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MUSIC OF SAVAGE NATIONS. 231 |
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It is improbable, however, that all nations went the same road in these discoveries. Accident had much to do with it. The conch shell, among a ^ribe near the sea, the horn, with a hunting people, and, with people situated near the bamboo forests, the " pans pipes," would be the first of instruments. Instruments of the order of flutes, were also of easy fabrication, and the knowledge that they are so wide-spread among savages all the world over, is internal evidence that they were "natural" instruments.
"Without sketching further the probable progress of musical invention, we shall now describe some of the instruments and songs used by the people of the world who are yet in a state of nature. But first let us mention some instruments, which have been handed down to us from an immensely remote and ante-civilized period.
The antiquarians in classifying the progress of pre-historic races from their earliest emergence from barbarism, have called that age, when the use of metal became first known,—the Bronze Age; as at that time smelting not being known, the use of iron was not understood, and metal implements were fashioned of copper, which could be beaten by the hammer (of stone) into the required shape, even when cold.
Of this mysterious epoch, a most interesting relic has been discovered, in the shape of a musical instrument. In a sepulchre, in a deep ravine, in Schleswig, were found very recently, a number of ornaments of bronze and gold (silver as well |
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