Besides those which have been noticed, other antique wind instruments
of the Indians are mentioned by historians; but the descriptions given
of them are too superficial to convey a distinct notion as to their
form and purport. Several of these barbarous contrivances scarcely
deserve to be classed with musical instruments. This may, for
instance, be said of certain musical jars or earthen vessels producing
sounds, which the Peruvians constructed for their amusement. These
vessels were made double; and the sounds imitated the cries of animals
or birds. A similar contrivance of the Indians in Chili, preserved in
the museum at Santiago, is described by the traveller S. S. Hill as
follows:――“It consists of two earthen vessels in the form of our
india-rubber bottles, but somewhat larger, with a flat tube from four
to six inches in length, uniting their necks near the top and slightly
curved upwards, and with a small hole on the upper side one third of
the length of the tube from one side of the necks. To produce the
sounds the bottles were filled with water and suspended to the bough
of a tree, or to a beam, by a string attached to the middle of the
curved tube, and then swung backwards and forwards in such a manner as
to cause each end to be alternately the highest and lowest, so that
the water might pass backwards and forwards from one bottle to the
other through the tube between them. By this means soothing sounds
were produced which, it is said, were employed to lull to repose the
drowsy chiefs who usually slept away the hottest hours of the day. In
the meantime, as the bottles were porous, the water within them
diminished by evaporation, and the sound died gradually away.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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