e are expressed in the Mavortian speech by chords, or
discords, produced by using two or more mouths at once. A few music
types will illustrate this, by examples, better than any verbal
description can do.

[Illustration: {Music} A tree. Fruit. A fruit-tree. Do. in leaf and
blossom. Do. in leaf and fruit. A dead fruit-tree]

The signification of these chords is by no means arbitrary; but, on the
contrary, their application is according to fixed rules and according to
aesthetic principles; so that the highest poetry of these people becomes,
in the very process of utterance, the finest music; while the utterance
of base sentiments, or of fustian, becomes, by the very nature of the
language, discordant, or at best vapid and unmelodious.

It will readily be imagined that I was a very long while in learning to
understand a speech so entirely different in all its principles from our
earthly tongues. And when I began to comprehend it, as spoken by my new
friends, I was unable, having but one mouth, to express anything but the
simplest ideas. However, I had Yankee ingenuity enough to supply in some
measure my want of lateral mouths.

My captor daily allowed me more and more freedom, and at length
permitted me to wander freely over the whole island, simply taking the
precaution to send a boy with me as a companion and guide, in case I
should lose my way. In one of these rambles I discovered a swamp of
bamboos, and by the aid of my pocket-knife cut down several and carried
them home. Then, with great difficulty and interminable labor, I managed
to make a sort of small organ, a very rude affair, with six kinds of
pipes, six of each kind. A bamboo pipe, with a reed tongue of the same
material, or even one with a flute action, was not so sweet in tone as
the voice of my friends; but they saw what I was trying to do, and
could, after growing familiar with the sound of my pipes, decipher my
meaning. The astonishment of my captor and his family at finding that
their monster Batrachian could not only express simple ideas with his
one mouth, but all the most complex notions by pieces of bamboo fastened
together and held on his knees before him, was beyond measure. From this
time my progress in learning their speech was very rapid; and within a
year from the completion of my organ I could converse fluently with
them. Of course, I had not mastered all the intricacies of their tongue,
and even up to the time of my leaving them I felt tha