aiety of the period. The Thibetians also
enliven their new years' fetes with noisy rejoicings, in which the song
and the dance always play a large part. Groups of children, with
numerous bells hung from their green dresses, pervade the streets,
giving, from house to house, concerts that are not wanting in harmony.
The song, generally sweet and melancholy, is interspersed with animated
choruses. During the strophe, all these little singers keep marking the
time, by making, with their bodies, a slow and regular movement like the
swinging of a pendulum; but when they come to the chorus, they vigorously
stamp their feet on the ground in exact time. The noise of the bells,
and of the nailed boots, produces a kind of wild accompaniment that
strikes upon the ear not disagreeably, especially when it is heard at a
certain distance. These youthful _dilettanti_ having performed their
concert, it is usual with those for whom they have sung to distribute
among them cakes fried in nut-oil, and some balls of butter.

On the principal squares, and in front of the public monuments, you see,
from morning till night, troops of comedians and tumblers amusing the
people with their representations. The Thibetians have not, like the
Chinese, collections of theatrical pieces; their comedians remain
altogether and continuously on the stage, now singing and dancing, now
exhibiting feats of strength and agility. The ballet is the exercise in
which they seem to excel the most. They waltz, they bound, they tumble,
they _pirouette_ with truly surprising agility. Their dress consists of
a cap, surmounted by long pheasants' plumes, a black mask adorned with a
white beard of prodigious length, large white pantaloons, and a green
tunic coming down to the knees, and bound round the waist by a yellow
girdle. To this tunic are attached, at equal distances, long cords, at
the end of which are thick tufts of white wool. When the actor balances
himself in time, these tufts gracefully accompany the movements of his
body; and when he whirls round they stick out horizontally, form a wheel
round the performer, and seem, as it were, to accelerate the rapidity of
his _pirouettes_.

You also see at Lha-Ssa a sort of gymnastic exercise called the Dance of
the Spirits. A long cord, made of leathern straps, strongly plaited
together, is attached to the top of the Buddha-La, and descends to the
foot of the mountain. The dancing sprites go up and down this c