At night-fall many of the Navajo people move, temporarily, all their goods and property into the corral, and abandon their huts or hogans. Those who do not move in are watchers to protect their property, for there are thieves among the Navajos. At 8 o'clock a band of musicians enters, and, sitting down, begins a series of cacophonous sounds on a drum. As soon as the music begins, the great wood pile is lighted. The conflagration spreads rapidly and lights the whole landscape and the sky. A storm of red, whirling sparks fly upward, like bright golden bees from out a hive, to a height of a hundred feet. The descending ashes fall in the corral like a light shower of snow. The heat soon grows so intense that in the remotest parts of the enclosure it is necessary for a person to screen his face when he looks towards the fire. Suddenly a warning whistle is heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen forms, lithe and lean, dressed only with the narrow white breech-clout and mocassins, and daubed with white earth until they seem a group of living marbles, come bounding through the entrance, yelping like wolves, and slowly moving round the fire. As they advance, in single file, they throw their bodies into diverse attitudes, some graceful, some strained, some difficult, some menacing, and all grotesque. Now they face the east, now the west, now the south, now the north, bearing aloft their slender wands, tipped with eagle down, holding and waving them with surprising effects. Their course around the fire is to the left, east, west, south, north, a course invariably taken by all the dancers of the night. When they have circled the fire twice, they begin to thrust their wands toward it. Their object is to try to burn off the tip of eagle down. They dash up to the fire, crawl up to it on their faces, run up holding their heads sidewise, dart up backward and approach it in all sorts of attitudes. Suddenly, one approaching the flaming pile throws himself on his back, with his head to the fire, and swiftly thrusts his wand into the flames. Many are the unsuccessful attempts, but at length, one by one, they all succeed in burning the downy balls from the end of their wands. As each accomplishes his feat, it becomes necessary, as the next duty, to restore the ball of down, which is done by refitting the ring held in the hand with down upon it, and putting it on the head of the aromatic sumac wand. The dance customs and ideas differ with the tribes and localities. Sometimes the dance is little more than an exhibition of powers of endurance. Men or women, or both, go through fatiguing motions for hours and even days in succession, astounding spectators by their disregard of the traditions of their race, so far as idleness is concerned. Other dances are grotesque and brutal. On special occasions weird ceremonies are indulged in, and the proceedings are sensational in the extreme.