The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-09-14

MeHHWHlle others, as nave SdlQ, De
 gan to walk over the stones without any
 reference to the ceremony prescribed
 by Papa-Ita, and three or four persons
 whom I personally knew on board the
 ship, did so in shoes, the soles of which
 were not burned at all. One of the gen tlemen, however who crossed over with unburned shoes, showed me that the
 ends of his trousers had been burned
 by the flames which leaped up between the stones, and which at all times add
 eds omuch to the impressiveness Of the spectacle, and there was no doubt
 that any one who stumbled or got a foot caught between the hot stones
 might have been badly burned United States Deputy Consul Ducorran. who
 was present, remarked to me that he
 knew that Papa-Ita had failed on a
 neighboring island, with stones of a
 marble-like quality, and he offered to
 test the heat of these basaltic ones by
 seeing how long he could remain on the
 hottest part of the pile, and he stood
 there, in my sight, from eight to ten
 seconds before he felt the heat through
 the thin soles of his shoes beginning to | be unpleasantly warm.
 A gentleman present asked Papa-Ita
 why he did not give an exhibit that
 would be convincing by placing his
 foot, even for few seconds. between two of the red hot stones which could
 be seen glowing at the bottom of the
 pile, to which Papa-Ita replied with dignity, My fathers did not tell me to do 1t that way" asked him If he would hold one of the smaller upper hot stones In his hand. He promised to do so, but he did not do it.
 The outer barriers were now remov- ed and a crowd of natives pressed in. I, who was taking these notes on the spot, left, after assuring myself that that the stones around the edge of the pit were comparatively cold although the center was no doubt very hot, and thosebel ow red hot. The real ques- tion is, repeat, how hot were those trodden on? and the answer to this I was to try to obtain after measuring the amount of water boiled away.
 On returning to the ship this was estimated from the water which was left in the bucket (after allowing for that spilled over) at about ten pounds. The stone, which it will be remember ed, was one of the hottest, if not the hottest in the pile. was found to weigh sixty-five pounds, and to have evapor ated this quantity of water, It was, as I have said, a volcanic stone, and on minuter examination proved to be a vascular basalt, the most distinctive feature of which was its porosity and on-conductibillty, for it was susse- quently found that it could have been heated red hot at one end while remain ing comparatively cool at the top. I brought a piece of it to Washington with me. and there determined its spe- cific gravity to be 0.S9, it's specific heat 0.19, and its conductivity to be so ex- tremely small that one end of a small fra gment could be held in the hand while the other was heated indefinitely in the flame of blowpipe, almost like a stick of sealing wax. This partly defeated the aim of the experiment (to find the temperature of the upper part of the stone), since only the mean tenn peratllre was found This mean tefn | perature of the hottest stone of the up- per layer, as deduced from the above | data was about twelve hundred de- | erees Fahrenheit, but the temperature | of the surface must have been indef- | nitely lower. The temprature at which | such stone begins t@show a dull red In daylight is, so far as l am aware, not exactly determined, but is approxi- nately thirteen to fourteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
 To conclude, I could entertain no loubt that I had witnessed substantial y the scenes described by the gentle nan cited. and I have reason to believe hat I saw very favorable specimen )f Fire Walk
 It was worth seeing. It was most ,lever and interesting piece of savage magic, but from the evidence I have ust given I am obliged to say (almost that 1t was not a miracle.