192 PROCESSIONS IN HONOUR OF THE GODS. [Cuar. X. 
different badges of office. The dresses of the 
officials were exactly the same as of those who form 
the train of some of the high mandarins. Some 
had a broad fan, made of peacock feathers, which 
they wore on the sides of their hats, others were 
clad in glaring theatrical dresses, with low caps, 
and two long black feathers stuck in them, and 
hanging over their shoulders like two horns. Then 
there were the ill-looking executioners with long, 
conical, black hats on their heads, and whips in 
their hands for the punishment of the refractory. 
Bands of music, placed in different parts of the 
procession, played at intervals as it proceeded. 
Anxious to see the end of this curious exhibition, 
I followed the procession until it arrived at a 
temple in the suburbs, where it halted. The gods 
were taken out of the sedan-chairs, and replaced 
with due honours, in the temple, from which they 
had been taken in the morning. Here their nu- 
merous votaries bent low before them, burned 
incense, and left their gifts upon the altar. Nu- 
merous groups of well-dressed ladies and their 
children were scattered over the ground in the 
vicinity of the temple, all bending their knees 
and seemingly engaged in earnest devotion. A 
large quantity of paper, in the form of the Sycee 
ingots, was heaped up on the grass as it was 
brought by the different devotees, and, when the 
ceremonies of the day were drawing to a close, the 
whole was burned in honour of, or as an offering 
to, the gods. The sight was interesting, but it 
