514 MYSTIC ISLES 



When I returned to my bird cage at Tautira, I sat 

 down and considered at length all these facts and fancies. 

 I believed in an all inclusive nature; that the Will or 

 Rule of God which made a star hundreds of millions of 

 times larger than the planet I had my body on, that took 

 care of billions of suns, worlds, planets, comets, and the 

 beings upon them, was not concerned in tricks of spirit- 

 ism or materializations at the whim of mediums or 

 tahuas. But I had in my travels in many countries seen 

 inscrutable facts, and to me this was one. Nobody 

 knew what was the cause of the inaction of the fire in the 

 lovu or umu. It was not a secret held by anybody, or a 

 deception. 



One might believe that the stones arrive at a condition 

 of heat which the experienced sorcerers know to be 

 harmless. One might conceive that the emotion of the 

 walkers produces a perspiration sufficient to prevent in- 

 jury during the brief time of exposure; or that the sweat 

 and oily secretions of the skin aided by dust picked up 

 during the journey on the oven was a shield; or that the 

 walkers were hypnotized by the tahua, or exalted by 

 their daring experiment, so that they did not feel the 

 heat. Even this theory might not account for the fail- 

 ure to find the faintest burn or scorch upon those who 

 fulfilled the injunction of the sorcerers. 



The people of Tautira, from Ori-a-Ori to Matatini, 

 had the fullest confidence that Tufetufetu had sho\vn 

 them a miracle, and that it was not evil; but to the 

 American and Em-opean missionaries the Umuti was 

 deviltry, the magic of Simon ^lagus and his successors. 

 This was shown clearly in the statement of Deacon 



