Like all the savage tribes of Africans, they are very fond of the tom-tom, or drum. Those drums are of different sizes, but many are from four to six feet in length, and about ten inches in diameter at one end, but only six or seven at the other. The wood is hollowed out quite thin, and skins of animals are stretched tightly over the ends. The drummer holds the tom-tom slantingly between his legs; and, with two sticks, he beats furiously upon the larger end of the drum, which is held uppermost. Sometimes they beat upon it with their hands. The people form a circle round the tom-tom, and dance and sing, keeping time with it. They often invited me to hear them.
But now I am going to speak to you of a far more curious instrument. It is called by these cannibals the handja; and I never saw it except among their tribes.
Ndiayai was very fond of hearing the handja, and I often went to his shed to hear someone play upon it. Sometimes, on these occasions, Ndiayai would come out surrounded by Queen Mashumba and some of his other wives, and listen for an hour or two to the music of the handja.
I give you a representation of the handja (see p. 78), so you will understand better when I describe it to you.
It consists of a light reed frame, about three feet long, and eighteen inches wide, in which are set, and securely fastened, a number of hollow gourds. The handja I saw contained seven gourds. These gourds are covered by strips of a hard, red wood, found in the forest. These gourds and cylinders, as you see, are of different sizes, so graduated that they form a regular series of notes. Each gourd has a little hole which is covered with a skin thinner than parchment. And what kind of skin do you think it was? It was the skin of the very large spider which abounds in that country, and from which I should not care to receive a bite, it is so poisonous.
The performer sits down, with the frame across his knees, and strikes the strips lightly with a stick. There are two sticks, one of hard wood, the other of much softer wood. The instrument is played on the same principle as a chime of bells, or an instrument used in France, and which, perhaps, some of you have seen, composed of a series of glasses. The tone of the handja is very clear and good, and though their tunes were rude, they played them with considerable skill.
THE HANDJA.
The Fans work iron better than any tribe I met with. They are very good blacksmiths. Their warlike habits have made iron a very necessary article to them. It is very plentiful in their mountainous country.