48 HABITS AND CUSTOMS.

in the heat of these huts ; the poor creatures thus employed are generally bathed in perspiration, and yet they may be heard singing all day long. Their songs are certainly merely expressive of their desire to escape, or of longing after their homes. The chaunts are very peculiar, and, with few exceptions, the impromptu pouring-forth of the feelings of the singer, according to the custom prevalent over nearly the whole of the East.

Few songs are to be met with which the one learns of the other ; for each individual sings exactly what he thinks, without any regard to metre or time.

For their dances the natives have a few peculiar melodies, which, however, are frequently altered by variations of their own composition. The young female slaves are heard to sing chiefly in a minor key, and their notes are scarcely audible in the next hut : the song will frequently run in the following strain : " The sun is concealing itself behind the hills, come people to the joyous dance ; the cows are milked, the work is done, light the fire ; my lover comes to fetch me home, &;c." A tear may be seen to flow from the eye of many a girl as she thinks of her native hills, over these songs ; time, however, is capable of assuaging the grief of these poor creatures, and after the laj)se of two or three years but few of them devote a thought to their native country. In Egypt I have often conversed with both male and female slaves who scarcely remembered their fatherland, which they the more easily