We have not quite done with these tables. There are two great resources of a people besides work—love and war. "If music be the food of Love, play on." But will playing on the instruments of Java and other islands of those warm seas conduce to the object? The gamelan, or set of native band instruments, has one stringed instrument, several flageolets, a number of wood and metal harmonicons and inverted bronze bowls, all played with mallets: there are also gongs of various sizes, bells and a drum. The metal harmonicon is known in Javanese language as the gambang, and I have no better name to propose. The leader's instrument is the two-stringed fiddle (rebab), almost exactly the same as the Siamese sie-saw, which is also admirably named. Among the gambangs at the Exposition is a wooden harmonicon with twenty bars, and seven bronze harmonicons with bars varying greatly in size and shape, and consequently in tone, and in number from eight to twenty-one in an instrument. The mallets also vary in weight. The bonang is an instrument with inverted bronze bowls resting on ratans and struck with mallets. They are of various sizes and thickness, and corresponding tone and quality, and are arranged in sets of fourteen, two rows of seven each, on a low bench like a settee. They vary in one from twenty to twenty-four centimètres in diameter, and in the other from twenty-seven to thirty-two. They are intended, doubtless, to agree with the chromatic scale of the island, but are faulty on the fourth and seventh, as it seems to me, and yet, contrary to Raffles, Lay and other writers, are not pentatonic, in which the fourth and seventh are rejected altogether and no semi-tones are used. There is no doubt that the pentatonic is the musical scale of all Malaysia, and probably of all China; and none also that the diatonic, almost universal in Europe, is the musical scale of portions of India. What conclusions of ethnologic import may be drawn from this cannot here be more than suggested, but the latter fact seems to bear upon the association of the Hindoos with ourselves in the great Aryan family, Our do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do correspond with the Hindoo sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa, and the intervals are the same—two semi-tones, of which the Malaysian is destitute. The Hindoos have also terms in their language for the tonic, mediant and dominant, so that they know something of harmony, of which the Malays seem quite ignorant.
The flageolets from Java are all made on the principle of the boy's elder whistle, but have finger-holes—generally six, but sometimes only four. Two bamboo jewsharps—as I suppose I must call them—about a foot long, and with a string to fasten to the ear, as it seems, are much like two from Fiji in the Smithsonian. There are plenty of drums from Amboyna, Timor and the islands adjacent. The most unpromising and curious of all, however, is the anklong of Sumatra, which is all of bamboo, and has neither finger-holes, keys, strings nor parchment. Three bamboo tubes, closed below, are suspended vertically, so that studs at their lower ends rattle in holes in a horizontal bamboo. This causes them to emit musical sounds of a pitch proportioned to their length, as in an organ-pipe. The respective lengths of the three tubes are as one, two and four, so that the note of two is an octave graver than one, and that of four an octave graver still. Thus, when they are shaken the sounds are in accord. Twelve similar sets of three each are suspended from a single bar, and their lengths are so proportioned that they sound the musical scale—the three in the first frame, we will say, sounding the tenor C, the middle C and the C in the third space in the treble clef; the next set the corresponding D's above, and so on. It really does not sound so badly as one might suppose.
Here is a table, conchological, entomological and ornithological, which might stay us a while if we were making a catalogue. A conch-shell twenty inches long and ten in diameter will do for a sample—not a small gasteropod! They do not excel us so much in butterflies as I had expected, but some of the beetles are fearful things—six inches long, and with veritable arms on their heads each five inches long, with elbow-joint, wrist and two claws on the end of a single finger. Next is a praying mantis, a foot long and with double-jointed arms like the beetles,
That lifts his paws most parson-like, and thence
By simple savages, through mere pretence,
Is reckoned quite a saint amongst the vermin.
Other tables have weapons, shoes, table-furniture and knickknacks.
After this environment we have small space for the trophy itself. It is gorgeous with tiger and leopard skins, and with the weapons of the hill and maritime tribes under the Dutch sway, and a profusion of the ruder implements of the less accessible regions whose inhabitants only occasionally show themselves in the settlements. We see in this most interesting collection spoons and knives made from the leg-bones of native buffaloes and of deer; wooden battleaxes with inserted blades of jade; spears of bamboo and of cocoawood tip-hardened in the fire; arrows of reed with poisoned wooden tips; swords of dark and heavy cocoawood; shields of wood hewed with patient care from the solid log; wooden clubs; water-jars of a single section of bamboo and holding twelve gallons; gourd bottles, grass slippers, bark clothing, plaintain hats, cows'-tail plumes; and a host more which may be omitted. On the various faces of the structure and upon the steps are profusely arranged the various objects, over which the canopy of palm gracefully towers.
All that has been described occupies the central space beneath the dome. Around it and occupying the corners are a thousand specimens of wood, canes, fibres, seeds, gum, wax, resins, teas, hideous theatrical figures, savage weapons, rich fabrics, filigrain jewelry and tea-services. Here also are pigs of tin from regions famous for it twenty centuries ago, blocks of native building stones, minerals, ores and agates. Here are models of mining-works, smelting-sheds, sugar-houses, plans and maps.
On one side, occupying a very modest space, are contributions from Guiana, exemplifications of the habits, methods and productions of the country—manioc-strainers and baskets, river-boats, animals, woods, minerals, fruits and tobacco. Figures of a negro and negress of Paramaibo propped against the counter seem utterly lost at the sights around.
Edward H. Knight.