Close by this busy scene, another group was forming under a large and lofty _Pandahl_, or open bungalow. Forcing my way to one corner of the shed, I found a company of Indian jugglers consisting of two men, a girl, and a child of perhaps three years. The men were habited in strange uncouth dresses, with large strings of heavy black beads round their necks; the girl was simply and neatly clad in white, with silver bangles and anklets, and a necklace of native diamonds. It would be impossible to detail all their extraordinary performances, which far exceeded any thing I had ever read of their art. The quantity of iron and brass ware which they contrived to swallow was truly marvelous; ten-penny nails, clasp-knives, gimlets, were all treated as so many items of pastry or confectionary, and I could but picture to myself the havoc a dozen of these cormorants would commit in an ironmonger's shop. Not the least remarkable of their feats was that of producing a sheet of water upon the sand close at our feet; and, after conjuring upon its clear surface half-a-dozen young ducks and geese, suddenly causing it to freeze in such a solid mass as to allow of our walking across it without causing so much as a crack in its crystal body. One more feat I must relate; which was that of suspending the girl while seated on a sort of ottoman, to the ridge-pole of the shed; and, at a given signal, removing the rope by which she hung, leaving her still suspended in the air--not with a regular apparatus, such as is used by the performers of a similar trick in London and Paris, but apparently with no apparatus at all! For, to my exceeding amazement, a sword was given to me, as the only European of the company, and I was told to cut and slash as much as I pleased above and around the girl. After some hesitation, I hacked and hewed the air in every direction, around and close to the suspended maiden with a vigor which would inevitably cut asunder any means of support; yet there she swung unmoved, without any sort of apparent agent of suspension except the air itself! Snake-charming and dancing completed the entertainment. When I left the place it was night.