the water on to boil, I cast myself on the ground, and
complacently puffing away at my pipe, gazed at the wild but
picturesque scene before me. The position of the river was marked out
by a semicircle of some fifty or sixty fires, before which dark and
ill-defined figures were ever and anon flitting like phantoms; while,
in the midst, the funnel of the steam-boat loomed tall and black above
the veil of smoke that hung around--like some dark and horrid object
Of heathen idolatry surrounded by its sacrificial fires. The sounds
that met my ear, however, dispelled this somewhat fanciful idea; for
in the stillness of the night voices grow distinct, while forms are
indebted to the imagination for filling up their outlines.

The native passengers, who had remained, silent and dull, in a
constrained position during the whole of the day, felt a load taken
off their spirits as soon as they set foot on dry land; and in a trice
the silence that had hitherto reigned was broken by a very Babel of
tongues, among which could be distinguished the guttural jargon of the
Scindian, the bastard dialect of Mahratti, of the Hindoo from the
Deccan, and the ungrammatical _patois_ of Hindostani, which--although,
when exclusively used, it marked out the Mussulman--was yet the
_lingua franca_ of the whole party; but amidst the unceasing torrent
of words, little could be distinguished, save when the ear was saluted
with an outburst of nature's universal and unvaried language in the
shape of a light-hearted laugh. By and by, my attention became
directed, by an occasional shout of merriment, to a group of Seedies
clustered round a fire near me. Negroes in this country are much the
same as in other parts of the World--a happy, easily-contented race,
forgetful of the past, and careless of the future. After keeping up
their noisy confabulation for some time, they removed to a level spot
close to where I was lying: one of them squatted down on the ground,
and commenced singing to the music of a sort of tambourine, that he
beat with the flat of his hand; and the others at once formed a
circle, and commenced a rude dance, which had probably been brought
by themselves or their fathers from the shores of Eastern Africa. The
air was at first low and monotonous, the time seeming to be more
studied than any variation of the tune; but after some minutes a few
notes in a higher key were occasionally introduced, giving the music a
strangely wild and melancholy cha