Description of some new musical instruments

Georg Forster describes some of the new musical instruments that they found.

We likewise found a new musical instrument, consisting of eight, nine, or ten slender reeds, about nine inches long, joined to each other by some fibres of coco-nut core. The length of its reeds seldom varied much, and the long and short ones were placed promiscuously; a notch was formed at the top of each, and the method of playing was only to slide the instrument backwards and forwards along the lips. It had commonly not above four or five different notes, and we never met with one which included a whole octave. Its resemblance to the syrinx, or Pan's flute of the civilized Greeks, dignified it much more than any music which it contained. From the method of playing it, the lovers of music will easily conceive that this divine art is entirely in its infancy among the inhabitants. The vocal part, which is the same as we had already observed it at Ea-oowhe, is very far from being unharmonious, and the women beat time to it by snapping their fingers very exactly; but its whole extent is only of four notes, and therefore cannot admit of any variety. They had likewise a flute of a bamboo-reed, nearly of the thickness of a German flute, which they played with the nostrils, like the Taheitians. They commonly had ornamented it with various little figures, burnt in, and pierced four or five holes in it, whereas the Taheitian flute had but three in all.

pp. 455-456

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