it were by hieroglyphic action, their historical events, their projected enterprises, their hunting, their ambuscades, and their battles, resembling in some respects the Pyrrhic dances of the ancients. Speaking of the prevalence of these dances among the natives of Hayti, Peter Martyr observes that they performed them to the chant of certain metres and ballads, handed down from generation to generation, in which were rehearsed the deeds of their ancestors.

"These rhymes or ballads," he adds, "they call areytos; and as our minstrels are accustomed to sing to the harp and lute, so do they in like manner sing these songs, and dance to the same, playing on timbrels made of shells of certain fishes. These timbrels they call maguey. They have also songs and ballads of love, and others of lamentation or mourning; some also to encourage them to the wars, all sung to tunes agreeable to the matter."

It was for these dances, as has been already observed, that they were so eager to procure hawks'-bells, suspending them about their persons, and keeping time with their sound to the cadence of the singers. This mode of dancing to a ballad has been compared to the dances of the peasants in Flanders during the summer, and to those prevalent throughout Spain to the sound of the castanets, and the wild popular

chants said to be derived from the Moors; but which, in fact, existed before their invasion, among the Goths who overran the Peninsula.*

The earliest history of almost all nations has generally been preserved by rude heroic rhymes and ballads, and by the lays of the minstrels ; and such was the case with the areytos of the Indians. "When a cacique died," says Oviedo, "they sang in dirges his life and actions, and all the good that he had done was recollected. Thus they formed the ballads or areytos which constituted their history."† Some of these ballads were of a sacred character, containing their traditional notions of theology, and the superstitions and fables which comprised their religious creeds. None were permitted to sing these but the sons of caciques, who were instructed in them by their Butios. They were chanted before the people on solemn festivals, like those already described, accompanied by the sound of a kind of drum, made from a hollow tree.‡

Such are a few of the characteristics remaining on record of these simple people, who per

* Mariana, Hist. Esp., lib. v., cap. I.

† Oviedo, Cron. de las Indias, lib. v., cap. I.

Fray Roman. Hist. del Almirante, cap. 61. Peter Martyr, decad. i., lib. ix. Herrera, Hist. Ind., decad. i., lib. iii., cap. 4. Oviedo, lib. v., car. I.