Amongst many of the aboriginal tribes of China, a great festival is
celebrated in the third month of every year. It is held by way of a
general rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total
annihilation of the ills of the past twelve months. The destruction
is supposed to be effected in the following way. A large earthenware
jar filled with gunpowder, stones, and bits of iron is buried in the
earth. A train of gunpowder, communicating with the jar, is then
laid; and a match being applied, the jar and its contents are blown
up. The stones and bits of iron represent the ills and disasters of
the past year, and the dispersion of them by the explosion is
believed to remove the ills and disasters themselves. The festival
is attended with much revelling and drunkenness.
At Old Calabar on the coast of Guinea, the devils and ghosts are, or
used to be, publicly expelled once in two years. Among the spirits
thus driven from their haunts are the souls of all the people who
died since the last lustration of the town. About three weeks or a
month before the expulsion, which according to one account takes
place in the month of November, rude effigies representing men and
animals, such as crocodiles, leopards, elephants, bullocks, and
birds, are made of wicker-work or wood, and being hung with strips
of cloth and bedizened with gew-gaws, are set before the door of
every house.
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