During the growth of the rice, if the rats be making havoc among it, or the pale green leaf appear blighted, there are similar ceremonies to awe the vermin, and charm back the colour to the plant. But the harvest feasts are the great days; there are three:--The feast of first fruits,[12] when the priestesses, accompanied by a gong and a drum, go in procession to the farms and gather several bunches of the ripe padi. These are brought back to the village, washed in cocoa-nut water, and laid round a bamboo altar, which at the harvest feasts is erected in the common room of the largest house, and decorated with white cloth and red streamers, so as to present a very gay appearance, and is hung around with the sweet-smelling blossom of the areca palm. This feast and interdict last two days; only fowls are killed; dancing and gong-beating go on night and day; and when it is over, the Dayaks may set themselves to repair their bamboo platforms outside the houses, on which the rice is trodden out from the ear, and then dried in the sun. They may now also gather in their crops. The second feast[13] is a more important affair: it is held about the middle of harvest, and lasts four days; fowls and a pig are killed, and dancing and beating of gongs go on almost continually. The first part of this feast is celebrated, not in the village, but in a shed at some distance from it, frequently built by the roadside, and sometimes on the very summits of the hills on which the villages are situated. Although strangers are forbidden to approach the place during these ceremonies, yet at Sirambau I have often been invited to be present during this and the other feasts. They choose a lovely spot for the erection of their shed, which is tastefully decorated with green boughs and climbing plants, and situated under the loftiest fruit-trees I have ever seen; and here as in other villages, around the spot where the shed was erected were planted yellow bamboos, and their golden tapering stems and graceful feathery tufts are a charming and pleasing contrast to the rude leaf walls and roof of the neighbouring building.