Everyone who goes to Walpi sees the great shrine in the gap which is called the "shrine of the end of the trail." The base and sides are large slabs of stone, and within are various odd-shaped stones surrounding a coiled fossil believed by the Hopi to be a stone serpent. During the winter Sun ceremony this whole stone box blossoms with feathered prayer-sticks, almost hiding the shrine, and converting it into a thing of beauty. Other holy places, most of them ruins of abandoned towns, are visited at times by this people, who cheerfully make long journeys to mountains and running streams for sacred water, pine boughs, or herbs. They carry with them feather prayer-sticks and sacred meal as offerings to the gods of the place. One of the streams from which holy water is brought is Clear Creek near the town of Winslow, seventy-five miles south of Walpi. Each field has a shrine and _pahos_ are often seen there; this is also the custom among the Zuñi and other of the Pueblos. In the center of the main plaza of each pueblo may be seen a stone box with a slab of stone for a door which opens to the east. This is called the _pahoki_, or "house of the pahos," the central shrine of the village, and it is carefully sealed up when not in use. It is to be expected that the shrines of the ancient pueblos would have vanished, and it is true that such remains are the rarest encountered in exploring ruins. Still a few traces reward a careful search in the outskirts of many of the ruins. A shrine made of slabs of stone painted with symbolic designs of the rain cloud was found at the ancient town of Awatobi, and is now in the National Museum. In caves and rock recesses of the mesas are deposits of the sacred belongings of the societies. These places, while not shrines perhaps, are kept inviolably sacred, and no curious white visitors have peered into them, even those highest in the good graces of the priests. Once by chance two explorers came upon such a treasure house and with some trepidation took a photograph of it. In a dark cleft under the rocks were the jars in which the "snake medicine" is carried. These were arranged without much order near a most remarkable carved stone figure of _Talatumsi_, the "dawn goddess" painted and arrayed in the costume of that deity. In truth, this little cavern had a gruesome look, and knowing also the prohibition against prying, one breathed more freely on getting away from the neighborhood. Though the Hopi may have no house shrines, and this is said with caution, because not much is known of their domestic life, yet in some of the houses are rude stone images which are venerated. These images may be household gods like the Lares and Penates of the ancients. No one would be surprised to know that the Hopi hold the fireplace sacred and make sacrifice to it as the shrine of Masauah, the dread ruler of the underworld.