signs and still more
rough incisions on the blowpipes, quivers and the women's combs and
their earrings.

Bamboo is the principal material used in making their hunting
requisites, their personal ornaments and their domestic utensils.

The combs are large and their teeth vary from 2 to 4 in number. Across
them are carved, more or less deeply cut, various signs, some of an
angular form that display a pretty correct geometrical precision and
others in curved lines, all of which are intended by the several artists
to represent birds' heads, snakes or plants. Sometimes this intention is
expressed sufficiently clearly; at others there is need of
interpretation.

The plants reproduced in this way are always medicinal or those to which
superstition attributes some virtue, so that the primitive art is in a
great measure due to the desire of possessing an amulet.

The same designs are repeated on the ear-rings, blowpipes and quivers.
The Sakais are very proud of these incisions and he who has the most
upon his weapon enjoys a certain fame. As a natural consequence this
makes him somewhat jealous of his finely decorated cane, much more so
than he is of his wife, that for her part gives him no motive for
cultivating the yellow demon's acquaintance.

Up to the time I am writing the Sakais' artistic genius has not passed
this limit, unless we reckon the horrible paintings upon their faces and
bodies, but this branch of art--it may seem irreverent, though none the
less true, to say so--brings to the mind dainty toilet-rooms and cosy
boudoirs in other parts of the world, in the very heart of civilization,
where its devotees think to beautify (but often damage) Nature.

Oh! what a chorus of silvery voices are calling me too, a savage!

* * * * *

The Sakais like music but nearly always the notes are accompanied by a
dancing movement, sometimes lightly as if to mark the time, but at
others they kick their legs about so furiously, at the same time
twisting and writhing their bodies in such a strange series of
contortions that an uninitiated looker-on would surely receive the
impression that they were suffering from spasmodic pains in the stomach,
whereas in reality they are only imitating the wriggling of a serpent.

The woman is particularly fond of dancing and with it she measures the
cadencies of her own songs and gives point to the words themselves
whilst her companions repeat a sort of chorus