NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 
723 
Fig. 256. — Admiralty Island Pan-pipes. 
The musical instruments used are the Conch shells {Triton), perforated on the side as 
usual, a very simple Jew’s-harp made of bamboo, of the usual Melanesian pattern, Pan- 
pipes, of three to five pipes of different lengths (the New Hebrides natives have Pan-pipes 
with three pipes), and lastly, drums. These latter are hollowed out cylinders of wood 
with only a narrow longitudinal slit opening to the 
exterior. Some of them are small, a foot and a half 
or so in length, and are sometimes carried in the 
canoes. The larger drums, seen only in the club 
houses, are cylinders, four feet in height and a foot 
and a half in diameter, and are fixed upright at the 
entrances of these houses. There were four such at 
the four corners of one club house. The slit in these 
is not more than four or five inches broad, and it is 
difficult to understand how the cylinders are hollowed 
out by the natives. Very similar drums exist at 
the New Hebrides, for example at Efate, where they 
are stuck upright in the ground in circles. 1 
The natives seemed to have no idea of tune, they 
blew the notes on the Pan-pipes at hap-hazard. The chief of Wild Island blew with 
evident satisfaction a child’s tin trumpet, which he appropriated from one of his 
subjects, to whom it had been given, and came off’ to the ship standing on his canoe 
platform and blowing it with all his might, with three bright coloured cricket belts 
which he had purchased, put on one above the other round his middle. The drums 
were frequently sounded on Wild Island, often in the afternoon. Such drums are used 
in New Guinea as signals. 
The women, both old and young, dance, moving round in a ring with a quick step. 
The men signified that they danced too, but were not seen to do so. Some old women 
were seen performing a kind of incantation ; four of them sat on the ground in the yard 
of one of the houses, facing one another in a circle, whilst two sat outside the circle ; 
as before mentioned all had their faces and bodies blackened, and uttered at regular 
intervals a chant, “ ai aiai aiai aiai aiai umm.” The commencement was shrill, in a high 
key, and the terminal '‘umm" was sounded low, with the peculiar humming lingering 
sound, just as in Fijian chants. 
The village at D’Entrecasteaux Island is fortified, a palisade about 10 feet high 
stretching right across the corner of the island, where the village lies, shutting it off’ from 
the landing place. The path to the village led through a gate-like opening in the 
palisade, which did not seem in very good repair, and was without ditch or embank- 
ment. The village itself was surrounded by a second wall, low and crossed by stiles, 
1 F. A. Campbell, A Year in the New Hebrides, p. Ill, figure Fili Id Efate, Melbourne, 1873. 
