DANCING BY MOONLIGHT. 
321 
maidens separated into parties, the maidens near 
the drummers, and the young men at a distance of 
some twenty paces around them. A circle is then 
formed. The ladies here choose their own partners, 
instead of waiting to be chosen. A maiden skips 
up awkwardly to the drummer, then glides off to 
the side of the young men, and touches the gentle- 
man with whom she wishes to dance, and returns. 
The young man does not immediately accept, for 
two or three minutes elapse after he has been 
touched ere he starts off to join the lady who has 
honoured him in the presence of a hundred admiring 
or jealous spectators. They join, turning first face 
to face, then back to back, then face to the drum- 
mers, in the most lively style. The young men are 
dressed in their tobes, and throw them up and round 
so as to produce a moving circle, as women might 
do with their petticoats; but not moving their bodies 
so much as their circling tobes : this is the grand 
grace of the dance. Then there are parties of men 
and women dancing together ; but the men with 
men. and women with women. The women trip up 
awkwardly, but modestly, to where the men are 
placed, and then fall back ; upon which the men 
pursue them violently, overtaking them before they 
get to their places, and throwing their tobes around 
them : but there is nothing indelicate in all this. 
On the contrary, the whole dance is quite a pattern of 
modesty to the Europeans, the Arabs, and the Moors, 
— to these latter especially, whose dance, as intro- 
YOL. II. Y 
