e
Mongols are on foot, O Timour! And do thou, O Lama, send down good
fortune upon our arrows and our lances.

"O divine Timour, will thy great soul soon revive?
Return! return! we await thee, O Timour!"

When the Tartar Troubadour had completed this national song, he rose,
made a low bow to the company, and, having suspended his instrument upon
a wooden pin, took his leave. "Our neighbours," said the old man, "are
also keeping the festival, and expect the Toolholos: but, since you seem
to listen with interest to Tartar songs, we will offer some other
melodies to your notice. We have in our own family a brother who has in
his memory a great number of airs, cherished by the Mongols; but he
cannot play; he is not a Toolholos. Come, brother Nymbo, sing; you have
not got Lamas of the West to listen to you every day."

A Mongol, whom, seated as he was in a corner, we had not before noticed,
at once rose, and took the place of the departed _Toolholos_. The
appearance of this personage was truly remarkable; his neck was
completely buried in his enormous shoulders; his great dull staring eyes
contrasted strangely with his dark face, half-calcined as it were by the
sun; his hair, or rather a coarse uncombed mane, straggling down his
back, completed the savageness of his aspect. He began to sing: but his
singing was a mere counterfeit, an absurd parody. His grand quality was
extreme long-windedness, which enabled him to execute roulades,
complicated and continuous enough to throw any rational audience into
fits. We soon became desperately tired of his noise, and watched with
impatience a moment's cessation, that might give us an opportunity of
retiring. But this was no easy matter; the villain divined our thoughts,
and was resolved to spite us. No sooner had he finished one air than he
dovetailed another into it, and so started afresh. In this way he went
on, until it was really quite late in the night. At length he paused for
a moment to drink a cup of tea; he threw the beverage down his throat,
and was just clearing his throat to commence anew, when we started up,
offered to the head of the family a pinch of snuff, and, having saluted
the rest of the company, withdrew.

You often meet in Tartary these Toolholos, or wandering singers, who go
about from tent to tent, celebrating in their melodies national events
and personages. They are generally very poor; a violin and a flute,
suspended from the