Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/143

Rh blouses, the women in long, plain dresses. I here saw representatives of the various African nations—Congos, Mandingos, Luccomées, Caraballis, and others dancing in the African fashion. Each nation has some variations of its own, but the principal features of the dance are in all essentially the same. The dance always requires a man and a woman, and always represents a series of courtship and coquetry; during which the lover expresses his feelings, partly by tremor in all his joints, so that he seems ready to fall to pieces, as he turns round and round his fair one, like the planet around its sun, and partly by wonderful leaps and evolutions, often enfolding the lady with both his arms, but without touching her; yet still, as I said, this mode varied with the various nations. One negro, a Caraballis, threw one arm tenderly round the neck of his little lady during the dance, whilst with the other he placed a small silver coin in her mouth. And the black driver, an ugly little fellow (he under whose whip I saw the women at work), availed himself frequently of his rank, sometimes by kissing, during the dance, the prettiest of the girls that he danced with, and sometimes by interrupting the dancing of another man with a handsome young negro-girl, or with one of the best dancers, and then taking his place; for it is the custom that if any one of the bystanders can thrust a stick or a hat between two dancers, they are parted, and he can take the man's place. In this manner a woman will sometimes have to dance with three or four partners without leaving her place. Women, also, may exclude each other from the dance, generally by throwing a handkerchief between the dancers: when they take the place of the other who retires, such interruptions being generally taken in very good part, the one who retires smiling and seeming well pleased to rest a little only again to come forward, and the man laughing still more heartily to see himself the object of choice with so many. The dancing of the women