The most monotonous of all the dances was that with which some Turkish officials, who had fixed their quarters at the further end of the mountain neck, solaced themselves. Not that they danced themselves! they were far too lazy and phlegmatic to do that; but they impressed into their service a succession of rayah boys, who in turn danced long _pas seuls_ before their lords and masters. Without leaving what we may call his pedestal, a boy kept treading the ground to the weary see-sawing music, and trying to make every muscle and limb quiver like a jelly. Then, after performing this operation for a good ten minutes, with his face towards his Turkish admirers, he slowly turned round on his pivot and danced—if such tremulous distortion could be called dancing!—for an equal space of time, with his back to the spectators, and then he gradually swerved round again as if he were roasting before a slow fire, and was from time to time adjusted by a turnspit! But the Turks, comfortably squatted on carpets strewn over the turf, gazed gravely on by the hour together, and seemed to enjoy the spectacle. We heard much playing of ghuzlas and double pipes and flutes, and much vocal accompaniment with lyric songs and long epic ballads. The instruments, with the exception of the ghuzla, were the same as the Croatian already described, and the ghuzla itself resembled a tamburitza with three strings and bow in place of fingers; but the playing on them struck me as slightly better than what we had heard at Siszek. The metre was as curious and as much a relic of an older world as the instruments whose Arcadian affinities have been already touched on. One of the many minstrels was enchanting an audience of Bosniac maidens with a lyric, whose measure, unless my ears deceived me, was identical with that of Anacreon’s song beginning, λέγουσω αΐ γυναῖκες, Ἀνακρεων γέρων εἶ. And it was strange and impressive, with the air merry with tree-crickets from the foliage around, to catch, as it, seemed, the cadence of that exquisite ode in which the Teian bard paid his homage to the same cicadas! μακαρίζονμέν σε τέττιξ, ὅτι δενδρέων ἐπ’ ἄκρων ὀλίγην δρόσον πεπωκὼς, βασιλεὺς ὅπως ἀείδεις. But the songs, though interesting, were not beautiful, and, to tell the truth, were often more like a succession of street-cries than any other sound, human or divine! This was mainly owing to what was the chief peculiarity of the singing—the long stress, namely, laid by the voice on the last syllable or the last trochee, insomuch that success in a singer seemed to lie in the ability of keeping on at the concluding howl longer than his fellows.