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And after the autumnal equinox the ancient Egyptians
held a festival called "the nativity of the sun's walking-stick,"
because, as the luminary declined daily in the sky, and his light
and heat diminished, he was supposed to need a staff on which to
lean. In New Caledonia when a wizard desires to make sunshine, he
takes some plants and corals to the burial-ground, and fashions them
into a bundle, adding two locks of hair cut from a living child of
his family, also two teeth or an entire jawbone from the skeleton of
an ancestor. He then climbs a mountain whose top catches the first
rays of the morning sun. Here he deposits three sorts of plants on a
flat stone, places a branch of dry coral beside them, and hangs the
bundle of charms over the stone. Next morning he returns to the spot
and sets fire to the bundle at the moment when the sun rises from
the sea. As the smoke curls up, he rubs the stone with the dry
coral, invokes his ancestors and says: "Sun! I do this that you may
be burning hot, and eat up all the clouds in the sky.


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