eck, but
often enough near the middle, so that its head may sometimes move across
the man's face or eyes and hair, a really harrowing sight. The
attendant, sometimes called the hugger, places his left arm across the
shoulder of the first dancer and walks beside and a step behind him,
using his feather wand or snake whip to distract the attention of the
snake. (See Figure 11.) Just behind this pair walks their gatherer, who
is alertly ready to pick up the dropped snake, when it has been carried
four times around the dance circle; sometimes it is dropped sooner.

The dance step of this first pair is a rhythmic energetic movement,
almost a stamping, with the carrier dancing with closed eyes. The
gatherer merely walks behind, and is an alertly busy man. The writer has
seen as many as five snakes on the ground at once, some of them coiling
and rattling, others darting into the surrounding crowd with lightning
rapidity, but never has she seen one escape the gatherer, and just once
has she seen a snake come near to making its escape. This was during the
ceremony at Hotavilla last summer (1932); the spectators had crowded
rather close to the circle, and several front rows sat on the ground, in
order that the dozens of rows back of them might see over their heads.
As for the writer, she sat on a neighboring housetop, well out of the
way of rattlers, red racers, rabbit snakes, and even the harmless but
fearsome-looking bull snake from 3 to 5 feet long. Often the snake
starts swiftly for the side lines, but always without seeming haste the
gatherer gets it just as the startled spectators begin a hasty retreat.
If the snakes coils, meal is sprinkled on it and the feather wand
induces it to straighten, when it is picked up. But this time the big
snake really got into the crowd, second or third row, through space
hurriedly opened for him by the frightened and more or less squealing
white visitors. The priest was unable to follow it quickly without
stepping on people, who had repeatedly been warned not to sit too close.

[Illustration: Figure 11.--Snake Priests with Snake.

--Photo by Bortell]

Very quietly and without rising, a man in the third row picked up the
snake and handed it to the gatherer. The writer shuddered but did not
realize that the impromptu gatherer was her son, so bronzed by a
summer's archaeology field trip that she did not recognize him.
Afterward he merely said, "It was a harmless bull snake, and the priest
c