When all the snakes have been carried and the last one has been dropped from the mouth of the carrier, the chant ceases. A priest draws a great round cloud symbol on the ground. Quickly the Hopi maids and women, (a small selected group), who stand ready with baskets of meal, sprinkle the ground within the circle. At a signal all the snakes, now in the hands of the gatherers and the Antelope priests, are thrown upon this emblem. The women hastily drop sacred meal on the mass of snakes, then a second signal and the Snake priests grab up the whole writhing mass in their hands and run in the four directions off the steep mesa, to deposit their Elder Brothers again in the lowlands with the symbolic sacred meal on their backs, that they may bear away to the underground the prayers of their Younger Brothers, the Snake Clan. The Antelope priests now circle the plaza four times, stamping on the sipapu in passing, and then return to their own kiva, and the dance is over. The Snake priests presently return to the village, still running, disrobe in their kiva and promptly go to the nearest edge of the mesa, where the women of their clan wait with huge bowls of emetic (promptly effective) and tubs of water for bathing. This is the purification ceremony which ends the ritual. Immediately the women of their families bring great bowls and trays of food and place them on top of the Snake Kiva, and the men, who have fasted all day and sometimes longer, enjoy a feast. A spirit of relief and happiness now pervades the village and everybody keeps open house. Far more often than otherwise, rain, either a sprinkle or a downpour, has come during or just at the close of the dance, and the people are thankful and hopeful, for this is often the first rain of the season. The writer has herself stood soaked to the skin by a thunder shower that had been slowly gathering through the sultry afternoon and broke with dramatic effect during the ceremony. The Snake priests were noticeably affected by the incident and danced with actual fanatic frenzy. Those who habitually attend this ceremony from Flagstaff and Winslow and other points within motoring distance (if there is any motoring distance these days) have long ago learned that they would better start for home immediately following the dance, not waiting for morning, else the dry washes may be running bank high by that time and prevent their getting away. The writer has counted more than a hundred marooned cars lined up at Old Oraibi or Moencopi Wash, waiting, perhaps another twenty-four hours, for the ordinarily dry wash to become fordable. One will at least be impressed with the idea that the Snake Dance (a movable date set by the priests from the observation of shadows on their sacred rocks) comes just at the breaking of the summer drouth.