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Updated: May 27, 2025
The point to which I devoted my chief attention was the selection of the means for producing certain effects, and I carefully considered whether I should express the annihilating stroke of fate that befell the French Emperor in Russia by a beat on the tom-tom or not.
The gong and tom-tom are used by the Dyaks and Malays in war, and for signals at night, and the Dyaks procure them from the Malays. I said that the music struck up, for, rude as the instruments were, they modulate the sound, and keep time so admirably, that it was any thing but inharmonious. A space was now cleared in the centre of the house, and two of the oldest warriors stepped into it.
With the exception of the man at the helm, who sits stolid, minding his business, and one youth who plays the tom-tom, the crew are standing in a ring, gesticulating with their arms and legs, or waving wands and branches of trees. Some have half of their faces smeared with red paint. If a boat passes they greet it with a shout and a sally of wit or ribaldry.
From far and near, up and down the valley, dim, ghostly, shadowy horsemen came darting to join the array. Close behind Red Dog some rabid warrior began a wild war chant, and others took it up. Somewhere along the throng a tom-tom began its rapid, monotonous thump, and here, there, and everywhere the rattles played their weird, stirring accompaniment.
Perhaps we should not be so clean, if we had to bring every bucket of water that we used from the City Square! "Tom-tom; tom-tom; tom-tom"; the little drum sounded louder and louder as the crowd increased. Men and women craned their necks to see who was beating it. The children squirmed their way through the crowd.
When visiting the famous temples of Nikko, in Japan, the author saw a priest sitting before a temple in the open air, beside a collection of prepared pine chips with which he was feeding a small fire upon an open stone slab, and accompanying the burning process by beating at intervals upon a tom-tom.
I had hardly spelled out my own suspicion, when to the measured beatings of the tom-tom, gradually becoming faster, and with a low, weird, tuneless chant, like the voices of the forest, the Indians began to tread a mazy, winding pace, which my slow eyes could not follow, but which in a strange way brought up memories of snaky convolutions about the naked body of some Egyptian serpent-charmer.
Down the pass the faraway beat of a drum was heard. It was the steady throb of the tom-tom rising and falling with rhythmic regularity. "Sun-dance," said the Inspector, as near to excitement as he generally allowed himself. "Piegans." "Where?" said Cameron. "In the sun-dance canyon," answered the Inspector. "I believe in my soul we shall see something now. Must be two miles off. Come on."
The tom-tom beat furiously and the six chiefs leaping up and circling round Germain, struck the air with their tomahawks and cried together "Continue to listen Ye who are braves; Ye who established the Great League, Continue to listen." They gave the peace-pipe to Germain, and again seating themselves in semicircle, gravely passed it from lip to lip.
These instruments are carved from a solid piece of a tree six or eight feet long, most of the interior being extracted through a narrow slit-like aperture two or three inches wide and running nearly the length of the tom-tom. The result is a hollow instrument, giving one or two different notes when struck in different parts which can be heard for many miles.
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