At the top of the street there is a native 'tamasha' with people singing and beating tom-toms; half-way down the street there are stone-throwing and firing, and at the bottom of the street there are people, Europeans and Natives, shopping!"

Veteran bandsmen played the regimental march; casual minstrels blew conches or banged tom-toms; and when at last the ambulance waggons moved off, drawn by oxen that wore blue bead necklaces, and marigolds over their ears, one had the proud satisfaction of feeling that the most perfect organisation in the world could not have given our fine fellows a reception more after their own hearts.

Nobody suspected that the bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe.

I had reason to ask the same question that evening, as we sat in the cool verandah, watching the fireflies flicker about the tree-tops, and listening to the weary din of the tom-toms which came from all sides of the Savanna save our own, drowning the screeching and snoring of the toads, and even, at times, the screams of an European band, which was playing a 'combination tune,' near the Grand Stand, half a mile off.

Furthermore, our savage helpers determined to make the night hideous with cries, tom-toms, and drums, either to discourage the visits of hostile Indians or jaguars, or for the purpose of exorcising the demons brought by the white men, or else to cheer up their families, who were undoubtedly hiding in the jungle near by.

You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling thunder of the big doobla or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of innumerable tom-toms.

Not unfrequently dancing boys or girls are in attendance, and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a squeaking fiddle, or a twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and ear-piercing songs from the dusky prima donna, makes night hideous, until the grey dawn peeps over the dark forest line.

Along with the elephant we had a line of about one hundred coolies, and several men with drums and tom-toms.

The living are hardly better off, depressed as they are by four years of sham patriotism, circus-parades, tom-toms, threats, braggings, hatreds, informers, trials for treason, and summary executions.

[Illustration: A "ZIGRI" IN GWARJAK] A horn, a lute, and half a dozen tom-toms accompanied the dance.

Together they galloped over the desert sands; together they visited the Saharan villages, hidden in the groves of date palms behind the brown earthen walls of the oasis; together watched the burning sunsets of Africa; at meal-times they met in the hotel; in the evenings they sat upon the verandah, and heard the Zouaves singing in chorus, the distant murmur of the tom-toms.

When one was thrown, the victor's friends shouted in triumph and sang and danced about him to the music of tom-toms, while the backers of the loser met the demonstrations with ridicule.

A band of singsong girls gently beat their tom-toms, and carolled in soft and soothing strains.

Chapters from A solo in tom-toms. Chap.

Chapters from A solo in tom-toms. SEE FOWLER, GENE.

Chapters from A solo in tom-toms. SEE FOWLER, GENE.

Chapters from A solo in tom-toms. Chap.

Chapters from A solo in tom-toms. SEE FOWLER, GENE.

Chapters from A solo in tom-toms. SEE FOWLER, GENE.

Chapters from A solo in tom-toms. SEE FOWLER, GENE.

Here we were placed in passes, with great caution and mystery, by the shikari and his chief-of-the-staffthe "oldest inhabitant" of Vernaboug; and here we sat in the morning stillness until a distant clamour and the faint beating of tom-toms afar off made us sit up more warily, and watch eagerly for the expected bear.

The yells increase, and the tom-toms, vigorously banged, seem calculated to fuss any self-respecting bear into fits.

Now and again, lazily, I lean back to watch the witless hoverings of a big butterfly, or sleepily listen to the increasing sound of the tom-toms and the yells of the beaters, whose voices, as those of demons of the pit, rend the peaceful air and add to my sense of Olympian aloofness!

Begone dull slothlet me continue "As the sound of the beaters swells upon the ear, and the thunder of the tom-toms grows more insistent, the keen-eyed sportsman grasps more firmly the lever of his four-barrelled Nordenfeldt and prepares to play upon the bears his hail of stinging missiles.

It was on a Sabbath afternoon that a band of Choctaws having just played a game of racquette behind the city and a similar game being about to end between the white champions of two rival faubourgs, the beating of tom-toms, rattling of mules' jawbones and sounding of wooden horns drew the populace across the fields to a spot whose present name of Congo Square still preserves a reminder of its old barbaric pastimes.