THE FIRE WALK CEREMONY IN TAHITI. 541 



they did not burn my hand, but as they approached the center the 



stones were heaped up into a mound three or four Layers doe}), at 

 which point the lowest layers seen between the upper ones were visibly 

 red-hot. That these latter were, nevertheless, sending out considerable 

 heat there could be no question, though the topmost stones were cer- 

 tainly not red-hot, while those at the bottom were visibly so and were 

 occasionally splitting- with loud reports, while the flames from the 

 luirned wood near the center of the pile passed up in visible lambent 

 tongues, both circumstances contributing to the effect upon the excited 

 bystanders. 



The upper stones, I repeat, even where the topmost were presently 

 removed, did not show any glow to the eye, but were unquestionably 

 very hot and certainly looked unsafe for naked feet. Native feet, how- 

 ever, are not like European ones, and Mr. Richardson, the chief engi- 

 neer of the ship, mentioned that he had himself seen elsewhere natives 

 standing unconcerned with naked feet on the cover of pipes conveying 

 steam at about 300° F., where no European foot could even lightly 

 rest for a minute. The stones then were hot. The crucial question 

 was. How hot was the upper part of this upper layer on which the feet 

 were to rest an instant in passing? I could think of no ready thermo- 

 metric method that could give an absolutely trustworthy answer, but 

 I could possibly determine on the spot the thermal equivalent of one 

 of the hottest stones trodden on. (It was subsequently shown that the 

 stone might be much cooler at one part than another.) Most obviously, 

 even this was not an easy thing to do in the circumstances, but I 

 decided to try to get at least a trustworthy approximation. B} T the 

 aid of Chief Engineer Richardson, who attended with a stoker and one 

 of the quartermasters, kindly detailed at my request by the ship's 

 master, Captain Lawless, I prepared for the rough but conclusive 

 experiment presently described. 



It was now nearly forty minutes after 4, when six acolytes (natives), 

 wearing crowns of flowers, wreathed with garlands and bearing poles 

 nearly 15 feet long, ostensibly to be used as levers in toppling over 

 the upper etones, appeared. They were supposed to need such long 

 poles because of the distance at which they must stand on account of 

 the heat radiated from the pile, but I had walked close beside it a 

 moment before and satisfied myself that 1 could have manipulated the 

 >tones with a lever of one-third the length, with some discomfort, but 

 with entire safet} r . Some of the uppermost stones only were turned 

 over, leaving a superior layer, the long poles being needlessly thrust 

 down between the stones to the bottom, where two of them caught tire 

 at their extremities, adding very much to the impression that the 

 exposed layer of stones was red hot, when in fact they were not, at 

 least to the eye. These long poles and the way they were handled 

 were, then, a part of the ingenious "staging" of the whole spectacle. 



