sorts extravagantly, as if in compensation, to a fine
tone-carving that divides up the tone-interval into fractions
so much less than the semitone that our ears are almost
indifferent to them, and are at first inclined to deny their
existence. This minute division of the tone, or step, and
neglect at the same time of the broader harmonic intervals,
reminds one of work in which the artist charges his picture
with unimportant detail, while failing in attention to the
strong outlines. Among its merits we must not forget to
mention a certain quality of tone-color which inheres in the
Hawaiian tongue and which greatly tends to the enhancement of
Hawaiian music, especially when thrown into rhythmic forms.

The first thing, then, to repeat, that will strike the
auditor on listening to this primitive music will be its lack
of melody. The voice goes wavering and lilting along like a
canoe on a rippling ocean.

[Illustration: PLATE XVIII
HALA FRUIT BUNCH AND DRUPE WITH A "LEI"
(PANDANUS ODORATISSIMUS)]

[Page 171]
Then, of a sudden, it swells upward, as if lifted by some
wave of emotion; and there for a time it travels with the
same fluctuating movement, soon descending to its old
monotone, until again moved to rise on the breast of some
fresh impulse. The intervals sounded may be, as already said,
a third, or a fifth, or a fourth; but the whole movement
leads nowhere; it is an unfinished sentence. Yet, in spite of
all these drawbacks and of this childish immaturity, the
amateur and enthusiast finds himself charmed and held as if
in the clutch of some Old-World spell, and this at what
others will call the dreary and monotonous intoning of the
savage.

In matters that concern the emotions it is rarely possible to
trace with certainty the lines that lead up from effect to
cause. Such is the nature of art. If we would touch the cause
which lends attractiveness to Hawaiian music, we must look
elsewhere than to melody. In the belief of the author the
two elements that conspire for this end are rhythm and
tone-color, which comes of a delicate feeling for