244 
A FUNERAL DANCE. 
[chap. VI. 
which he blew occasionally in the height of his excite¬ 
ment. These instruments produced a sound partaking 
of the braying of a donkey and the screech of an owl. 
Crowds of men rushed round and round in a sort of 
“ galop infernel,” brandishing their lances and iron¬ 
headed maces, and keeping tolerably in line five or six 
deep, following the leader who headed them, dancing 
backwards. The women kept outside the line, dancing 
a slow stupid step, and screaming a wild and most 
inharmonious chaunt, while a long string of young 
girls and small children, their heads and necks rubbed 
with red ochre and grease, and prettily ornamented with 
strings of beads around their loins, kept a very good 
line, beating the time with their feet, and jingling the 
numerous iron rings which adorned their ankles to keep 
time with the drums. One woman attended upon the 
men, running through the crowd with a gourd full of 
wood-ashes, handfuls of which she showered over their 
heads, powdering them like millers; the object of the 
operation I could not understand. The “ premiere 
danseuse” was immensely fat; she had passed the 
bloom of youth, but, “ malgre ” her unwieldy state, she 
kept up the pace to the last, quite unconscious of her 
general appearance, and absorbed with the excitement 
of the dance. 
These festivities were to be continued in honour of 
