In order to give them a more favourable opinion of English amusements, and to leave their minds fully impressed with the deepest sense of our superior attainments, I directed some fireworks to be got ready; and, after it was dark, played them off in the presence of Feenou, the other chiefs, and a vast concourse of their people.  Some of the preparations we found damaged; but others of them were in excellent order, and succeeded so perfectly, as to answer the end I had in view.  Our water and sky-rockets, in particular, pleased and astonished them beyond all conception; and the scale was now turned in our favour.

This, however, seemed only to furnish them with an additional motive to proceed to fresh exertions of their very singular dexterity; and our fireworks were no sooner ended, than a succession of dances, which Feenou had got ready for our entertainment, began.  As[160] a prelude to them, a band of music, or chorus of eighteen men, seated themselves before us, in the centre of the circle, composed by the numerous spectators, the area of which was to be the scene of the exhibitions.  Four or five of this band had pieces of large bamboo, from three to five or six feet long, each managed by one man, who held it nearly in a vertical position, the upper end open, but the other end closed by one of the joints.  With this close end, the performers kept constantly striking the ground, though slowly, thus producing different notes, according to the different lengths of the instruments, but all of them of the hollow or base sort; to counteract which, a person kept striking quickly, and with two sticks, a piece of the same substance, split, and laid along the ground, and, by that means, furnishing a tone as acute as those produced by the others were grave.  The rest of the band, as well as those who performed upon the bamboos, sung a slow and soft air, which so tempered the harsher notes of the above instruments, that no bye-stander, however accustomed to hear the most perfect and varied modulation of sweet sounds, could avoid confessing the vast power, and pleasing effect, of this simple harmony.

[Footnote 160:  Mr Andersen’s account of the night dances being much fuller than Captain Cook’s, the reader will not be displeased that it has been adopted.—­D.]

The concert having continued about a quarter of an hour, twenty women entered the circle.  Most of them had, upon their heads, garlands of the crimson flowers of the China rose, or others; and many of them had ornamented their persons with leaves of trees, cut with a deal of nicety about the edges.  They made a circle round the chorus, turning their faces toward it, and began by singing a soft air, to which responses were made by the chorus in the same tone; and these were repeated alternately.  All this while, the women accompanied their song with several very graceful motions of their hands toward their faces, and in other directions at the same time, making constantly