As the first of the _Neetak Hoollo_, precedes a long strict fast of two nights and a day, they gormandize such a prodigious quantity of strong food, as to enable them to keep inviolate the succeeding fast, the sabbath of sabbaths, the _Neetak Yah-ah_: the feast lasts only from morning till sun-set. Being great lovers of the ripened fruits, and only tantalized as yet, with a near view of them; and having lived at this season, but meanly on the wild products of nature—such a fast as this may be truly said to afflict their souls, and to prove a sufficient trial of their religious principles. During the festival, some of their people are closely employed in putting their temple in proper order for the annual expiation; and others are painting the white cabbin, and the supposed holiest, with white clay; for it is a sacred, peaceable place, and white is its emblem. Some, at the same time are likewise painting the war-cabbin with red clay, or their emblematical red root, as occasion requires; while others of an inferior order, are covering all the seats of the beloved square with new mattresses, made out of the fine splinters of long canes, tied together with flags. In the mean time, several of them are busy in sweeping the temple, clearing it of every supposed polluting thing, and carrying out the ashes from the hearth which perhaps had not been cleaned six times since the last year’s general offering. Several towns join together to make the annual sacrifice; and, if the whole nation lies in a narrow compass, they make but one annual offering: by which means, either through a sensual or religious principle, they strike off the work with joyful hearts. Every thing being thus prepared, the _Archi-magus_ orders some of his religious attendants to dig up the old hearth, or altar, and to sweep out the remains that by chance might either be left, or drop down. Then he puts a few roots of the button-snake-root, with some green leaves of an uncommon small sort of tobacco, and a little of the new fruits, at the bottom of the fire-place, which he {100} orders to be covered up with white marley clay, and wetted over with clean water[XXIV]. Footnote XXIV: Under the palladium of Troy, were placed things of the like nature, as a preservative from evil; but the above practice seems to be pretty much tempered with the Mosaic institution; for God commanded them to make an altar of earth, to sacrifice thereon. _Exod._ xx. 24.