ting roofed cloisters, which, as we ascertained
afterwards, were used as dwelling-places by the priests. There beyond
and connected with the first by a short passage was a second rather
smaller court, also open to the sky, and beyond this again, built like
all the rest of the temple of lava blocks, a roofed erection measuring
about twelve feet square, which I guessed at once must be the sanctuary.

This temple was, as I have said, small, but extremely well proportioned,
every detail of it being in the most excellent taste though unornamented
by sculpture or painting. I have to add that in front of the sanctuary
door stood a large block of lava, which I concluded was an altar, and in
front of this a stone seat and a basin, also of stone, supported upon a
very low tripod. Further, behind the sanctuary was a square house with
window-places.

At the moment of our first sight of this place the courts were empty,
but on the benches of the amphitheatre were seated about three hundred
persons, male and female, the men to the north and the women to the
south. They were all clad in pure white robes, the heads of the men
being shaved and those of the women veiled, but leaving the face
exposed. Lastly, there were two roadways into the amphitheatre, one
running east and one west through tunnels hollowed in the encircling
rock of the crater, both of which roads were closed at the mouths of the
tunnels by massive wooden double doors, seventeen or eighteen feet
in height. From these roadways and their doors we learned two things.
First, that the cave where had lived the Father of Serpents was, as I
had suspected, not the real approach to the shrine of the Child, but
only a blind; and, secondly, that the ceremony we were about to witness
was secret and might only be attended by the priestly class or families
of this strange tribe.

Scarcely was it full daylight when from the cells of the cloisters
round the outer court issued twelve priests headed by Harut himself, who
looked very dignified in his white garment, each of whom carried on a
wooden platter ears of different kinds of corn. Then from the cells of
the southern cloister issued twelve women, or rather girls, for all were
young and very comely, who ranged themselves alongside of the men. These
also carried wooden platters, and on them blooming flowers.

At a sign they struck up a religious chant and began to walk forward
through the passage that led from the first court to the