t you may the more clearly understand the whole matter, I will so
anticipate my story as to put you in possession of many essential
particulars concerning the place set apart by the Creeks for gathering
their people to the festival in question. This will provide you with the
unexpected gratification of even a third preamble, as an explanatory
avenue extra to the main subject.

The chosen spot is remote from any habitations, and consists of an ample
square, with four large log houses, each one forming a side of the
square, at every angle of which there is a broad opening into the area.
The houses are of logs and clay, and a sort of wicker-work, with
sharp-topped, sloping roofs, like those of our log houses, but more
thoroughly finished. The part of the houses fronting the square is
entirely open. Their interior consists of a broad platform from end to
end, raised a little more than knee-high, and so curved and inclined as
to form a most comfortable place for either sitting or lying. It is
covered with the specially-prepared cane matting, which descends in
front of it to the ground. A space is left open along the entire back of
each house, to afford a free circulation of air. It starts from about
the hight of my thin, so that I could peep in from the outside through
the whole of each structure, and obtain a clear view of all that was
going on. Attached to every house towers a thick, notched mast. Behind,
the angle of one of the four broad entrances to the square, rises a
high, cone-roofed building, circular and dark, with an entrance down an
inclined plane, through a low door. Its interior was so obscured that I
could not make out what it contained; but some one said it was a
council-house. I occupied one corner of an outer square, next to the one
I have already described, two sides of which outer square were formed by
thick corn-fields, a third by a raised embankment apparently for
spectators, and a fourth by the back of one of the buildings before
mentioned. In the center of this outer square was a very high circular
mound. This, it seems, was formed from the earth accumulated yearly by
removing the surface of the sacred square thither. At every Green-Corn
Festival, the sacred square is strewn with soil yet untrodden; the soil
of the year preceding being taken away, but preserved as above
explained. No stranger's foot is allowed to press the new earth of the
sacred square until its consecration is complete. A gentleman t