The highlight of the week is the torchlight descent.
Salomon Reinach, guided by the analogy of similar practices among the aborigines of Australia, and noticing that these primitive pictures represent none but animals that formed the staple food of the age and place, and that they are usually found in the deepest and darkest recesses of the caves where they could only be drawn and seen by torchlight, has argued that they were not intended for artistic gratification (a late motive in human art), but were magical representations destined to influence and perhaps attract the hunter's quarry.
In the seclusion of his villa of Sorgvliet (Fly-from-Care), near the Hague, he lived from this time till his death, occupied in the composition of his autobiography (Eighty-two Years of My Life, first printed at Leiden in 1734) and of his poems. He died on the 12th of September 1660, and was buried by torchlight, and with great ceremony, in the Klooster-Kerk at the Hague.
Before sunrise next morning (the loth) a second "stand" like that on Arafa is made for a short time by torchlight round the mosque of Mozdalifa, but before the sun is fairly up all must be in motion in the second ifada towards Mina.
Fish abound at many parts of the coast, and are taken by lines, or speared at night by torchlight, or netted, or a river is dammed and the fish stupefied with the root of a milletia.