The Makooa are fond of music and dancing, and are easily made happy with the sound of the tom-tom, yet, like all savages, their unvaried tunes and motions soon fatigue European attention. They have a favourite instrument, called 'Ambira,' the notes of which are very simple, yet harmonious, sounding to the ear, when skilfully managed, like the changes upon bells. It is formed by a number of thin bars of iron, of different lengths, highly tempered, and set in a row on a hollow case of wood, about five inches square, closed on three sides, and is generally played upon with a piece of quill. One of these instruments, which I brought to England, has twenty of these bars. There is another described in Porchas, that had only nine, which also differs in some other respects from the one I have just mentioned. As the description of this in old English is characteristic, I shall here give it to the reader.—"Another instrument they have called also 'Ambira,' all of iron wedges, flat and narrow, a span long, tempered in the fire to differing sounds. They are but nine set in a rew, with the ends in a piece of wood as in the necke of a viole, and
hollow, on which they play with their thumbe nailes, which they weare long therefore, as lightly as men with us on the virginals, and is better musicke."
I have given in the Appendix a vocabulary of the language of the Makooa, to which, in a second column, I have added that of the Monjou, a people respecting which I have already furnished all the scanty information I had the means of obtaining.[1] It remains for me to remark, that the latter appear to be of a milder nature than the Makooa, but this impression I may have received from having seen their traders only. I have also given a few words taken from John Dos Santos,[2] who gives them as part of the language generally spoken at Zimbaoa, the
- ↑ I perceived that some of the settlers were extremely jealous of the attention I paid to the natives, and had not the Governor liberally assisted me, I should latterly have been scarcely permitted to speak to them.
- ↑ Vide Histoire de l'Ethiopie Orient: par C. R. Père Jean dos Santos. Paris, 1684. A translation from the Portuguese by G. Charpy.
