Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/37

26 amusement of the marriage guests. Their orchestra consisted of an abominable violin―on which one of them scratched away with commendable perseverance―a tambourine, which another enthusiastically thumped and rattled, and other rude instruments, which were distributed among the remainder of this band of musical artists. The concert was certainly as varied as the rivalry of many discordant sounds could make it; and as there was no cessation in the succession of these sweet sounds, some one striking in with a nasal song at every pause of the instrumentalists, the noise was incessant, and I could only conclude that they had entered into it for the night.

After the refreshments, there was also a display of the Terpsichorean art as practised in this clime, which, if not very pleasing to the beholder, was at least interesting to me in consequence of its novelty. The performer was a young Jewess, who was pushed into the middle of the room by her friends, to all appearance not without some reluctance, as it was only after a considerable amount of blushing, resistance, and struggling, that she could be induced to begin. And when at last she did throw off her bashfulness, whether real or assumed, of what an extraordinary spectacle was I compelled to be a spectator; such a one as certainly I had