Artificial Fireworks. 
263 
T(U. Our two invalids getting weaker and weaker soon became 
walking skeletons and although at yesterday’s camp one of the War raus, 
Avhorn I had long suspected to be a Piai from his not eating salted fish 
or salted meat, had practised his supernatural powers on his fellow 
tribesman, by blowing whole clouds of tobacco in his face, and 
murmuring some incantations, the treatment had so far not proved 
effective at all. This evening a Waika took pity on the sick Waika for 
dense smoke-clouds were wafted over to us from out of the brushwood 
where both medicinemen had removed their patients. I was only 
surprised that the poor fellows did not die. 
7G5. For a long while past, whenever the coloured people heard 
us admiring any beautiful landscape, they started talking about some 
illuminations that would surpass everything that we had hitherto seen, 
but however inquisitive the intimation had made us there was always 
unfortunately wanting the very article necessary for its display, namely, 
a Mora at least partly hollow, a timber that is considerably more 
resinous ( fetter ) than our fir-trees. We had pitched camp to-day above 
the Achra-mucra on the western bank below the protecting shelter of 
giant Mora trees when one of the men came gaily tripping over to us 
to say that the exhibition could now be installed, for he had just found 
an excellent fire torch, a tree at least 130 feet high and ten feet in 
diameter. Hardly had the sun dipped behind the western edge of the 
forest than the preparations were set afoot, and a small fire lighted in 
the opening at the root-neck ( Wurzelhals ) in the inner core of the 
hollow tree. It was again one of those infinitely beautiful fairy -like 
tropical nights: the heavens, without a cloud, dotted all over with 
myriads of sparkling and glittering stars, not, a breath of air to sway 
the dense foliage of the dark forest: the surface of the proud stream, 
beyond the reach of its rage-restrained wrath, resembling a mirror that 
reflected every object: all was at peace and rest, and only towards the 
north did the waters wage a fruitless and furious fight against the 
stone parapets calmly gazing on them. The lighted fire might have been 
burning half an hour when the inner walls of the cavity right up to the 
summit seemed to have caught fire. We stood upon one of the highest 
crags spellbound for the moment at the outburst of blazing flame: in 
front, the foaming water and dark rocks, at our side, the dark mass of 
foresc, and behind, the glassy smooth surface of the becalmed and 
languid current. There now forced itself from out of several openings 
evidently situate where the branches were given off, a thick oily black 
smoke which made its way over the stream in long and curly streaks* 
these were lighted up of a sudden by some sparks that rushed through 
the black columns like forked lightning. The flashes of light were 
repeated more and more frequently until they also at last changed 
just as abruptly into a huge column of fire that drove ahead of it a 
regular cloud of flaming sparks in the midst of a dense black whirl of 
smoke and then, like a sky-rocket, blazed up into the skies. This 
moment was as surprising as it was sublime, and all of us gave expres- 
sion to our admiration and astonishment. The effects of the bright and 
dazzling illumination upon the surrounding wildly romantic rocks and 
