144 
A VOYAGE TO 
* 779 * 
March. 
'- 1 - 
^'ms, in the fame manner as the Friendly Iflanders, had a 
very pleafing effect. 
It is very remarkable, that the people of thefe iflands are 
great gamblers. They have a game very much like our 
draughts; but, if one may judge from the number of 
fquares, it is much more intricate. The board is about two 
feet long, and is divided into two hundred and thirty-eight 
fquares, of which there are fourteen in a row; and they 
make ufe of black and white pebbles, which they move from 
fquare to fquare. 
There is another game, which conffits in hiding a hone 
under a piece of cloth, which one of the parties fpreads out, 
and rumples in fuch a manner, that the place where the 
Hone lies is difficult to be diftinguiffied. The antagonift, 
with a flick, then flrikes the part of the cloth where he ima- 
Now, to overturn this fact, by the reafoning of perfons who did not hear thefe perform¬ 
ances, is rather an arduous tafk. And, yet, there is great improbability that any uncivi¬ 
lized people Ihould, by accident, arrive at this degree of perfection in the art of mufic, 
which we imagine can only be attained by dint of ftudy, and knowledge of the fyftem and 
theory upon which mufical compofition is founded. Such miferable jargon as our coun¬ 
try Plalin-fingers pracftife, which may be juftly deemed the loweft clafs of counterpoint, 
or finging in feveral parts, cannot be acquired, in the coarfe manner in which it is per¬ 
formed in the churches, without confiderable time and practice. It is, therefore, fcarcely 
credible, that a people, femi-barbarous, fhould naturally arrive at any perfection in that 
art, which it is much doubted whether the Greeks and Romans, with all their refinements 
in mufic, ever attained, and which the Chinefe, who have been longer civilized than any 
people on the globe, have not yet found out. 
If Captain Burney (who, by the teftimony of his father, perhaps the greateft mufical 
theorift of this or any other age, was able to have done it) had written down, in European 
notes, the concords that thefe people fung; and if thefe concords had been fuch as Euro¬ 
pean ears could tolerate, there would have been no longer doubt of the fact: but, as it is, 
it would, in my opinion, be a rafh judgment to venture to affirm that they did or did not 
understand counterpoint; and therefore I fear that this curious matter muft be confidered 
as {till remaining undecided. 
gines 
