in winter, the ducks those born in summer. They stretch out a long rope
of sealskin. The ducks take hold of one end, the ptarmigans of the
other, then comes a tug-of-war. If the ducks win there will be fine
weather through the winter; if the ptarmigans, bad. This autumn festival
might, of course, with equal magical intent be performed in the spring,
but probably autumn is chosen because, with the dread of the Arctic ice
and snow upon them, the fear of winter is stronger than the hope of
spring.

* * * * *

The intense emotion towards the weather, which breaks out into these
magical _agones_, or "contests," is not very easy to realize. The
weather to us now-a-days for the most part damps a day's pleasuring or
raises the price of fruit and vegetables. But our main supplies come to
us from other lands and other weathers, and we find it hard to think
ourselves back into the state when a bad harvest meant starvation. The
intensely practical attitude of man towards the seasons, the way that
many of these magical dramatic ceremonies rose straight out of the
emotion towards the food-supply, would perhaps never have been fully
realized but for the study of the food-producing ceremonies of the
Central Australians.

The Central Australian spring is not the shift from winter to summer,
from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season
short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden
fertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a
marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate,
the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched
acacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life