380 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH. ANN. 18 
First day 
The festival opens by the men giving the kashira, including the fire- 
pit, a thorough cleaning. After dark all the men, women, and children 
in the village gather on the roof of the kashim and an old man beats a 
drum while the people unite in a song addressed to the wild parsnip 
(Archangelica), the stalks of which are standing ungathered on the 
distant hillsides. 
Second day 
On the second day four men go out and gather bundles of stalks of 
the wild parsnip (i-ki-twk) which they place on top of the entrance way 
outside the kashim. When evening comes these bundles are taken 
inside and laid on the floor, while the little boys of the village roll over 
them and wrestle with one another on top of them; then they are opened, 
the stalks spread on the floor, and each man takes one in his hand and 
sits at his place in the kashim uniting with the others in a song asking 
the stalks to become dry; when the heat of the room dries the stalks 
they are formed into a large sheaf. 
Third day 
At daybreak on this morning the sheaf is opened and from its con- 
tents a smaller sheaf is made about a foot in diameter, one end of 
which is thrust down on a stake, four or five feet long, planted in the 
floor, in front of the oil lamp which ordinarily burns at the rear of the 
room. When it is daylight each hunter brings into the kashim the 
inflated bladders of all the seals, whales, walrus, and white bears that 
he has killed during the year. Each man ties the bladders in a bunch 
by the necks and these bunches are bung up on seal spears stuck in the 
wall in a row six or eight feet above the floor, at the back of the room. 
Food is then brought into the kashim and offerings of small fragments 
are thrown on the floor before the bladders; a libation of water is also 
made in the same place; then the food is passed about and everyone 
partakes of it. 
Fourth day 
On this morning every hunter takes down his bunch of bladders and 
marks each with bands and dots of paint made from charcoal and oil; 
the charcoal used for this purpose is made usually from wild parsnip 
stalks. In the evening small torches are made from parsnip stalks, 
which burn with a bright, flaring, resinous flame. Each of the young 
men takes one of the torches and rushes about the room, leaping and 
shrieking like a madman, waving the flaming torches about the blad- 
ders, so as to bathe them slightly in the fire and smoke, and then into 
the faces of the men who are sitting about the room. When the place 
becomes filled with thick smoke this performance ends by the torch 
bearers jumping wildly about and shouting, while the young men and 
boys catch one another and in succession each one is forced backward 
down through the hole in the middle of the floor; everyone resists in a 
good-natured way until he is overcome and forced through. 
