raised, but by merely pressing the floor with the toes. The action and
movement thus seem to run like a wave through the body, greatest where
it begins in the hand, and gradually diminishing as it dies away in
the foot. With a change of time in the accompaniment the girl drops
her arm, advances a step or two nearer the person before whom she is
dancing, and leans back, supporting her whole weight on one foot, with
the other put forward, and pressing against the floor the border of
her drapery.

In her hands she holds a little scarf, which serves to give a motive
to the action of the arms and head. The movement in this figure, which
admits of great variety, no two performers being at all alike in it,
is somewhat stronger than in the first. The undulation, too, instead
of dying away gradually from its commencement, runs with equal force,
like the line of an S, through the body. Without any pause in the
music the dancer sometimes glides imperceptibly into, sometimes begins
with startling suddenness, the next movement. The general position
remains what it was before, but to describe how its principle of
life and motion seems concentrated below the dancer's waist, and
from thence flows in undulating streams, to flash from or to dull,
according to her organization, the eyes, and to crisp the child-like
feet with which she grasps the carpet, is for me impossible. A Gavarni
might draw what would recall this wonderful pantomime to the brain of
one who had seen it, but nothing but his own imagination could suggest
it to him who had not. One of these girls is a perfect actress:
numberless shades of expression pass over her delicate features, but
the prevailing one is a beseeching, supplicating look. We administer
to her, as the custom is, some rupees in token of our admiration, and
with an arch smile the no longer supplicating damsel passes on.