o imitate the convulsion of nature, and to sing his impressions.
So taking hold of a drum which hung near his bed, he beat a slight
rolling, resembling the distant sounds of an approaching storm, then
raising his voice to a shrill treble, which he knew how to soften when he
pleased, he imitated the whistling of the air, the creaking of the
branches dashing against one another, and the particular noise produced
by dead leaves when accumulated in compact masses on the ground. By
degrees the rollings of the drum became more frequent and louder, the
chants more sonorous and shrill; and at last our Indian shrieked, howled,
and roared in the most frightful manner; he struggled and struck his
instrument with extraordinary rapidity; it was a real tempest, to which
nothing was wanting, not even the distant howling of the dogs, nor the
bellowing of the affrighted buffaloes."

Mr. Leland, speaking of the Russian Gipsies near Moscow, says that after
meeting them in public, and penetrating to their homes, they were
altogether original, deeply interesting, and able to read and write, and
have a wonderful capacity for music, and goes on to say that he speedily
found the Russian Gipsies were as unaffected and childlike as they were
gentle in manner, and that compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy,
begging, and always suspecting Gipsy roughs, as a delicate greyhound
might compare with a very shrewd old bulldog trained by a fly tramp.
Leland, in his article, speaking of one of the Russian Gipsy maidens,
says:--"Miss Sarsha, who had a slight cast in one of her wild black eyes,
which added something to the Gipsiness and roguery of her smiles, and who
wore in a ring a large diamond, which seemed as if it might be the right
eye in the wrong place, was what is called an earnest young lady, and
with plenty to say and great energy wherewith to say it. What with her
eyes, her diamond, her smiles, and her tongue, she constituted altogether
a fine specimen of irrepressible fireworks."

Leland, referring to the musical abilities of the Russian Gipsies, in his
article in "Macmillan's Magazine," November, 1879, says:--"These artists,
with wonderful tact and untaught skill have succeeded in all their songs
in combining the mysterious and maddening chorus of the true wild eastern
music with that of regular and simple melody intelligible to every
western ear." "I listened," says Leland, "to the strangest, wildest, and
sweetest singing I ever ha