Their singing, like their instrumental music, has not much “tune” to it, but there is always a stirring rhythm and a certain weird and touching quality, which impressed me the more because I could never quite understand it,—the same elusive charm that characterizes the singing of the negroes of the Southern States. I do not refer to the negro songs composed by white men, which are entirely different, but the melodies that the negro sings at his work. The native songs are of the nature of chants, and turn upon several notes of a minor scale. But it is not quite our minor scale. There is one prominent and characteristic note, which I confess defied me, though it may have been a minor third slightly flat. I found it very difficult to reduce their songs to musical notation. The words of most of the songs are improvised by the leading voice, and have a regular refrain in which all join. But if they wish to sing in chorus, as in their dance-songs, any words will serve the purpose and the same sentence may be repeated for an hour. “Our old cow she crossed the road” were luminous with propriety and sentiment in comparison with the words that they will sometimes sing in endless repetition. “The leopard caught the monkey’s tail,” “The roots grow underneath the ground,” are samples of their songs. Their canoe-songs I like best of all. The rhythm is appropriate and one almost hears the sound of the paddles. They sing nearly all the time as they use the paddle or the oar, and on a long journey they say it makes the hard work easier. If they should take a white man on a journey and, not being his regular workmen, should expect a “dash”—a fee, or present, in African vernacular—the leading voice will sing the white man’s praises on the journey, alluding in particular to his benevolence, while the others all respond, seeking thus by barefaced flattery and good-natured importunity to shame the meanness out of him. Dancing, both with old and young, takes the place in general of our games and sports, except that the men also hunt. The music used is that of the two drums already described, especially the upright one, and they usually sing as they dance. They can scarcely listen to the music without indulging the movements of the dance. Men and women never dance together; and they have nothing like our conventional dances. There is something of the freedom and unrestrained movements of the Italian and Hungarian peasant-dances; yet in comparison with these latter the African dance is a very uncouth performance, though frequently difficult, and extremely grotesque. Its peculiar characteristic is that the feet are no more active than any other part of the body; arms, shoulders, abdomen, head—all the parts and every muscle are set in motion, sometimes including even the eyes and the tongue. Their champions we would call contortionists rather than dancers.