A few white puffs showed that it had caught fire, and then a dense column of black smoke rose from it, filling the atmosphere with a sickening smell of singed hair and burning flesh. The wind blew the smoke towards me, and I was enveloped in it for some moments, during which I could see nothing of what was going on, and I felt my eyes smart and my nostrils fill with the smoke and the stench. Gradually a tall flame, over twenty feet high, leaked out, consuming the body and showing me, as the atmosphere cleared, the Shokas down by the river washing their hands and faces to cleanse themselves of what they look upon as unclean, the contact with a corpse. Retracing their steps to the village, the women cried and moaned, carrying back to the house the clothes of the deceased and his brass bowls. [Illustration: SHOKA FUNERAL PILE] [Illustration: WOMEN DUSTING AND CARESSING THE LAY FIGURE] Reaching home, it was incumbent on them to provide lavishly for the amusement of the dead man's soul. A lay figure crudely constructed of straw and sticks was attired by them in the clothes of the departed, and covered over with Indian fabrics embroidered in gold and red and blue, and a turban was stuck on the head, with a _panache_ made of a branch of fir-tree. The _Kalihe_ was at the side of the image. When the fire was extinguished, a visit was paid to the cremation spot by the relatives of the deceased, and such pieces of bone as the knee-joints, elbows, and the larger vertebrae of the spine, usually left undestroyed by the flames, were collected and deposited inside the clothes of the image. Wheat, rice, and flour were purchased in large quantities and cooked to provide food for the multitude of friends who remained the guests of the family during the whole time of the funeral. A sheep a day is usually killed and eaten on such occasions, and cask after cask of _choekti_ (wine), _zahn_ (a liquor distilled from barley, rice and wheat), and _anag_ (from fermented grain of various kinds) are emptied by the mourning crowd. The women folk of the dead man mourned round the effigy, resting their heads on it, crying and imploring the beloved one to return to life. Other rows of women, with their hoods turned inside out in sign of mourning, danced gracefully in circles round the dressed-up figure, left the house by one door in the basement, described an arc in the open, and returned by another door, while men were dancing a doleful dance outside the house. Beating of drums went on the whole day--languid and sad at moments; excited, violent and rowdy at others, according to the mood of the musicians and the quantity of liquor consumed by them. On each day of these proceedings, which lasted for three or four days, rice, baked wheat, and wine were placed before the effigy, until, when it was assumed that the soul of the dead had had a sufficiently amusing time, arrangements were made for its transmigration from the lay figure into a live sheep or yak.