During This Time, The Dance Is Conducted With Some Decency, But When Night Approaches, And The Women Take A More Active Part In The Amusement, Their Thin And Short Dresses, And The Agility Of Their Actions Are Little Calculated To Admit Of The Preservation Of Any Decorum.

The following was the nature of the dance; six or seven men joining hands, surrounded one in the centre of the ring, who was dressed in a ludicrous manner, wearing a large black wig stuck full of kowries.

This man at intervals repeated verses, which, from the astonishment and admiration expressed at them by those in the ring, appeared to be extempore. Two performers played on the outside of the ring, one on a large drum, the other on the bandera. The singer in the ring was not interrupted during his recitations, but at the end of every verse, the instruments struck up, and the whole party joined in loud chorus, dancing round the man in the circle, stooping to the ground, and throwing up their legs alternately. Towards the end of the dance, the man in the middle of the ring was released from his enclosure, and danced alone, occasionally reciting verses, whilst the other dancers begged money from the by-standers.

[Footnote: The bandera is made of several cocoa-nut shells, tied together with thongs of goat-skin, and covered with the same material; a hole at the top of the instrument is covered with strings of leather, or tendons, drawn tightly across it, on which the performer plays with the fingers, in the manner of a guitar.]

It has been already stated, that Adams could not form any idea of the population of Timbuctoo, but on one occasion he saw as many as two-thousand assembled at one place.

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