I walked with bare feet, and after we had done so, about 200 Maoris followed. No one, so far as I saw, went through with boots on. I did not walk quickly across the oven, but with deliberation, because I feared that I should tread on a sharp point of the stones and fall. My feet also were very tender. I did not mention the fact, but my impression as I crossed the oven was that the skin would all peel off my feet. Yet all I really felt when the task was accomplished was a tingling sensation not unlike slight electric shocks on the soles of my feet, and this continued for seven hours or more. The really funny thing is that, though the stones were hot enough an hour afterwards to burn up green branches of the _ti_, the very tender skin of my feet was not even hardened by the fire. Many of the Maoris thought they were burned, but they were not--at any rate not severely. Do not suppose that the man who directed this business was an old _tohunga_. He is a young man, but of the Raiatea family, who are hereditary fire-walkers. I can only tell you it is _mana--mana tangata_ and _mana atua_. On this report a few remarks may be offered. (1) No preparation of any chemical, herbal, or other sort was applied to the Europeans, at least. (2) 'The handing over the _mana_' (or power) was practised by Home, sometimes successfully (it is alleged), as when Mr. S. C. Hall's scalp and white locks were unharmed by a red-hot coal; sometimes unsuccessfully. A clergyman of my acquaintance still bears the blister caused when he accepted a red-hot coal from the hand of Home, as he informs--me by letter. (3) The 'walk' was shorter than seems common: only 12 ft. (4 paces). (4) A friend of Colonel Gudgeon's was badly burned, and the reason assigned was a good folklore reason, since the days of Lot's wife, of Theocritus, and of Virgil: he looked behind. (5) The feeling as if of 'slight electric shocks' is worthy of notice. (6) Colonel Gudgeon clearly believes that a man without _mana_ had better not try, and by _mana_, here, he probably means 'nerve.' As we can hardly suppose, in spite of Home, that _mana_, in a supernormal sense, can be 'handed over' by one man to another, Colonel Gudgeon's experience seems equally to baffle every theory of 'how it is done.' Perhaps we can all do it. People may make their own experiments. Perhaps Colonel Gudgeon faced fire in a manner so unusual as a result of Dr. Hocken's description of the Fijian rite at Mbenga, an isle twenty miles south of Suva. This account was published in the 'Transactions of the New Zealand Institute,' vol. xxxi. 1898, having been read before the Otago Institute on May 10, 1898, and is here reprinted in full as follows:-- AN ACCOUNT OF THE FIJI FIRE CEREMONY BY DR. T. M. HOCKEN, F.L.S.