Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/789

Rh usually began with a lively recitative by the best-voiced man of the company, with which the others fell in in harmonious refrain. The simple, endlessly repeated text was constantly taken up anew, and related to a fact not very interesting in itself:" "We are carrying Souza's goods to Kulamushita, cloth, pearls, powder, and brass wire; Souza is rich, Souza will give us good schnapps." Refrain: "Yes, Souza will give us good schnapps." Regular songs do not appear to exist, and the airs that are sung of evenings over the camp-fires are of the same improvised character.

Besides his voice, the negro makes music with whatever will make a noise—two sticks, old fruit-cans, iron articles, or stones. He also has a number of musical instruments that are not to be despised, the best of which, the maximba, would not be unworthy to be called a clavier.

Besides music and songs, the evening circles are enlivened with stories of adventure and occasional animal fables, which I am not able to recall. One story, which was told me by a mulatto woman in Malansh, was evidently an adaptation of a Portuguese nurse's story. In these tales the interposition of an interval between two events is expressed in a very curious manner, as, "And now he waited a month, r-r-r-r-r-. . . and he waited another month, r-r-r-r-r," each trilling with the tongue, which generally lasted about half a minute, answering for the designated interval.

There is not much to be said about the scientific conceptions of the negroes. Most of our clews to their character are derived from their verbal expressions. Among the heavenly bodies they distinguish the sun and moon, the larger planets, and the fixed stars, the latter only in general, without taking consideration of individual stars or particular groups. The larger planets are called wives of the moon, whence it proceeds that chaste Luna is regarded as a man. Little use is made of the rising and setting of the sun to express direction, which is usually described as "up" or "down," according to the course of the streams.

Of minerals, the natives distinguish between stone and earth, and the latter as dry (sand) and moist (mud). Of earths, they speak of red earth, or laterite, and white or gray earth, alluvium. Bog-iron ore, which is abundant, is "the great stone." Among the metals, copper is known; and the word signifying copper is in some of the dialects applied to the moon. Their vocabulary is rich in names of animals and plants. Not one of the plants growing in the plains is