was tucked under and over the five lines of cowries, which acted as cestus to the portly middle, “big as a budget.”  The horns of hair, not unlike the rays of light in Michael Angelo’s “Moses,” were covered with a cap of leaves, and they were balanced behind by a pigtail lashed with brass wire.  Her ornaments were sundry necklaces of various beads, large red and white, and small blue and pink porcelains; a leaf, probably by way of amulet, was bound to a string round the upper arm; and wrists and ankles were laden with heavy rings of brass and copper, the parure of the great in Fan-land.  The other ballerine were, of course, less brilliantly attired, but all had rings on their arms, legs, and ankles, fingers, and toes.  A common decoration was a bunch of seven or eight long ringlets, not unlike the queues de rat, still affected by the old-fashioned Englishwoman; these, however, as in the men, were prolonged to the bosom by strings of alternate red and white beads.  Others limited the decoration to two rats’ tails depending from the temples, where phrenologists localize our “causality.”  Many had faces of sufficient piquancy; the figures, though full, wanted firmness, and I noticed only one well-formed bosom.  The men wore red feathers, but none carried arms.

The form of saltation suggested Mr. Catlin’s drawings.  A circular procession of children, as well as adults, first promenaded round the princess, who danced with all her might in the centre, her countenance preserving the grand serieux.  The performers in this “ging-a-ring” then clapped hands with prolonged ejaculations of o-o-o-oh, stamped and shuffled forwards, moving the body from the hips downwards, whilst H. R. H. alone stood stationary and smileless as a French demoiselle of the last century, who came to the ball not to causer but to danser.  At times, when King Fitevanga condescended to show his agility, the uproar of applause became deafening.  The orchestra consisted of two men sitting opposite each other,—­one performed on a caisson, a log of hollowed wood, four feet high, skin-covered, and fancifully carved; the other on the national Anjya, a rude “Marimba,” the prototype of the pianoforte.  It is made of seven or eight hard-wood slats, pinned with bamboo tacks to transverse banana trunks lying on the ground:  like the grande caisse, it is played upon with sticks, plectra like tent-pegs.  Mr. W. Winwood Reade ("Savage Africa,” chap, xiii.) says:  “The instrument is also described by Froebel as being used by the Indians of Central America, where, which is still more curious, it is known by the same name—­’marimba.’” Of course they borrowed the article and the name from the negroes:  most tribes in Africa have their own terms for this universal instrument, but it is everywhere recognized by the African who knows Europeans as “marimba.”  Thus Owen tells us (p. 308) “that at the mouth of the Zambesi it is called ‘Tabbelah,’” evidently the Arabic “Tablah” Another favourite instrument is a clapper, made of two bamboos some five feet long, and thick as capstan bars,—­it is truly the castanet en grand.