THE FIRE WALK CEREMONY IN TAHITI. 543 



three or four persons, Avhom I personally know on })oard the ship, did 

 so in shoes, the soles of which were not burned at all. One of the 

 gentlemen, however, who crossed over with unburned shoes, showed 

 me that the ends of his trousers had l)een liurnt by the flames which 

 leaped up between the stones, and which at all times added so nuicli 

 to the impressiveness of the spectacle; and there was no doubt that 

 anyone who stumbled or got a foot caught between the hot stones 

 might have been ])adly burned. United States Deputy Consul Ducor- 

 ran, who was present, remarked to me that he knew that Papa-Ita had 

 failed on a neighboring island, with stones of a marble-like quality, 

 and he ofi'ered to test the heat of these basaltic ones by seeing how 

 long he could remain on the hottest part of the pile, and he stood 

 there, in my sight, from eight to ten seconds before he felt the heat 

 through the thin soles of his shoes beginning to be unpleasantl}^ warm. 



A gentleman present asked Papa-Ita why he did not give an exhibit 

 that would be convincing by placing his foot, even for a few seconds, 

 between two of the red-hot stones which could be seen glowing at the 

 bottom of the pile, to which Papa-Ita replied with dignity, ''My 

 fathers did not tell me to do it that way." I asked him if he would 

 hold one of the smaller, upper hot stones in his hand. He promised 

 to do so, but he did not do it. 



The outer barriers were now removed and a crowd of natives pressed 

 in. I, who was taking these notes on the spot, left, after assuring 

 myself that the stones around the edge of the pit were comparatively 

 cold, although the center was no doubt very hot, and those below red- 

 hot. The real question is, I repeat. How hot were those trodden on? 

 and the answer to this I was to try to obtain after measuring the 

 amount of water boiled away. 



On returning to the ship this was estimated from the water which 

 was left in the bucket (after allowing for that spilled over) at about 

 10 pounds. The stone, which it will be remembered was one of the 

 hottest, if not the hottest, in the pile, was found to weigh 65 pounds, 

 and%to have evaporated this quantity of water. It was, as I have said, 

 a volcanic stone, and on minuter examination proved to be a vesicular 

 basalt, the most distinctive feature of which was its porosity and non- 

 conductibility, for it was subsequently found that it could have been 

 heated red-hot at one end, while remaining comparatively cool at the 

 top. I l)rought a piece of it to Washington with me and there deter- 

 mined its specific gravity to be 2.39, its specitic heat 0.1i>, and its con- 

 ductivity to be so extremely small that one end of a small fragment 

 could be held in the hand while the other was heated indetinitely in 

 the flame of a ))io\Ypipe, almost like a stick of sealing wax. This 

 partly defeated the aim of the experiment (to find the temperature of 

 the upper part of the stone), since only the mean temperature was 

 found. This mean temperature of the hottest stone of the upper laj^er, 



