Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/219

 pipes, as well as guitars of a simple make, were to be found amongst the ordinary population, but all the larger and more elaborate instruments were confined to the royal band, consequently I was unable to get hold of any proper specimen of this class of native handicraft for my collection. In nearly all settlements small drums are kept in the council-hut, and are beaten on the occasion of any successful hunting-excursion, and at funerals.

The Marutse-Mabunda melodies are somewhat monotonous, but they are very numerous, and are of a character that make it evident that a little cultivation would soon effect a decided improvement in them. Of course the ordinary manipulation of the different instruments is purely mechanical; but amongst the king’s zither-players I observed two grey-headed old men, who really displayed some amount of taste. As they hummed I could hear that their voices were precisely in time with their instruments, gradually sinking to a whisper in the pianissimo part, and as gradually rising to a forte when the tune required it. Their performance was a pleasant contrast to the discordant shouts of the head drummer, who strove to compete with the noise of his own huge instrument.

There is one more instrument which I much regret to have met with in the Marutse country at all, but which must not be omitted from the enumeration. I allude to the war-drum. In the council-hall there were four of these ghastly-looking objects. The skins were painted all over with red, to represent blood, and they were filled with fragments of dry flesh and bones, these bones being principally the toes and fingers of the live children of