OF THE SOUTH SEAS 511 



the former queen lift the hem of his tapa and bow over 

 it? It was night, the hghts sputtered, and I was awed 

 by the success of the incantation. A minute after Papa 

 Ita had gone, I threw a newspaper upon the path he 

 had trod, and it withered into ashes. The heat seared 

 my face. The doctors, five or six of them, Americans 

 and Enghsh, resident in Honolulu, shrugged their 

 shoulders. They had examined Papa Ita's feet before 

 the ceremony and afterward. The flesh was not burned, 

 but, well — What? I confess I do not know. A ther- 

 mometer held over the umu of Papa Ita at a height of 

 six feet registered 282 degrees Fahrenheit. 



There could be no negation of the extreme heat of the 

 oven of Tufetufetu. I had tested it for myself. No 

 precaution was taken by the walkers. I knew most of 

 them intimately. There was no fraud, no ointment or 

 oil or other application to the feet, and all had not the 

 same thickness of sole. At Raratonga, near Tahiti, the 

 British resident, Colonel Gudgeon, and three other 

 Englishmen had followed the tahua as my neighbors had 

 here. The official said that though his feet were tender, 

 his own sensations were of light electric shocks at the mo- 

 ment and afterward. Dr. William Craig, who dis- 

 obeyed the tahua and looked behind, was badly burned, 

 and was an invalid for a long time, though Dr. George 

 Craig and Mr. Goodwin met with no harm. The resi- 

 dent half an hour after his passage tossed a branch on 

 the stones, and it caught fire. In Fiji, Lady Thurston 

 with a long stick laid her handkerchief on the shoulder 

 of one of the walkers, and when withdrawn in a few 

 seconds it was scorched through. A cloth thrown on the 

 stones was burned before the last man had gone by. 



