What
thinkest thou those long-forgotten nobles and ladies would have felt had
they known that they should one day flare to light the dance or boil the
pot of savages? But see, here come the dancers; a merry crew--are they
not? The stage is lit--now for the play."
As she spoke, we perceived two lines of figures, one male and the other
female, to the number of about a hundred, each advancing round the human
bonfire, arrayed only in the usual leopard and buck skins. They formed
up, in perfect silence, in two lines, facing each other between us
and the fire, and then the dance--a sort of infernal and fiendish
cancan--began. To describe it is quite impossible, but, though there was
a good deal of tossing of legs and double-shuffling, it seemed to our
untutored minds to be more of a play than a dance, and, as usual with
this dreadful people, whose minds seem to have taken their colour from
the caves in which they live, and whose jokes and amusements are drawn
from the inexhaustible stores of preserved mortality with which they
share their homes, the subject appeared to be a most ghastly one.
Pages:
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411