The fifth of the series resembles the fourth inasmuch as its floor is covered with iron-spiked blossoms. But the erring souls continually attempt to escape. With much anxiety of mind and weariness of body, they raise themselves from their spiny bed only to be met by fiends armed with gigantic sledge-hammers. Fierce blows of their ponderous weapons send them reeling back to their torment, amidst the horrible laughter of their fierce captors. The sixth hell is that of everlasting fire, but of even a more revolting character than that preached by so many Christian teachers. For amidst the roaring flames of the blazing pit scamper the giant dogs of hell, whose teeth are of sharpened iron. They seize their prey, and devour it with insatiable appetite. After being eaten the wicked are re-born, again roasted in the infernal fire, again devoured by iron fangs and so on and on for sixteen thousand weary years. In the seventh hell the sides are steep hills, but they apparently present a means of escape. Up the precipitous incline the lost ones toil and clamber, but terrific gusts of wind ever hurl them headlong to the bottom on to a floor of iron spikes. The last of the series is another of unquenchable fire. Here the lost are so crowded together that they have no room to move. This is the deepest and widest hell of all, and here the throng of sufferers must endure their torments until that day when a great cloud shall appear in the heavens, announcing the end of the world. As if these eight diabolical creations of some fiendish mortal's brain did not contain sufficient terrors to frighten the wicked, all the eight major hells have each been subdivided into sixteen minor ones equally revolting. They are all of cubical shape, and measure thirty leagues each way; but not wishing to weary the reader by detailing their several characters, only one is here mentioned in illustration of their general nature. In one of these minor hells every one suffers from intolerable thirst. Through its gloomy confines flows a river whose waters are saturated with salt. The wretches, maddened by the thirst which none may relieve, fling themselves into the briny flood. Along the banks stand devils with long iron poles with burning hooks, who fish them out again, mutilate their bodies with the red-hot iron, and when they cry aloud in their madness for water, pour molten iron down their scorching throats. CHAPTER XVI. RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. Religious ceremonies follow one another with incredible rapidity in the "Kingdom of the Yellow Robe." They are observed by every one, not on account of their religious value, but because they afford excellent reasons for indulging in general holidays. A few of the more important ones will be dealt with in this and the two succeeding chapters.