The Commander is the chief officer of a local Camp. He issues the call for, and presides over, all its meetings. Initiates members; administers the oath; invests them with the signs, grips, and passwords necessary in making themselves known as members of the Order; and imparts to them the signal code of sounds by which they are governed in their excursions, and at times when, for obvious reasons, it is not expedient to utter words of command. The South Commander is, to all appearances, a lay member of the Camp. His power, however, when he chooses to exercise it, is superior to that of the Commander. He is an officer without apparent function, and yet it is a portion of the oath attached to the second, or supreme degree, that he shall be obeyed in preference to any other known or constituted authority. He can prorogue the Camp, or dissolve it altogether, whenever he deems fit, and is amenable to no one inside of the Camp of which he is a member. The office of this functionary is not an elective one. Whenever a Camp is formed, the authority under which it works assigns to it a South Commander, and he is the only person through whom communications can be received from, or made to, that authority. All the doings of the Camp, the number and names of its members, the warnings issued, the persons visited, and all other proceedings, are carefully noted by the South Commander, and reported by him to the Grand Commander of the District in which the Camp is located, and he is the only member of the Camp who has knowledge of that officer. The South Commander is not permitted to know any Grand Commander save the one to whom he reports, nor does he know to whom his superior is amenable. The Grand Commander has charge of a District comprising a certain number of Camps (usually seven), from the South Commanders of which he receives reports as above stated. It is his duty to condense these reports into cypher, which he transmits to the officer above him, known as the Chief of Dominion, and from whom he receives the general instructions and orders to be transmitted to the various Camps of his District through the South Commander. He in turn is not permitted to know any Chief of Dominion save the one to whom he reports; and, like his inferiors, is in utter ignorance as to whom his superior is amenable. The Chief of Dominion has charge of all the operations of the Order in some State assigned to his care. He receives reports from the Grand Commanders thereof; and transmits the same to the "Grand Cyclops," or supreme head of the Order, and President ex-officio of the "Supreme Grand Council." This Supreme Grand Council is composed of the Chiefs of Dominions, and from them emanate the instructions which, being decided upon in the conclave of the Council, are promulgated to the rank and file through the Grand Commanders, South Commanders, and Commanders of Camps.