Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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There were several babies scattered about promiscuously in bright-coloured wrappings, and a number of children under ten years old. Some of them had dainty features and lovely eyes, and a better behaved lot of children you never saw. We did not hear one of them cry during the entire voyage. They lay in their clumsy, queer-looking cradles, made by rude carpenters, without the slightest attention, as self-satisfied as if they had been millionaires smothered in luxury.

One night the peasants from Lazistan gave an interesting performance. The music was furnished by an ordinary bagpipe with three stops, which emitted a mournful and monotonous refrain, but with perfect time, and the dancers kept step to it very much after the manner of the North American Indian. They placed a child in the centre, a dozen or so of them clasped hands in a circle, alternately spreading out as far as their arms would reach and then coming together in a bunch, and in the meantime stamping their feet, bowing the knees, and bending the upper part of the body forward. Sometimes they would stoop to a squatting posture and hop along on one side and then on the other; then they would raise their arms as high as they could reach, revolving all the time to the left. It was a graceful movement and rather fascinating, and they seemed to enjoy it.