e been quite at a loss
to discover any such foundation for many that I have heard lately, and
which have appeared to me extraordinarily wild and unaccountable. The way
in which the chorus strikes in with the burthen, between each phrase of
the melody chanted by a single voice, is very curious and effective,
especially with the rhythm of the rowlocks for accompaniment. The high
voices all in unison, and the admirable time and true accent with which
their responses are made, always make me wish that some great musical
composer could hear these semi-savage performances. With a very little
skilful adaptation and instrumentation, I think one or two barbaric chants
and choruses might be evoked from them that would make the fortune of an
opera.

The only exception that I have met with, yet among our boat voices to the
high tenor which they seem all to possess is in the person of an
individual named Isaac, a basso profondo of the deepest dye, who
nevertheless never attempts to produce with his different register any
different effects in the chorus by venturing a second, but sings like the
rest in unison, perfect unison, of both time and tune. By-the-by, this
individual _does_ speak, and therefore I presume he is not an ape,
ourang-outang, chimpanzee, or gorilla; but I could not, I confess, have
conceived it possible that the presence of articulate sounds, and the
absence of an articulate tail, should make, externally at least, so
completely the only appreciable difference between a man and a monkey, as
they appear to do in this individual 'black brother.' Such stupendous long
thin hands, and long flat feet, I did never see off a large quadruped of
the ape species. But, as I said before, Isaac _speaks_, and I am much
comforted thereby.

You cannot think (to return to the songs of my boatmen) how strange some
of their words are: in one, they repeatedly chanted the 'sentiment' that
'God made man, and man makes'--what do you think?--'money!' Is not that a
peculiar poetical proposition? Another ditty to which they frequently
treat me they call Caesar's song; it is an extremely spirited war-song,
beginning 'The trumpets blow, the bugles sound--Oh, stand your ground!' It
has puzzled me not a little to determine in my own mind whether this title
of Caesar's song has any reference to the great Julius, and if so what may
be the negro notion of him, and whence and how derived. One of their songs
displeased me not a little, for it embodie