l raced toward a certain hill. Every man who caught up with
a woman in the race was bound at once to have intercourse with her.

Very instructive, from our present point of view, is the account given by
Dalton, of the festivals of the various Bengal races. Thus the Hos (a
Kolarian tribe), of Bengal, are a purely agricultural people, and the
chief festival of the year with them is the _magh parah_. It is held in
the month of January, "when the granaries are full of grain, and the
people, to use their own expression, full of devilry." It is the festival
of the harvest-home, the termination of the year's toil, and is always
held at full moon. The festival is a _saturnalia_, when all rules of duty
and decorum are forgotten, and the utmost liberty is allowed to women and
girls, who become like bacchantes. The people believe that at this time
both men and women become overcharged with vitality, and that a safety
valve is absolutely necessary. The festival begins with a religious
sacrifice made by the village priest or elders, and with prayers for the
departed and for the vouchsafing of seasonable rain and good crops. The
religious ceremonies over, the people give themselves up to feasting and
to drinking the home-made beer, the preparation of which from fermented
rice is one of a girl's chief accomplishments. "The Ho population," wrote
Dalton, "are at other seasons quiet and reserved in manner, and in their
demeanor toward women gentle and decorous; even in their flirtations they
never transcend the bounds of decency. The girls, though full of spirits
and somewhat saucy, have innate notions of propriety that make them modest
in demeanor, though devoid of all prudery, and of the obscene abuse, so
frequently heard from the lips of common women in Bengal, they appear to
have no knowledge. They are delicately sensitive under harsh language of
any kind, and never use it to others; and since their adoption of clothing
they are careful to drape themselves decently, as well as gracefully; but
they throw all this aside during the _magh_ feast. Their nature appears to
undergo a temporary change. Sons and daughters revile their parents in
gross language, and parents their children; men and women become almost
like animals in the indulgence of their amorous propensities. They enact
all that was ever portrayed by prurient artists in a bacchanalian festival
or pandean orgy; and as the light of the sun they adore, and the presence
of numerous