Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/91

Rh like other ornamental gardens which I have seen here, very ornamental, but stiff. Palms of many kinds, splendid flowers in beds, bordering well gravelled or flagged paths, marble basins with gold fish, &c. A beautiful little boy of two years old is the best treasure of the house.

In the evening I was once more with the F. family; saw amiable, and cheerful young people dancing in the joy of their hearts, and heard again that enchanting Cuban dance-music. It has a broken, strange, but extremely animated movement. My kind, agreeable host, Mr. S., plays it on the pianoforte with the musical genius of a German.

Feb. 11th.—Yesterday was Sunday, and although our little village of Serro did not go to church—because there is no church there—it still had quite a holiday appearance. At noon I heard from various distances the living cadence of the African drum, not unlike the sound of the flail in the barns around us at threshing time, only that here it has a much more animated life. This was the sign that the dances of the free negroes were now commencing at their assembling places in the neighbourhood. My host had the kindness to accompany me to one of these, very near our Serro. I found a large room, very like those of public-houses among us, in which I saw these negroes naked to the waist, wild, energetic figures and countenances, who were beating drums with energetic animation. These drums were hollowed tree-stems, over the openings of which was stretched a parchment skin, on which the negroes drummed, in part with sticks and in part with their hands, with their thumbs, with their fists with wonderful agility and skill, a wild, artistic perfection, or I should rather say a perfected natural art;—they drummed as bees hum and beavers build. The time and measure, which sometimes varied, was exquisitely true; no one can imagine a more natural, perfect, lively precision, in that irregular, regular