treasures as presents. The children, grand-children, and
great-grand-children of the good old man assembled round his house, and
represented a dramatic piece for my amusement, in which Langediu himself
played a principal part, and astonished me by the animation of his
action and singing. As this was one of the best representations I have
seen in Radack, I will describe it, in the hope that my readers also
will not be uninterested in it.

The number of the _dramatis personae_ was twenty-six, thirteen men and
thirteen women, who seated themselves in the following order on a spot
of smooth turf. Ten men sat in a semicircle, and opposite to them ten
women in a semicircle also, so that by uniting the points, an entire
circle would have been formed, but a space of about six feet was left at
both ends, in each of which sat an old woman provided with a drum. This
drum, made of the hollow trunk of a tree, is about three feet long, six
inches in diameter at each end, narrowed like an hour-glass, to half
that thickness in the middle. Both ends are covered with the skin of the
shark: it is held under the arm, and struck with the palm of the hand.
In the middle of the circle, old Langediu took his station with a
handsome young woman, sitting back to back. The whole party were
elegantly adorned about the head, and the females about the body also,
with garlands of flowers. Outside the circle stood two men with muscle
horns. The hollow tones of these horns are the signal for a chorus
performed by the whole company, with violent movements of the arms and
gesticulations meant to be in consonance with the words. When this
ceased, a duet from the pair in the middle was accompanied by the drums
and horns only; Langediu fully equalling his young companion in
animation. The chorus then began again, and this alternation was
repeated several times, till the young songstress whose motions had been
growing more and more vehement, suddenly fell down as dead. Langediu's
song then became lower and more plaintive: he bent over the body, and
seemed to express the deepest sorrow; the whole circle joined in his
lamentations, and the play concluded.

Deficient as was my knowledge of the language, I was still able clearly
to understand the subject of this tragedy, which represented a marriage
ceremony. The young girl was forced to accept of a husband whom she did
not love, and preferred death to such an union. Perhaps the reason of
old Langediu's playing