tempted, wonderfully complicated in
detail.

Bororo singing occasionally took the form of a recitative, with the
chorus joining in the refrain--this principally when chanting the merits
of a deceased person, or during some calamity in the _aldeja_, or
village.

[Illustration: Bororo Child showing strong Malay Characteristics.]

The only musical instruments I was able to find in the various
settlements of Bororos I visited consisted chiefly of single, double,
or treble gourds, the latter with perforations at the two ends, used as
wind instruments and producing deep bass notes. The single gourd had a
cane attachment intended to emit shrill high notes. Then there were other
dried gourds filled with pebbles which rattled as they were shaken at the
end of a long handle to which the gourds were fastened.

The cane flutes were slightly more elaborate, with ornaments of rings of
black feathers. There was only one rectangular slit in the centre of the
flute, so that only one note could be produced--as was the case with most
of their rudimentary musical instruments.

CHAPTER XVI

Bororo Legends--The Religion of the Bororos--Funeral Rites

THE Bororos believed in spirits of the mountains and the forest, which
haunted special places in order to do harm to living beings. Those
spirits came out at night. They stole, ill-treated, and killed. In rocks,
said the Bororos, dwelt their ancestors in the shape of parrots. The
Bororos were greatly affected by dreams and nightmares, which they
regarded as events that had actually happened and which generally brought
bad luck. They were often the communications of evil spirits, or of the
souls of ancestors. The Bororos had many superstitions regarding animals,
which they individualized in their legends, giving them human
intelligence--especially the _colibri_ (humming-bird), the macaw, the
monkey, the deer, and the leopard.

The stars, according to these savages, were all Bororo boys. Let me give
you a strange legend concerning them.

"The women of the _aldeia_ had gone to pick Indian corn. The men were out
hunting. Only the old women had remained in the _aldeia_ with the
children. With an old woman was her nephew, playing with a bow and arrow.
The arrows had perforated sticks, which the boy filled with Indian corn.
When the boy had arrived home he had asked his grandmother to make a
kind of _polenta_ with Indian corn. He had invited all the other boys of
the _aldeia_ to