The Love of Dancing 
47 
eral tenor, takes cliief place: — “The whites have a native country; the 
blacks also have one, but the mulatto searches for one in vain, he seeks 
and finds none. Poor is the man, contemptible is the man who has no 
native country: the mulatto has none.” 
171. Their mental and physical indolence, in short their collective 
intellectual powers that stand on a very low level, allow of the negroes 
being endowed with but a few good qualities, among which their un- 
limited gratitude shines forth as the most brilliant. Impelled by it, 
they readily and willingly offer their lives for those to whom they be- 
lieve they are indebted, though in contrast with this beautiful and chief 
characteristic, the unbounded thirst for revenge which only too often 
seeks and finds satisfaction in the most awful sufferings of their vic- 
tims, is very striking. Xot only in connection with his physique but 
also in regard to disposition a marked difference is shown between the 
creole negro and the one brought out straight from Africa: the latter is 
reserved and mischievous, the former ever cheerful, light-hearted and 
ready for a joke. Physical listlessness and laziness, especially among 
the women, have already had to make way for a certain elasticity and 
mobility that lends a particular charm to the black figure when one sees 
her, with her striking white pearly teeth and sparkling eyes, hurrying 
through the streets in a white muslin costume. Their figures become 
ridiculous however when in their apish efforts to clothe themselves in 
the most absurd European fashions with glaring colours, they make real 
caricatures of themselves: unfortunately this is the case with nine- 
tenths of them. 
172. With the onset of evening, there sound from every quarter the 
monotonous notes of drum and tambourine, instruments which passion- 
ately excite the indolent muscles of the Africans and their descendants 
who always dearly love a dance: they will keep it up until break of day. 
1 was often witness of their crude native dances which nevertheless are 
only danced by immigrants and former slaves: the creole negroes are 
ashamed of them, and are only happy when indulging in country-dances, 
quadrilles etc. The native dance as a rule takes place in the open. 
Only let the ponderous fist strike the drum and holiday-makers and 
working people will swarm from all sides to the seductive call of the in- 
strument, — if one may call a barrel or hollow tree-trunk covered with 
cow, bullock, goat or sheep skin by the name of instrument — and a 
crowd of hundreds is collected in no time. In measured beat and slow, 
the ladies, draped in white muslin, and adorned with huge red-coral 
chains, trip it with the men in circles advancing and retiring: the ex- 
citement of the musicians, for in most cases the triangle or a violin is 
yet added to the drum, becomes aroused, and proportionately with it 
the action of the partners. The blows of the drummer fall ever quicker 
and harder on the skin which possibly only withstands the treatment 
by virtue of its being so thick: the dancers are soon transported with 
wild bacchanalian lust, when what with a series of disgusting jerks, 
“winds” and contortions they resemble Furies rather than human be- 
ings. Put this is still too tame for the spectators, the gesticulations 
and distortions are not sufficiently out-of-the-common. All of a sudden. 
