Contrasting the Congoese with the Goanese, we obtain a measure of difference between the African and the Asiatic.  Both were Portuguese colonies founded about the same time, and under very similar circumstances; both were catechized and Christianized in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; both had governors and palaces, bishops and cathedrals, educational establishments and a large staff of missioners.  But Asia was not so inimical, mentally or bodily, to the European frame as Africa; the Goanese throve after a fashion, the mixed breed became the staple population, and thus it continues till this day.  On the other hand the Hamitic element so completely asserted its superiority over insititious Japheth, that almost every trace has disappeared in a couple of centuries.  There lingers, it is true, amongst the Congoese of the coast-regions a something derived from the olden age, still distinguishing them from the wild people of the interior, and at times they break out naturally in the tongue of their conquerors.  But it requires a practised eye to mark these minutiae.

The Congoese are passably brave amongst themselves; crafty and confined in their views, they carry “knowledge of life” as far as it is required, and their ceremonious intercourse is remarkable and complicated.  They have relapsed into the analphabetic state of their ancestors; they are great at eloquence; and, though without our poetical forms, they have a variety of songs upon all subjects and they improvise panegyrics in honour of chiefs and guests.  Their dances have been copied in Europe.  Without ever inventing the modes of the Greeks, which are still preserved by the Hindoos, they have an original music, dealing in harmony rather than in tune, and there are motives, of course all in the minor key, which might be utilized by advanced peoples; these sons of nature would especially supply material for that recitative which Verdi first made something better than a vehicle for dialogue.  Hence the old missioners are divided in opinion; whilst some find the sound of the “little guitar,” with strings of palm-thread and played with the thumbs of both hands, “very low, but not ungrateful,” others speak of the “hellish harmony” of their neophytes’ bands.  The instrument alluded to is the nsambi or nchambi; four strings are attached to bent sticks springing from the box; it is the wambi of the Shekyanis (Du Chaillu, chap. xii), but the bridge, like that of our violin, gives it an evident superiority, and great care and labour are required in the maker.

This form of the universal marimba is a sounding-board of light wood, measuring eight inches by five; some eight to eleven iron keys, flat strips of thin metal, pass over an upright bamboo bridge, fixed by thongs to the body, and rest at the further end upon a piece of skin which prevents “twanging.”  The tocador or performer brings out soft and pleasing tones with the sides of the thumbs and fingers.  They have drums and the bell-like cymbals called chingufu: