“My desire of hearing what the Persians considered as their best musick, could only be gratified it is said in the chief cities. Meanwhile a kind of violin called kemáncheh (or, as pronounced in the south of Persia, Kamoncheh) and found in almost every town, afforded me frequent entertainment. That which I saw first was in the hands of Mohammed Caraba’ghi, a poor fellow who sometimes visited our camps. His kemáncheh was of _tut_ or mulberry-tree wood; the body (about eight inches in diameter) globular except at the mouth, over which was stretched, and fixed by glue, a covering of parchment; it had three strings (of twisted sheep’s-gut) and a bridge placed obliquely. A straight piece of iron strengthened the whole instrument from the knob below, through the handle or fingerboard to the hollow which received the pegs. It was carried hanging from the shoulder by a leather strap; in length it was nearly three feet from the wooden ball at the top to the iron knob or button which rested upon the ground. The bow was a mere switch, about two feet and a half long, to which was fastened at one end some black horse-hair. At the other end this hair was connected by a brass ring with a piece of leather seven or eight inches long. The ring was managed with the second and third fingers of the performer’s hand and by its means he contracted or relaxed the bow, which was occasionally rubbed on a bit of wax or rosin stuck above the pegs.... “The performer generally combined his voice with the tones of his instrument. At the house of a person in Bushehr, I one day heard another minstrel sing to his kemáncheh a melancholy ditty, concerning the ill-fated Zend dynasty which became extinct on the murder of Luft Ali Kha’n in 1794, when the present King’s uncle, of the Kajar tribe, assumed imperial authority. The Zend princes were much beloved.... The elegy on their misfortunes abounded with pathetic passages, and the tune corresponding drew tears from some who listened.” Later the author informs us that the kemáncheh is made of various materials: “I have seen one of which the body was merely a hollow gourd; and another of which every part was richly inlaid and ornamented. Some,” says Abd-ul-cadir, “form the body of this instrument from the shell of a cocoanut, fixing on it hair strings; but many are made from wood over which they fasten silken strings.”[9] But! ... but! ... but, surely it is lunch-time! The sight of the big double-bass and its Asiatic satellites is becoming very irksome, and--the American’s “silent sorrow” is overcoming us. In plain words: “We are hungry!”