In all the countries which had come to him by inheritance he had houses "built after the manner of arbours"--of saplings, thatched with boughs of trees, and lined with mats. Some of these houses were a hundred and twenty feet long, and at every house provision was kept for his entertainment when it pleased him to make a royal progress through his dominions. Besides these, he kept for his own use a treasury building at Orapakes, filled with skins, copper, pearls, beads, bows and arrows, also a store of the precious red paint, with which the ladies of his court adorned themselves. At the four corners of this house were four images rudely carved out of the trunks of trees--one represented a dragon, another a bear, the third a leopard, and the fourth a man, signifying that the great Emperor was lord of beast and man. Indeed, his power was absolute. He had under him inferior kings of his own kindred, and all paid him tribute. Eight of ten parts of everything they acquired--game, corn, skins, beads, dye-stuffs, and the precious copper--were reverently laid at his feet. At his least frown they trembled with fear, for cruel and ingenious he could be in devising tortures for the punishment of those who offended him. The arrow and the tomahawk were his most merciful agents in despatching them. Before the door of his rural palace many a victim had been, in the presence of his women and little children, flayed alive, dismembered by degrees, thrown alive into a pit of fire. On this fifth of January some such divertisement was keenly anticipated. His family and retainers were awake early, and bustling about in preparation for an unusual event. There was to be a great gathering of the neighbouring chiefs,--Opechancanough and Opitchipan, his brothers and successors, and others. Early in the morning fires were kindled all over the settlement, and before them haunches of venison were spitted for the slight roasting deemed essential before the boiling, according to the invariable custom of the Indians in preparing flesh and fowl. Beneath the fires flat rocks were heating, to be withdrawn for the baking of bread. Some of the loaves were laid in the ashes, as they are to-day by the Virginians, who are indebted to the Indian, not only for his corn, but for his peculiar methods of cooking it. Now, as then, the "hoe-cake" is baked before the fire, and turned to brown on both sides; the homelier "ash-cake" is washed as soon as withdrawn from its humble bed of ashes, and dries immediately from its own heat. Now, as then, the Indian corn is beaten into "hominy," and boiled for food. We have not lost its Indian name, nor the Indian's name for the small loaf. He called it "pone"--where did he find a word so near kin to the Latin _panis_ and the French _pain_?