On the first day the sand altar is made and at night the songs are begun. Within the kiva the interminable rites go on, and daily the cycle of songs accompanied with flutes is rehearsed. A messenger clad in an embroidered kilt and anointed with honey runs with flowing hair to deposit prayer-sticks at the shrines, encircling the fields in his runs and coming nearer the pueblo on each circuit. During the seventh and eighth days a visit is made to three important springs where ceremonies are held, and on the return of the priests they are received by an assemblage of the Bear and Snake societies, the chiefs of which challenge them and tell them that if they are good people, as they claim, they can bring rain. After an interesting interchange of ceremonies the Flute priests return to their kiva to prepare for the public dance on the morrow. When at 3 A. M. the belt of Orion is at a certain place in the heavens the priests file into the plaza, where a cottonwood bower has been erected over the shrine called the entrance to the underworld. Here the priests sing, accompanied with flutes, the shrine is ceremonially opened and prayer-sticks placed within, and they return to the kiva. At some of the pueblos there is a race up the mesa at dawn on the ninth day as in other ceremonies. On the evening of the ninth day the Flute procession forms and winds down the trail to the spring in order: a leader, the Snake maiden and two Snake youths, the priests, and in the rear a costumed warrior with bow and whizzer. At the spring they sit on the north side of the pool, and as one of the priests plays a flute the others sing, while one of their number wades into the spring, dives under the water, and plants a prayer-stick in the muddy bottom. Then taking a flute he again wades into the spring and sounds it in the water to the four cardinal points. Meanwhile sunflowers and cornstalks have been brought to the spring by messengers. Each priest places the sunflowers on his head and each takes two cornstalks in his hands, and the procession, two abreast, forms to ascend the mesa. A priest draws on the trail with white corn meal a line and across it three cloud symbols. The Flute children throw the offerings they hold in their hands upon the symbols and advance to the symbols, followed by the priests who sing to the sound of the flutes. The children pick the offerings from the ground with sticks held in the hand, and the same performance is repeated till they stand again in the plaza on the mesa before the cottonwood bower, when they sing melodious songs, then disperse.