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 Africa the greatest festival is that of the New Year, which falls in the second half of August.  At a given moment all the fires are extinguished with water and afterwards relit by the friction of two dry pieces of wood.  The ashes of the old fires are carried out and deposited at cross-roads.  All the people get up very early in the morning and bathe in the sea or some other water, praying to be kept in good health and to live that they may bathe again next year.  Sham-fights form part of the amusements of the day; sometimes they pass into grim reality.  Indeed the day was formerly one of general license; every man did that which was good in his own eyes.  No awkward questions were asked about any crimes committed on this occasion, so some people improved the shining hour by knocking a few poor devils on the head.  Shooting still goes on during the whole day, and at night the proceedings generally wind up with a great dance.[336] The King of Benametapa, as the early Portuguese traders called him, in East Africa used to send commissioners annually to every town in his dominions; on the arrival of one of these officers the inhabitants of each town had to put out all their fires and to receive a new fire from him.  Failure to comply with this custom was treated as rebellion.[337] Some tribes of British Central Africa carefully extinguish the fires on the hearths at the beginning of the hoeing season and at harvest; the fires are afterwards rekindled by friction, and the people indulge in dances of various kinds.[338]