gy all in
one direction, the arms also are raised and inclined towards the head,
the hands usually grasping waddies, boomerangs, or other warlike weapons.
The jump now keeps time with each beat, the dancers at every movement
taking six inches to one side, all being in a connected line, led by the
first. The line however is sometimes doubled or tripled according to
space and numbers; and this gives great effect, for when the front line
jumps to the LEFT, the second jumps to the RIGHT, the third to the LEFT
again, and so on; until the action acquires due intensity, when all
simultaneously and suddenly stop. The excitement which this dance
produces in the savage is very remarkable. However listless the
individual may be, laying perhaps, as usual, half asleep; set him to this
dance, and he is fired with sudden energy, and every nerve is strung to
such a degree that he is no longer to be recognised as the same person
until he ceases to dance, and comes to you again. There can be little
doubt that the corrobory is the medium through which the delights of
poetry are enjoyed, in a limited degree, even by these primitive savages
of New Holland.

(*Footnote. To this end they stretch a skin very tight over the knees,
and thus may be said to use the tympanum in its rudest form, this being
the only instance of a musical instrument that I have seen among them.
Burder says: "By the timbrels which Miriam and the other women played
upon when dancing, we are to understand the tympanum of the ancient
Greeks and Romans, which instrument still bears in the East the name that
it is in Hebrew, namely, doff or diff, whence is derived the Spanish
adufe, the name of the Biscayan tabor. Niebuhr describes this instrument
in his Travels Part 1 page 181. It is a broad hoop, with a skin stretched
over it; on the edge there are generally thin round plates of metal,
which also make some noise when this instrument is held up in one hand
and struck with the fingers of the other hand. Probably no musical
instrument is so common in Turkey as this; for when the women dance in
the harem the time is always beat on this instrument. We find the same
instrument on all the monuments in the hands of the Bacchante. It is also
common among the negroes of the Gold Coast and Slave Coast." Oriental
Customs Volume 1.)

VISIT TO THE LIMESTONE CAVES.

March 18.

As it was necessary to grind some wheat with hand-mills to make up our
supply of flour, I was obliged to r