sun spread over the sky in entrancing variety. I could not see the
west, but to the northeast were rifts of blood-red clouds edged with
gold over a lake of pearly hue, and to the right of it a bank of
smoke. Against this was a single cocoa on the edge of the promontory,
a banner my eye always sought as the day ended. Rising a hundred feet
or more, the curving staff upheld a dozen dark fronds, which nodded
in the evening breeze.

There was the slightest chill in the air, unusual there, so that I put
on shirt and trousers of thin silk and tennis shoes for my walk, and
with a lantern set out for the tii. Along the road were my neighbors,
the whole village streaming toward the goblin wood. Mahine and Maraa,
two girls of my acquaintance, unmarried and the merriest in Tautira,
joined me. They adorned me with a wreath of ferns and luminous,
flower-shaped fungus from the trees, living plants, the taria iore,
or rat's-ear, which shone like haloes above our faces. The girls
wore pink gowns, which they pulled to their waists as we forded the
streams. Mahine had a mouth-organ on which she played. We sang and
danced, and the tossing torches stirred the shadows of the black
wold, and brought out in shifting glimpses the ominous shapes of the
monstrous trees. With all our gaiety, I had only to utter a loud
"Aue!" and the natives rushed together for protection against the
unseen; not of the physical, but of the dark abode of Po. In this
lonely wilderness they thought that tupapaus, the ghosts of the
departed, must have their assembly, and deep in their hearts was a
deadly fear of these revenants.

When we approached the umu, I felt the heat fifty feet away. The
pit was a mass of glowing stones, and half a dozen men whom I knew
were spreading them as evenly as possible, turning them with long
poles. Each, as it was moved, disclosed its lower surface crimson
red and turning white. The flames leaped up from the wood between
the stones.

About the oven, forty feet away, the people of the villages who had
gathered, stood or squatted, and solemnly awaited the ritual. The
tahua, Tufetufetu, was still in a tiny hut that had been erected for
him, and at prayer. A deacon of the church went to him, and informed
him that the umu was ready, and he came slowly toward us. He wore
a white pareu of the ancient tapa, and a white tiputa, a poncho of
the same beaten-bark fabrics. His head was crowned with ti-leaves,
and in his hand he had a wand of t