The country was large but sparsely populated, the fighting men numbered
not more than four thousand, of whom about half lived in the great city,
the rest occupying villages here and there on the mountain slopes. As a
rule the people were monogamous, except the priests. It was the custom
of sacrifice which kept down the population to its low level, made the
power of the priests absolute, and their wealth greater than that of all
the other inhabitants of the country put together, for they chose the
victims that had offended against Jal or against the mother-goddess, and
confiscated their possessions to "the service of the temple." Thus the
great herds of half-wild cattle which the travellers had seen on the
plains belonged to the priests, and the priests took a fourth of the
produce of every man's field and garden--that is, when they did not take
it all, and his life with it.

Twice in every year great festivals were held in the temple of Jal,
at the beginning of the spring season and in the autumn after the
ingathering of the crops. At each of these festivals many victims were
offered in sacrifice, some upon the stone and some by being hurled into
the boiling pool beneath the statue, there to be consumed by the Snake
or swept down the secret course of the underground river. The feast
celebrated in the spring was sacred to Jal, and that in the autumn to
the mother-goddess. But there was this difference between them--that
at the spring ceremony female victims only were sacrificed to Jal to
propitiate him and to avert his evil influence, while at the autumn
celebration males alone were offered up to the mother-goddess in
gratitude for her gifts of plenty. Also criminals were occasionally
thrown to the Snake that his hunger might be satisfied. The priests had
other rites, Olfan added, and these they would have an opportunity of
witnessing if the spring festival, which should be celebrated on the
second day from that date, were held according to custom.