POLYNESIAN TRADITIONS. 34? 



repairing to the cave where the god of the earthquakes and 

 boiling springs lived, and ask for fire to enable them to make 

 progress in the 'art of dining well' 



He was as good as his word and calling on the rocks to 

 divide, passed into the fearful presence of the fire-god. The 

 young aristocrat seems to have 'jockeyed' the deity into 

 giving a few cinders ; but after a time, the latter repenting his 

 weakness in yielding to the audacity of his petitioner, sallied 

 forth, and by one fierce gust drove cooks, ovens, fire, and food 

 all over the place. The prince, nothing daunted, again sought 

 his deity, and is said to have entered into a personal combat 

 with him. 



Knowing full well that the digestions of thousands of his 

 countrymen depended on his prowess, he fought the battle of 

 ' cooking reform ' with unsurpassed devotion, and in the end 

 succeeded in severing one of the arms of the fiery god, where- 

 upon the latter asked for terms, as he said he wanted the other 

 one to maintain the balance of Samoa. An offer of a hundred 

 wives Avas indignantly refused by the young man. AVhat he 

 had come for, what he had fought for, Avas fire ; and the 

 possession of that, and at once, was the only condition he 

 would make. He carried his point, and great was the jubila- 

 tion in the Samoan South Kensington School when he returned, 

 and the banquets of roast and boiled with which he was 

 regaled are matters about which the natives talk to this day. 

 By the self-devotion of Prince Ti-it-iti, Samoa passed in one 

 day from the fearful regimen of cold (raw) leg of mutton to 

 the possible enjoyment of a triumph of Delmonico's chef. 



When the shock of an earthquake occurs in Samoa, the 

 natives will sometimes say : ' Ah ! if brave Prince Ti-it-iti had 

 not cut off one of the arms of Mafuie, Avhat a terrible shaking 

 he could have given us.' 



