296 COCHINCHINA. 
attracted our attention, whose slow melancholy movement 
breathed that kind of plaintive softness so peculiar to the 
native airs of the Scotch, to Avhich indeed it bore a very close 
resemblance. The voices of the women Vvcre shrill and 
warbling, but some of their cadences were not without 
melody. The instruments at each pause gave a few short 
flourishes, till gradually overpowered by the swelling and 
deafening gong. Knowing nothing of the language, we were 
of course as ignorant of the subject as the majority of an 
English audience is of an Italian opera. In the shed of 
Turon, however, as well as in the theatre of the Haymarket, 
the eye was amused as well as the ear. At each repetition 
of the chorus the three Cochin Chinese graces displayed their 
fine slender shapes in the mazy dance, in which, however, 
the feet were the least concerned. By different gestures of 
the head, body, and arms, they assumed a variety of figures ; 
and all their motions were exactly adapted to the measure of 
the music. The burden of the chorus was not unpleasing, 
and was long recollected on the quarter-deck of the Lion, 
till the novelty which succeeded in China effaced it from the 
memory. In the latter country, however, we saAv no dancing 
neither by men nor women, which makes it probable that 
this part of the Cochinchinese entertainment must be an 
amusement of their own invention, or introduced from the 
western part of India. A tolerably good notion may be col- 
lected of the theatre and the operatic part of the representa- 
tion from the annexed engraving. 
No entrance money is ever expected in the theatres of 
China or Cochinchina. The actors are either hired to play at 
