CHAPTER VI. 
THE FUNERAL DANCE. 
Drums were beating, horns blowing, and people 
were seen all running in one direction ;—the cause was 
a funeral dance, and I joined the crowd, and soon found 
myself in the midst of the entertainment. The dancers 
were most grotesquely got up. About a dozen huge 
ostrich feathers adorned their helmets ; either leopard 
or the black and white monkey skins were suspended 
from their shoulders, and a leather tied round the waist 
covered a large iron bell which was strapped upon the 
loins of each dancer, like a woman’s old-fashioned 
bustle : this they rung to the time of the dance by 
jerking their posteriors in the most absurd manner. 
A large crowd got up in this style created an indescribable 
hubbub, heightened by the blowing of horns and the 
beating of seven nogaras of various notes. Every dancer 
wore an antelope’s horn suspended round the neck, 
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 
