which completes the
musical passage.

[Illustration: Playing the "ciniloi".

_p._ 178.]

It must not be thought, however, that song as it is known among the
Sakais is the melodious sound we are in the habit of considering as
such. With them it is an emission of notes, generally guttural ones
which are capriciously alternated without any variety of tune and which
in their integrity fail to express any musical thought.

The women sing with greater monotony, but more sweetly, than the men.
Often they join in groups singing and dancing, and this, I believe, is
the gayest moment of their lives and to this honest pleasure they will
abandon themselves with rapture, forgetting the fatigue of the day. Then
feminine coquetry triumphs before the other girls and the young men.

When night falls the air becomes cool, and even cold later on. Having
finished their evening meal the old folk and the children stretch
themselves out to sleep round the fire which is always kept lighted. The
women sit about weaving bags, mats and hats, their work illuminated by
flaring torches composed of sticks and leaves covered with the resin
found in the forest. To the extent permitted by their poor language they
chat and jest among themselves, laughing noisily the while.

The young men are scattered around preparing their arrows for the next
day's hunt, dipping them into the poisonous decoction when it is well
heated.

It is not long before work gets tedious to the girls. They jump up and
daub their faces in a grotesque manner. With palm leaves they mark out a
space of some yards square that has to be reserved for the dancers, and
then commences the women's song to which is soon added the stronger
voices of the men. At times the chorus is accompanied by an orchestra of
those instruments that the Sakais know how to play.

They will take two bamboo canes of six, eight or more inches in
diameter, being careful to select a male and female reed. These they
beat violently one against the other, the result being a deep note with
prolonged vibrations which awake the forest echoes but not the old
people and the children who are sleeping.

There is also the _krob_ a very primitive kind of lyre that consists of
a short but stout piece of bamboo on which two vegetable fibres are
tightly drawn. The plectrum used by the player is equally primitive
being a fish-bone, a thorn or a bit of wood. The sound caused by grating
the two strings is more harmonious t