OCR Text |
Show A' BIT OF RAINMAKING. An Effort In tbe Hebrides Islands That Was Brimful of S access. Lieutenant Boyle T. Somerville of the English navy, 'ho lived many yearn in the Hebrides islands, tells the following interesting tale regarding the work of a professional native rainmaker. rain-maker. Toward the end of the year, just after yam planting, there came an unusual period of drought, so that an inland in-land tribe in the island of Ambrym went to its rainmaker and demanded hia immediate attention thereto. He at once set to work to weave a sort of hurdle of the branches and leaves of a tree famed for its rain producing pro-ducing qualities, which, being finished, was placed, with proper incantations, at the bottom of what should have been a water hole In the now parched bed of the mountain torrent. There it was then held in place with stones. Down came the rain; nor did it cease for 48 hours, by which time it had become too much of a good thing. Soon the rain producing hurdle was quite 10 feet under un-der water in the seething torrent, and the people, much to their dismay, saw that their yams and the surrounding earth were beginning to wash away down the hillsides. The lieutenant continues: "Now mark what comes of fooliniz with the eiementsi jsoraanoi tne nin country was able to diva" to the bottom of the water hole to pull up the hurdle with its weight of Btones, so the merciless rain still held en. At last tho shore natives, na-tives, accustomed to swimming and diving, div-ing, heard what the matter was, and some of them coming to the assistance the compeller of the elements was recovered re-covered from it3 watery bed and the rain stopped!" It is such a coincidence as this, happening hap-pening perhaps once in a decade, which causes this people, now thoroughly Christianized, to refuse to give up their rain doctors, although all other out-I out-I ward forms of rank superstition appear to have been freely abandoned. Louisville Louis-ville Courier-Journal. |