1852.] 
DEVIL-MUSIC. 
349 
duced a wild and pleasing sound. They blew them 
all together, tolerably in concert, to a simple tune, and 
showed more taste for music than I had yet seen dis- 
played among these people. The instruments are made 
of bark spirally twisted, and with a mouthpiece of leaves. 
In the evening I went to the malocca, and found 
two old men playing on the largest of the instruments. 
They waved them about in a singular manner, vertically 
and sideways, accompanied by corresponding contor- 
tions of the body, and played a long while in a regular 
tune, accompanying each other very correctly. Prom the 
moment the music was first heard, not a female, old or 
young, was to be seen ; for it is one of the strangest 
superstitions of the Uaupes Indians, that they con- 
sider it so dangerous for a woman ever to see one of 
these instruments, that having done so is punished with 
death, generally by poison. Even should the view be 
perfectly accidental, or should there be only a suspicion 
that the proscribed articles have been seen, no mercy is 
shown; and it is said that fathers have been the exe- 
cutioners of their own daughters, and husbands of their 
wives, when such has been the case. I was of course 
anxious to purchase articles to which such curious cus- 
toms belong, and spoke to the Tushaua on the subject. 
He at length promised to sell them me on my return, 
stipulating that they were to be embarked at some dis- 
tance from the village, that there might be no danger of 
their being seen by the women. 
On the morning previous to that on which we were 
to leave, two more of our Indians who had received full 
payment on starting, were discovered to have left us. 
