William Bartram, in his “Travels in Florida” (1792), one of the most fascinating books ever written, narrates that he attended a “feast” given by the “White king of Talahafochta,” near the River “Appalochuchla” (Apalachicola), and says: When the feast was over, * * * our chief, with the rest of the white people in town, took their seats according to order; tobacco and pipes were brought; the calumet was lighted and smoked, circulating according to the usual forms and ceremony; and afterwards _black drink_ concluded the feast. The king conversed, drank _cassine_, and associated familiarly with his people and with us. (P. 234.) Again, when in what is now Georgia, or extreme north Florida, meeting the Creek Indians at a town he calls “Attasse,” he attended a great council of the chiefs of that nation: I was introduced to the ancient chiefs at the public square or areopagus; and in the evening in company with the traders, who are numerous in this town, repaired to the great rotunda, where were assembled the greatest number of ancient, venerable chiefs and warriors that I had ever beheld; we spent the evening and greater part of the night together in drinking cassine and smoking tobacco. The great council house, or rotunda, is appropriated to much the same purpose as the public square, but more private, and seems particularly dedicated to political affairs; women and youth are never admitted, and I suppose it is death for a female to presume to enter the door or approach within its pale. It is a vast conical building of circular dome, capable of accommodating many hundred people: constructed and furnished within exactly in the same manner as those of the Cherokees already described, but much larger than any I had seen of them; there are people appointed to take care of it, to have it daily swept clean, and to provide canes for fuel or to give light. As their vigils and manner of conducting their vespers and mystical fire in this rotunda are extremely singular, and altogether different from the customs and usages of any other people, I shall proceed to describe them. In the first place, the governor or officer who has the management of this business, with his servants attending, orders the black drink to be brewed, which is a decoction or infusion of the leaves and tender shoots of the _cassine_; this is done under an open shed or pavilion, at 20 or 30 yards distance, directly opposite the door of the council house. Next he orders bundles of dry canes to be brought in; these are previously split and broken in pieces to about the length of 2 feet, and then placed obliquely crossways upon one another on the floor, forming a spiral circle round about the great center pillar, rising to a foot or 18 inches in height from the ground; and