up
aloft will water the earth.[330] From this account we see how intimately
the kindling of a new fire at the two turning-points of the sun's course
is associated in the minds of these Indians with the fertility of the
land, particularly with the growth of the corn. The rolling smoke is
apparently an imitation of rain-clouds designed, on the principle of
homoeopathic magic, to draw showers from the blue sky. Once a year the
Iroquois priesthood supplied the people with a new fire. As a
preparation for the annual rite the fires in all the huts were
extinguished and the ashes scattered about. Then the priest, wearing the
insignia of his office, went from hut to hut relighting the fires by
means of a flint.[331] Among the Esquimaux with whom C.F. Hall resided,
it was the custom that at a certain time, which answered to our New
Year's Day, two men went about from house to house blowing out every
light in the village. One of the men was dressed to represent a woman.
Afterwards the lights were rekindled from a fresh fire. An Esquimau
woman being asked what all this meant, replied, "New sun--new
light."[332] Among the Esquimaux of Iglulik, when the sun first rises
above the horizon after the long night of the Arctic winter, the
children who have watched for his reappearance run into the houses and
blow out the lamps. Then they receive from their mothers presents of
pieces of wick.[333]

[The new fire in Wadai, among the Swahili, and in other parts of
Africa.]

In the Sudanese kingdom of Wadai all the fires in the villages are put
out and the ashes removed from the houses on the day which precedes the
New Year festival. At the beginning of the new year a new fire is lit by
the friction of wood in the great straw hut where the village elders
lounge away the sultry hours together; and every man takes thence a
burning brand with which he rekindles the fire on his domestic
hearth.[334] In the Bahr-el-Ghazal province of the Egyptian Sudan the
people extinguish their old fires at the Arab New Year and bring in new
fire. On the same occasion they beat the walls of their huts, the grass
thatches, and the walls of their enclosures in order to drive away the
devil or evil spirits. The beating of the walls and roofs is accompanied
by the firing of guns, the shouting of men, and the shriller cries of
the women.[335] Thus these people combine an annual expulsion of demons
with an annual lighting of a new fire. Among the Swahili of East Afr