94. When the picture was completed food was brought in, and there was a good deal of eating and sleeping and smoking done. Being informed that nothing more would be done until after nightfall, I went to my own shelter, to elaborate some of my more hasty sketches while matters were still fresh in my mind. At 7 o’clock a messenger came to tell me that ceremonies were about to be resumed. During my absence the principal character in the night’s performance--a man arrayed in evergreens--had been dressed. 95. I found, on returning to the lodge, a number of spectators seated around close to the edge of the apartment. The fire burned in the center. The sick woman, with some companions, sat in the south. The qaçàli, with a few assistants who joined him in singing and shaking rattles, was seated at the north, at the place where the circumference of the lodge was enlarged. (Paragraph 83.) There was a space about two feet wide and six feet long between them and the wall, or roof if you choose so to call it, of the lodge. I was assigned a place in the west. The sick woman was directed to move from the position she occupied in the south, and sit, with her face to the east, at the junction of the two white serpents that cross one another on the picture. (Plate XV.) 96. When she was seated the qaçàli began a song, accompanied by the usual rattling and drumming. At a certain part of the song the chanter was seen to make a slight signal with his drumstick, a rapid stroke to the rear, when instantly a mass of animate evergreens--a moving tree, it seemed--sprang out from the space behind the singers and rushed towards the patient. A terrifying yell from the spectators greeted the apparition, when the man in green, acting as if frightened by the noise, retreated as quickly as he came, and in a moment nothing could be seen in the space behind the singers but the shifting shadows cast by the fire. He was so thoroughly covered with spruce twigs that nothing of his form save his toes could be distinguished when he rushed out in the full glare of the fire. This scene was repeated three times, at due intervals. 97. Some time after the third repetition, the chanter arose, without interrupting his song, and proceeded to erase the picture with his rattle. He began with the mountain in the west (paragraph 162), which he completely leveled; next in order he erased the track of the bear; next, the hole in the center; and then, one by one, the various other figures, ending with the serpents on the outside. In erasing the serpents, he began with the figures in the east and followed the apparent course of the sun, ending with the figures in the north. When the picture was completely obliterated, the sand on which it had been drawn was collected, put in a blanket, and carried out of doors, to be thrown away.