As they only remained a few seconds, however, on the coals, it was impossible that they could receive much injury.”(15) (M7) In Japan the fire-walk is performed as a religious rite twice a year at a temple in the Kanda quarter of Tokio. One of the performances takes place in September. It was witnessed in the year 1903 by the wife of an American naval officer, who has described it. In a court of the temple a bed of charcoal about six yards long, two yards wide, and two feet deep was laid down and covered with a deep layer of straw. Being ignited, the straw blazed up, and when the flames had died down the bed of hot charcoal was fanned by attendants into a red glow. Priests dressed in robes of white cotton then walked round the fire, striking sparks from flint and steel and carrying trays full of salt. When mats had been laid down at the two ends of the fire and salt poured on them, the priests rubbed their bare feet twice in the salt and then walked calmly down the middle of the fire. They were followed by a number of people, including some boys and a woman with a baby in her arms. “The Shintoists claim that, having been perfectly purified by their prayers and ceremonies, no evil has any power over them. Fire they regard as the very spirit of evil; so twice a year, I believe, they go through this fire-walking as a kind of ‘outward and visible sign of inward spiritual grace.’ ”(16) (M8) In the island of Mbengga, one of the Fijian archipelago, once every year a dracaena, which grows in profusion on the grassy hillsides, becomes fit to yield the sugar of which its fibrous root is full. To render the roots edible it is necessary to bake them among hot stones for four days. A great pit is dug and filled with great stones and blazing logs, and when the flames have died down and the stones are at white heat, the oven is ready to receive the roots. At this moment the members of a certain clan called Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, leap into the oven and walk unharmed upon the hot stones, which would scorch the feet of any other persons. On one occasion when the ceremony was witnessed by Europeans fifteen men of the clan, dressed in garlands and fringes, walked unscathed through the furnace, where tongues of fire played among the hot stones. The pit was about nineteen feet wide and the men marched round it, planting their feet squarely and firmly on each stone. When they emerged from the pit, the feet of several were examined and shewed no trace of scorching; even the anklets of dried tree-fern leaves which they wore on their legs were unburnt. The immunity thus enjoyed by members of the clan in the fiery furnace is explained by a legend that in former days a chief of the clan, named Tui Nkualita, received for himself and his descendants this remarkable privilege from a certain god, whom the chief had accidentally dragged out of a deep pool of water by the hair of his head.(17) A similar ceremony of walking through fire, or rather over a