shed skull of a
monkey, and she is inclined to think that the spectators who look at this
are, in some way, more easily deluded. These facts are mentioned that I
may not seem unaware of what can be said to impugn the accuracy of the
descriptions of the Fire Rite, as given by Mr. Thomson and other
witnesses.

Mr. Thomson says that the Wesleyan missionaries have nearly made a clean
sweep of all heathen ceremonial in Fiji. 'But in one corner of Fiji, the
island of Nbengga, a curious observance of mythological origin has
escaped the general destruction, probably because the worthy iconoclasts
had never heard of it.' The myth tells how the ancestor of the clan
received the gift of fire-walking from a god, and the existence of the
myth raises a presumption in favour of the antiquity of the observance.

* * * * *

'Once every year the masawe, a dracaena that grows in profusion on the
grassy hillsides of the island, becomes fit to yield the sugar of which
its fibrous root is full. To render it fit to eat, the roots must be
baked among hot stones for four days. A great pit is dug, and filled
with large stones and blazing logs, and when these have burned down, and
the stones are at white heat, the oven is ready for the masawe. It is at
this stage that the clan Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, is called
on to "leap into the oven" (rikata na lovo), and walk unharmed upon the
hot stones that would scorch and wither the feet of any but the
descendants of the dauntless Tui Nkualita. Twice only had Europeans been
fortunate enough to see the masawe cooked, and so marvellous had been the
tales they told, and so cynical the scepticism with which they had been
received, that nothing short of another performance before witnesses and
the photographic camera would have satisfied the average "old hand."

'As we steamed up to the chiefs village of Waisoma, a cloud of blue smoke
rolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly lighted. We
found a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the sandy soil, a stone's
throw from high-water mark, in a small clearing among the cocoanuts
between the beach and the dense forest. The pit was piled high with
great blazing logs and round stones the size of a man's head. Mingled
with the crackling roar of the fire were loud reports as splinters flew
off from the stones, warning us to guard our eyes. A number of men were
dragging up more logs and rolling them into the blaze, while, ab