The aborigines of Australia have a dance in which they imitate the movements of the Kangaroo. The women sing, and produce a rhythmical accompaniment by beating two pieces of wood together; while the men, who represent the Kangaroos, produce sounds peculiar to these animals. The North American Indians have an Eagle Dance, a Bear Dance, and even a Dog Dance. The natives of Kamtschatka have a dance in which they cleverly imitate, not only the attitudes and tricks of the Bear, but also its voice. The peasants in Finland, in the beginning of the present century, still occasionally performed a similar dance, or rather action. The Aleutian Islanders, who have various pantomimic dances executed with masks frightfully ugly, have also a favourite representation in which a sportsman shoots a beautiful bird, and afterwards cries for grief at having killed it; when, suddenly, the beautiful bird revives, changed into a beautiful woman. The sportsman, of course, falls over head and ears in love with her, and thus all ends well.[85] This story is enacted with recitations accompanied by some musical instruments. Next to love and the chase, it is probably war which elicited the first attempts at dramatic music. To recall to the memory by a lively description with gesticulations, the valiant deeds, clever stratagems, and glorious achievements of the warriors after the battle, must have been always a fascinating entertainment to the victorious combatants. The Dyaks in Borneo, who preserve the heads of their slain enemies suspended near their hearths as ornamental trophies, perform a war-dance in which some of the combatants, gaily decorated, cleverly act a scene by seizing swords and handling them in various expressive ways. The Scalp-Dance of the North American Indians, performed in celebration of a victory, may be described as a kind of histrionic entertainment, which generally takes place at night by torchlight. The singular procedure of the Maori warriors in New Zealand in a certain dance, of projecting all of them their tongues simultaneously at fixed intervals, appears to be a pantomimic expression of defiance or contempt for the enemy. The Corroborie Dance of the natives of Australia had perhaps also originally reference to warlike exploits, although this does not appear at once evident to European witnesses. Twenty or more men paint their naked dark bodies to represent skeletons, which they accomplish by drawing white lines across the body with pipe-clay, to correspond with the ribs, and broader ones on the arms, legs, and the head. Thus prepared they perform the Corroborie at night before a fire. The spectators, placed at some distance from them, see only the white skeletons, which vanish and re-appear whenever the dancers turn round. The wild and ghastly action of the skeletons is accompanied by vocal effusions and some rhythmical noise which a number of hidden bystanders produce by beating their shields in regular time.