With infinite precautions, we moved through the thicket toward it, the glare growing yellower and more brilliant as we advanced.  And now we remained motionless and very still.

Massed against the flare of light were crowded many people in a vast, uneven circle ringing a great central fire, except at the southern end.  And here, where the ring was open so that we could see the huge fire itself, stood a great, stone slab on end, between two round mounds of earth.  It was the altar of Amochol, and we knew it instantly, where it stood between the ancient mounds raised by the Alligewi.

The drums had not yet begun while we were still creeping up, but they began now, muttering like summer thunder, the painted drummers marching into the circle and around it twice before they took their places to the left of the altar, squatting there and ceaselessly beating their hollow sounding drums.  Then, in file, the eight Sachems of the dishonoured Senecas filed into the fiery circle, chanting and timing their slow steps to the mournful measure of their chant.  All wore the Sachem’s crest painted white; their bodies were most barbarously striped with black and white, and their blankets were pure white, crossed by a single blood-red band.

What they chanted I could not make out, but that it was some blasphemy which silently enraged my Indians was plain enough; and I laid a quieting hand on the Sagamore’s shaking arm, cautioning him; and he touched the Oneidas and the Stockbridge, one by one, in warning.

Opposite us, the ruddy firelight played over the massed savages, women, children, and old men mostly, gleaming on glistening eyes, sparkling on wampum and metal ornaments.  To the right and left of us a few knives and hatchets caught the firelight, and many multi-coloured plumes and blankets glowed in its shifting brilliancy.

The eight Sachems stood, tall and motionless, behind the altar; the drumming never ceased, and from around the massed circle rose a low sing-song chant, keeping time to the hollow rhythm of the drums: 

  "Onenh are oya
    Egh-des-ho-ti-ya-do-re-don
  Nene ronenh
    ’Ken-ki-ne ne-nya-wenne!”

  [* “Now again they decided and said:  ‘This shall be done!’”]

Above this rumbling undertone sounded the distant howling of dogs in Catharines-town; and presently the great forest owls woke up, yelping like goblins across the misty intervale.  Strangely enough, the dulled pandemonium, joined in by dog and owl and drum and chanting savages, made but a single wild and melancholy monotone seeming to suit the time and place as though it were the voice of this fierce wilderness itself.

Now into the circle, one by one, came those who had dreamed and must be answered—­ not as in the old-time and merry Feast of Dreams, where the rites were harmless and the mirth and jollity innocent, if rough—­ for Amochol had perverted the ancient and innocent ceremony, making of a fourteen-day feast a sinister rite which ended in a single night.