G.D. Pike,
and published in 1873. A brief survey of this journey must here
suffice.

The songs they sang were generally of a religious character,--"slave
_spirituals_,"--and such as have been sung by the American bondmen in
the cruel days of the past. These had originated with the slave; had
sprung spontaneously, so to speak, from souls naturally musical; and
formed, as one eminent writer puts it, "_the only native American
music_."

The strange, weird melody of these songs, which burst upon the
Northern States, and parts of Europe, as a revelation in vocal music,
as a music most thrillingly sweet and soul-touching, sprang then,
strange to say, from a state of slavery; and the habitually minor
character of its tones may well be ascribed to the depression of
feeling, the anguish, that must ever fill the hearts of those who are
forced to lead a life so fraught with woe. This is clearly
exemplified, and the sad story of this musical race is comprehensively
told, in Ps. cxxxvii.:--

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.

"We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

"For there they that carried us away captive required of us
a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth,
saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

"How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"

And yet, ever patient, ever hopeful of final deliverance, they did
sing on and on, until at last the joyful day of freedom dawned upon
them.

To render these songs essentially as they had been rendered in
slave-land came the Jubilee Singers. They visited most of the cities
and large towns of the North, everywhere drawing large and often
overwhelming audiences, creating an enthusiasm among the people rarely
ever before equalled. The cultured and the uncultured were alike
charmed and melted to tears as they listened with a new enthusiasm to
what was a wonderfully new exhibition of the greatness of song-power.
Many persons, it is true, were at first attracted to the concert-hall
by motives of mere curiosity, hardly believing, as they went, that
there could be much to enjoy. These, however, once under the influence
of the singers, soon found themselves yielding fully to the enchanting
beauty of the music; and they would come away saying the half had not
been told. The musical critics, like all others in the audiences,
were so lost in admiration, tha