s; their ankles being
covered with silver bells and their wrists and arms similarly decked.
Their effort appears to be that the bells should be so agitated as to
ring in harmony with the instruments; but the fact is there is no
harmony about either. These girls depend more in their performance upon
pantomime, expression of features, pose of body, and graceful
posturings, than upon any great exertion of muscle.

In their peculiar performance there is no exposure of the person, as in
the Parisian style of dancing, only half clad as they are. These Indian
girls endeavor to tell a story by their dance: to express love, hope,
tenderness, jealousy, and other passions, all of which are so well
portrayed, as a rule, that one can easily follow their pantomime. When
idle, they sometimes perform as itinerants in the streets and squares,
as was the case when we chanced to see a small group at Madras. Positive
information regarding them is not to be obtained, but enough was heard
to satisfy us that they constitute a priestly harem.

After passing a very pleasant week in Madras, we sailed at daylight, on
the 11th of January, in the P. and O. steamship Teheran, for Calcutta,
through the Bay of Bengal, a five days' voyage. Soon after leaving the
roadstead of Madras there was pointed out to us on the port bow the low
lying coast of Orissa, India, where the famine of 1866 carried off one
million of souls. As we drew northward a decided difference in the
temperature was realized, and was most agreeable; the thermometer
showing 70 deg. at Calcutta, in place of 90 deg. at Madras, so that
portions of clothing, discarded when we landed at Ceylon, were now
resumed. Since entering these southern waters we had remarked the entire
absence of sea-gulls, so ever-present on the Atlantic and North Pacific;
but the abundance of Mother Carey's Chickens, as the little petrel is
called, made up for the absence of the larger birds. It is swallow-like
in both its appearance and manner of flight, and though web-footed is
rarely seen to light on the water. It flies very close to the surface of
the sea, frequently dipping for food; but never quite losing its power of
wing, or at least so it appeared to us. Sailors, who are a proverbially
superstitious race, seriously object to passengers at sea who attempt to
catch the petrel with hooks baited with food and floated on the water,
or by any other means, contending that ill-luck will follow their
capture.

Th