“The smoke and sparks, although sufficiently disagreeable, were trifles of comparative insignificance. I remember being told, in early infancy, that Santa Claus always came into a house through the chimney; and, although I accepted the statement with the unreasoning faith of childhood, I could never understand how that singular feat of climbing down a chimney could be safely accomplished.... My first entrance into a Korak ‘yourt,’ however, at Kamenoi, solved all my childish difficulties, and proved the possibility of entering a house in the eccentric way which Santa Claus is supposed to adopt.”—(George Kennan, “Tent Life in Siberia,” 12th edition, New York, 1887, p. 222.) Steller describes a Festival of the Kamtchatkans occurring at the end of November, after the winter provisions are in; in this, one party, on the outside of the house, attempts to lower a birch branch down through the chimney; the party on the inside attempts to capture it.—(Steller, “Kamtchatka,” translated by Mr. Bunnemeyer.) “Every time they make water, or other unclean exercise of nature, they wash those parts, little regarding who stands by. Before prayer, they wash both face and hands, sometimes the head and privities.”—(Blount, “Voy. into the Levant,” in Pinkerton, vol. x. p. 261.) “Among the Negroes of Guinea, when a wife is pregnant for the first time, she must perform certain ‘ceremonies,’ among which is ‘going to the sea-shore to be washed.’ She is followed by a great number of boys and girls, who fling all manner of dung and filth at her in her way to the sea, where she is ducked and made clean.”—(Bosman, “Guinea,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 423.) “In 1847, I was then twenty-six years old, once an old woman (in Cherbourg) came to me with a washing-pan, and asked me to piss into it, as the urine of a stout, healthy young man was required to wash the bosoms of a young woman who was just delivered of a child.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy, to Captain Bourke, dated Cherbourg, France, July 29, 1888.) In Scotland, the breasts of a young mother were washed with salt and water to ensure a good flow of milk. The practice is alluded to in the following couplet from “The Fortunate Shepherdess,” by Alexander Ross, 1778. “Jean’s paps wi’ sa’t and water washen clean, Reed that her milk get wrang, fen it was green.” (Quoted in Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. ii. p. 80, art. “Christening Customs.”) This practice seems closely allied to the one immediately preceding. We shall have occasion to show that salt and water, holy water, and other liquids superseded human urine in several localities, Scotland among others.