Moreover, they
all danced, the Inca himself amongst them, and bathed in the rivers
and fountains, saying that their maladies would come out of them.
Then they took great torches of straw, bound round with cords. These
they lighted, and passed from one to the other, striking each other
with them, and saying, "Let all harm go away." Meanwhile the runners
ran with their lances for a quarter of a league outside the city,
where they found four other Incas ready, who received the lances
from their hands and ran with them. Thus the lances were carried by
relays of runners for a distance of five or six leagues, at the end
of which the runners washed themselves and their weapons in rivers,
and set up the lances, in sign of a boundary within which the
banished evils might not return.
The negroes of Guinea annually banish the devil from all their towns
with much ceremony at a time set apart for the purpose. At Axim, on
the Gold Coast, this annual expulsion is preceded by a feast of
eight days, during which mirth and jollity, skipping, dancing, and
singing prevail, and "a perfect lampooning liberty is allowed, and
scandal so highly exalted, that they may freely sing of all the
faults, villanies, and frauds of their superiors as well as
inferiors, without punishment, or so much as the least
interruption.
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