four or five feet long, with several large 

 globular cavities communicating with one an- 

 other by narrow pipes. These trumpets send 

 forth most dismal sounds. The Jesuits have 

 cultivated with success the natural taste of the 

 Salivas for instrumental music ; and even since 

 the destruction of the society, the missionaries 

 of Rio Meta have continued at San Miguel 

 de Macuco a fine church music, and musical 

 instruction for the Indian youth. Very lately a 

 traveller was surprised, to see the natives playing 

 on the violin, the violoncello, the triangle, the 

 guitar, and the flute ^. 



The system of the solitary missions of the 

 Oroonoko is less favourable to the progress of 

 civilization, and the increase of the population of 

 the Salivas, than that which is adopted by the 

 monks of Saint Augustin $ in the plains of Ca- 

 sanare, and of Meta. The natives of Macuco 

 have improved from their intercourse with the 



* Gumilla, voh i, chap, xiii, p. 209 — 224; Gili, vol. i, 

 p. 57 ; vol. ii, p. 44. 



+ Diario del Presbitero Josef Cortez Madariaga en su Viage 

 de Santa Fe de Bogota por el Rio Meta a Caracas (1811), fol. 15 

 (MS.). 



t Recoletos, 'depending on the great College de la Cande- 

 laria de Santa Fe de Bogota. 



2 n 2 



