Note 92 — JOURNAL. (continued 3)

The simplest of these stringed instruments, and two kinds of marimba, have found a place in the Jesuit Bonnanis’ Gabinetto Armonica, printed at Rome, 1722, and dedicated to Holy King David. The great marimba consists of a large wooden frame; in which a number of hollow canes, about nine inches long, are placed, with the mouth upwards; across these open ends are laid pieces of sonorous wood, which being struck with another yield a pleasant sound, like the wooden armonicas of Malacca. The whole is suspended round the neck, like the old man’s psaltery in the Dance of Death. Each nation of negroes has its own peculiar instrument, which its exiles have introduced here. A king of each tribe is annually elected, to whom his people are obedient, something in the way of the gipsy monarchy. Before 1806 the election took place with great ceremony and feasting, and sometimes fighting, in the Campo de Sta. Anna; and the king of the whole was seated during the day in the centre of the square under a huge state umbrella. This festival is now abolished.