United States or Honduras ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


At sight of the flame a fiendish shout of exultation rent the air, the tom-toms sounded, the people clapped their hands with delight as the evidence of their murderous work burst on their view; whilst the English spectators of this sad scene withdrew, bearing deep compassion in their hearts, to philosophize as best they might on a custom so fraught with horror, so incompatible with reason, and so revolting to human sympathy.

Your habit of turning round and round to the sound of horns and tom-toms, your fondness for pigments and powders, the way in which you love to subjugate yourself to the rich warrior who has captured you in marriage, and the quickness with which your taste in feathered head-dresses varies all these things suggest touches of kinship; and you remember that in the fundamental principles of your nature you are quite identical.

The Council Pipe To the student of Indian affairs it might at first seem that the gathering of the great chiefs from all the Indian tribes, wearing war-shirt and war-bonnet, carrying their coup sticks, tomahawks, spears, bows and arrows, guns and tom-toms, would necessarily reemphasize to the Indian the glory of his former prestige, and this impression would gather such momentum that deleterious results would follow; but an alert and studious effort was always manifest to inculcate in the Indian mind that this last great council of the chiefs had for its dominant idea the welfare of the Indian, that he should live at peace with his fellows and all men, and the making of a lasting historic record of the fast-fading manners and customs of the North American Indian.

Directly the boats rounded the last point, which had before concealed their approach, the red flag was hoisted above the fort, and at the same time the loud sounds of the beating of tom-toms and drums commenced, continuing incessantly, as if to intimidate the English tars and induce them to pull back again to their ships. The men laughed. "What a row them niggers do kick up!

Before me was the olla-podrida of touring fashion and fellaheen squalor; the smell of camels and attar of roses; the polyglot chatter of European pleasure-seekers and the tom-toms of Arab pilgrims. Then once more I saw her. But still I did not see her face. I suppose there were other persons with her. I did not notice. I did notice the salient thing.

The two wounded men, though partially disabled and unable to crawl, could still use their rifles; and the little party kept up so hot a fire that, though the enemy were massed from twenty to thirty yards away, they could not be brought to unite in a general attack; not even by the shouts and yells of their comrades behind, and a furious beating of tom-toms.

The cries of the natives, the shouting and encouraging of the priests, the deafening noise of the tom-toms, mixed with the piercing harsh music of the country, the hurling and tossing of the poor little infants into the water, and the splashing and contention of the ravenous creatures as they tore them limb from limb, within a few feet of their unnatural parents the whole sea tinged with blood, and strewed with flowers!

At last, a few days before the time M. Peyron had calculated, as Felix was sitting under the big shady tree in his garden one morning, while Muriel, now worn out with hope deferred, lay within her hut alone with Mali, a sound of tom-toms and beaten palms was heard on the hill-path. The natives around fell on their faces or fled. It announced the speedy approach of Tu-Kila-Kila.

He doubted that it was one of his hut mates returning from the festivities, for he still heard the wild cries of the dancers and the din of the tom-toms in the village street without. Who could it be that took such pains to conceal his approach? As the presence came within reach of him the ape-man bounded lightly to the opposite side of the hut, his spear poised ready at his side.

Silence in the midst of the beating of heathen tom-toms becomes enervating and appalling; it may make a man insane. We are learning the value of team-work in missions. What one man alone could never accomplish, he can do with the help of others.