SHIRAZ. 
113 
out again when the fire was extinguished. He then took a piece* from 
which he continued to blow the most brilliant sparks for more than half 
an hour. The trick consists in putting in the mouth some cotton 
dipped in the oil of Naptha* on which the pieces of charcoal are laid 
and from which they derive the strength of their fire: now the flame of 
this combustible is known to be little calid. Another man put into his 
mouth two balls alternately, which burnt with a brilliant flame, and 
which also were soaked in the same fluid. 
The music was of the roughest kind. The performers were seated in 
a row round the basin of water; the band consisted of two men, who 
played the kamouncha , a species of violin; four, who beat the tain- 
borin; one, who thrummed the guitar ; one, who played on the spoons; 
and two who sung. The loudest in the concert were the songsters, 
who, when they applied the whole force of their lungs, drowned every 
other instrument. The man with the spoons seemed to me the most 
ingenious and least discordant of the whole band. He placed two 
wooden spoons in a neat and peculiar manner betwixt the fingers of his 
left hand, whilst he beat them with another spoon in his right. 
All this continued till the twilight had fairly expired ; when there 
commenced a display of fire-works on a larger scale than any that I 
recollect to have seen in Europe. In the first place, the director of 
the works caused to be thrown into the fountain before us a variety of 
fires, which were fixed on square flat boards, and which bursting into 
the most splendid streams and stars of flame, seemed to put the water 
in one entire blaze. He then threw up some beautiful blue lights, and 
finished the whole by discharging immense vollies of rockets which had 
been fixed in stands, each of twenty rockets, in different parts of the 
garden and particularly on the summits of the walls. Each stand ex¬ 
ploded at once; and at one time the greater part of all the rockets 
were in the air at the same moment, and produced an effect grand 
beyond the powers of description. 
At the end of this exhibition, a band of choice musicians and songsters 
Q 
