Once a year the priests and devotees of Pélé assembled there to perform certain rites and to feast on hogs, dogs, and fruit, which the pious inhabitants of Hamakua brought to the holy place in great abundance. This annual festival was intended to propitiate the volcanic goddess and thereby to secure the country from earthquakes and floods of molten lava.(655) The goddess of the volcano was supposed to inspire people, though to the carnal eye the inspiration resembled intoxication. One of these inspired priestesses solemnly affirmed to an English missionary that she was the goddess Pélé herself and as such immortal. Assuming a haughty air, she said, “I am Pélé; I shall never die; and those who follow me, when they die, if part of their bones be taken to Kirauea (the name of the volcano), will live with me in the bright fires there.”(656) For “the worshippers of Pélé threw a part of bones of their dead into the volcano, under the impression that the spirits of the deceased would then be admitted to the society of the volcanic deities, and that their influence would preserve the survivors from the ravages of volcanic fire.”(657) (M168) This last belief may help to explain a custom, which some peoples have observed, of throwing human victims into volcanoes. The intention of such a practice need not be simply to appease the dreadful volcanic spirits by ministering to their fiendish lust of cruelty; it may be a notion that the souls of the men or women who have been burnt to death in the crater will join the host of demons in the fiery furnace, mitigate their fury, and induce them to spare the works and the life of man. But, however we may explain the custom, it has been usual in various parts of the world to throw human beings as well as less precious offerings into the craters of active volcanoes. Thus the Indians of Nicaragua used to sacrifice men, women, and children to the active volcano Massaya, flinging them into the craters: we are told that the victims went willingly to their fate.(658) In the island of Siao, to the north of Celebes, a child was formerly sacrificed every year in order to keep the volcano Goowoong Awoo quiet. The poor wretch was tortured to death at a festival which lasted nine days. In later times the place of the child has been taken by a wooden puppet, which is hacked to pieces in the same way. The Galelareese of Halmahera say that the Sultan of Ternate used annually to require some human victims, who were cast into the crater of the volcano to save the island from its ravages.(659) In Java the volcano Bromo or Bromok is annually worshipped by people who throw offerings of coco-nuts, plantains, mangoes, rice, chickens, cakes, cloth, money, and so forth into the crater.(660) To the Tenggereese, an aboriginal heathen tribe inhabiting the mountains of which Bromo is the central crater, the festival of making offerings to the volcano is the greatest of the year.