When the roof is finished the women put a thick coating of mud on the floor and plaster the walls. At Zuñi floors are nearly always made of slabs of stone, but in Hopi mud is the rule. The process of plastering a floor is interesting to an onlooker. Clay dug from under the cliffs, crushed and softened in water and tempered with sand is smeared on the floor with the hand, a little area at a time. The floor may be dry and occasionally the mud gets too hard; a dash of water corrects this. When the mud dries to the proper stage, it is rubbed with a smooth stone having a flat face, giving the completed floor a fine finish like pottery. As an extra finish to the room a dado is painted around the wall, in a wash of red ocher by means of a rabbit skin used as a brush. Formerly a small space on the wall was left unplastered; it was believed that a _kachina_ came and finished it, and although the space remained bare it was considered covered with invisible mud. Before the house can be occupied the builder prepares four feathers for its dedication. He ties the _nakwakwoci_ or breath feathers to a willow twig, the end of which is inserted over one of the central roof-beams. The builder also appeases Masauah, the God of Death, by an offering in which the house is "fed" by putting fragments of food among the rafters or in a niche in the door lintels, beseeching the god not to hasten the departure of any of the family to the underworld. At the feast of Soyaluna in December, the feathers, forming the "soul" of the house, are renewed, and at this season when the sun returns northward, the village house-chief visits the houses which have been built within the year and performs a ceremony over them. A hole is left in one corner of the roof, under which the women build the mud fireplace, with its knob andirons and the column of pots with the bottoms knocked out which form the chimney. Over the fireplace, a chimney hood, usually supported on posts, is constructed of basket-work, plastered over with mud. A row of mealing stones slanted in sunken stone boxes in the floor must not be forgotten, and no one in Hopiland could set up housekeeping without a smooth stone slab to bake _piki_ upon. Some of the houses have a low bench along one or two sides of the room which forms convenient seats. The windows are small, being often mere chinks, through which the curious spy without being seen. Stones are usually at hand, by means of which, and mud, windows and doors may be closed when the family go off on a rather protracted stay.