of glowing stones in the middle of the pit.  Ten men now drove the butts of green saplings into the base of the pile, and held the upper end while a stout vine was passed behind the row of saplings.  A dozen men grasped each end of the vine, and with loud shouts hauled with all their might.  The saplings, like the teeth of an enormous rake, tore through the pile of stones, flattening them out towards the opposite edge of the pit.  The saplings were then driven in on the other side and the stones raked in the opposite direction, then sideways, until the bottom of the pit was covered with an even layer of hot stones.  This process had taken fully half an hour, but any doubt as to the heat of the stones at the end was set at rest by the tongues of flame that played continually among them.  The cameras were hard at work, and a large crowd of people pressed inwards towards the pit as the moment drew near.  They were all excited except Jonathan, who preserved, even in the supreme moment, the air of holy calm that never leaves his face.  All eyes are fixed expectant on the dense bush behind the clearing, whence the Shadrachs, Meshachs and Abednegos of the Pacific are to emerge.  There is a cry of “Vutu!  Vutu!” and forth from the bush, two and two, march fifteen men, dressed in garlands and fringes.  They tramp straight to the brink of the pit.  The leading pair show something like fear in their faces, but do not pause, perhaps because the rest would force them to move forward.  They step down upon the stones and continue their march round the pit, planting their feet squarely and firmly on each stone.  The cameras snap, the crowd surges forward, the bystanders fling in great bundles of green leaves.  But the bundles strike the last man of the procession and cut him off from his fellows; so he stays where he is, trampling down the leaves as they are thrown to line the pit, in a dense cloud of steam from the boiling sap.  The rest leap back to his assistance, shouting and trampling, and the pit turns into the mouth of an Inferno, filled with dusky frenzied fiends, half seen through the dense volume that rolls up to heaven and darkens the sunlight.  After the leaves, palm-leaf baskets of the dracaena root are flung to them, more leaves, and then bystanders and every one join in shovelling earth over all till the pit is gone, and a smoking mound of fresh earth takes its place.  This will keep hot for four days, and then the masawe will be cooked.

’As the procession had filed up to the pit, by a preconcerted arrangement with the noble Jonathan, a large stone had been hooked out of the pit to the feet of one of the party, who poised a pocket-handkerchief over it, and dropped it lightly upon the stone when the first man leapt into the oven, and snatched what remained of it up as the last left the stones.  During the fifteen or twenty seconds it lay there every fold that touched the stone was charred, and the rest of it scorched yellow.  So the stones were not