Shots are fired, the _nabikems_ are torn up with violence, set in flames, and flung into the river. The orgies last till daybreak, and the town is considered to be rid of evil influences for two years to come.(539) Mr. George Bogle, the English envoy sent to Tibet by Warren Hastings, witnessed the celebration of the Tibetan New Year’s Day at Teshu Lumbo the capital of the Teshu Lama. “The figure of a man, chalked upon paper, was laid upon the ground. Many strange ceremonies, which to me who did not understand them appeared whimsical, were performed about it; and a great fire being kindled in a corner of the court, it was at length held over it, and being formed of combustibles, vanished with much smoke and explosion. I was told it was a figure of the devil.”(540) On one day of the year some of the people of the Western Himalayas take a dog, intoxicate him with spirits and bhang or hemp, and having fed him with sweetmeats, lead him round the village and let him loose. They then chase and kill him with sticks and stones, and believe that, when they have done so, no disease or misfortune will visit the village during the year.(541) In some parts of Breadalbane it was formerly the custom on New Year’s Day to take a dog to the door, give him a bit of bread, and drive him out, saying, “Get away you dog! Whatever death of men, or loss of cattle would happen in this house to the end of the present year, may it all light on your head!”(542) It appears that the white dogs annually sacrificed by the Iroquois at their New Year Festival are, or have been, regarded as scapegoats. According to Mr. J. V. H. Clark, who witnessed the ceremony in January 1841, on the first day of the festival all the fires in the village were extinguished, the ashes scattered to the winds, and a new fire was kindled with flint and steel. On a subsequent day, men dressed in fantastic costumes went round the village, gathering the sins of the people. On the morning of the last day of the festival, two white dogs, decorated with red paint, wampum, feathers, and ribbons were led out. They were soon strangled, and hung on a ladder. Firing and yelling succeeded, and half an hour later the dogs were taken into a house, “where the peoples’ sins were transferred to them.” The dogs were afterwards burnt on a pyre of wood.(543) According to the Rev. Mr. Kirkland, who wrote last century, the ashes of the pyre upon which one of the white dogs was burned were carried through the village and sprinkled at the door of every house.(544) Formerly, however, as we have seen, the Iroquois expulsion of evils was immediate and not by scapegoat.(545) The Jews annually laid all the sins of the people upon the head of a goat and sent it away into the wilderness.(546)