On our return a dance was proposed, and carried by acclamation. An old woman set about pulling up the lilies, and clearing from other incumbrances, a piece of sward outside the circle. Two girls rushed up with kuscoussoo sieves to beat as tambourines;--these are sheep’s skin, pierced with holes, and called sonag.[300] A woman seizing one of the cooking jars drew off her slipper, and striking the open mouth with it, we had at once a tum-tum. The girls and women danced to the sieves and the jar, but beating time, as well as all the company, with their hands and uttering a cadenced cry. The shuffling of feet was most extraordinary, all pressing into the centre round the chief performer, who sang and rattled a tambourine. The dance was interrupted whilst he sang, and then they kept marking time by their hands meeting alternately at the height of the face and breast. The whole party joined in beating time and singing the choruses.[301] The singer commenced each stanza with that peculiar and indescribable, though never-to-be-forgotten, bird-like jerk of the head, with which the Spanish dancers throw off. Here in the germ was all the Spanish castanet dance, song, &c. It being proposed to stop, the girls exclaimed “Not till the cows come home.” So off they went again until the sun dipped under the horizon. The crowd dispersed in an instant, not, however, before we had thrown some coins into the tambourine. The minstrel gallantly distributed them to the girls who had distinguished themselves. Some one brought him a skirt full of raisins and walnuts, which were heaped into his sieve. This he distributed amongst the younger portion of the audience. There was then a good deal of kissing of his head and hands, and so we dispersed. I afterwards learnt that the castanet is in use amongst the tribes of the interior.[302] They have also a castanet of metal, and double. The striking of the hands is not, as in other parts of the East, the hollow of the fingers of the right hand upon the palm of the left; it is the two palms that are brought to make a sharp clack. They produce a variety of sounds and exhibit a variety of evolutions. Living in a circle engenders peculiar habits. When a man is wanted, (as was often the case in arranging hunting parties,) his name is called quietly, as you sit within your canvass walls, thus: “Eh! Hamed!” If there is no answer, the call is repeated; then some one in the next tent takes it up, and right and left you hear “Eh! Hamed,” and round it goes till the man is found. If you want to buy anything, you go into the middle of the circle, and call out, “Who has milk to sell?--let him come.” “Who has eggs?”[303]