1938-11-26 — Page 5

THE CHINA MAIL, NOVEMBER 26, 1938.

Trod Hot Stones

Unhurt

war,

On the Polynesian isle of Mar- But when he went to the quese a mixed crowd of natives and Musie forgot him in the casual tourists jostled round a shallow pit, Polynesian manner, and on his re- 20ft. by 10ft., filled with white-hot turn he found her happily married stones, to watch the fire-walking to a native man. rite of the South Sea Islands.

Ilaisane, his other sweetheart, Stalwart natives; armed with long with whom he risked death in an poles, raked out the few remaining elopement, was more faithful. Even pieces of timber and levelled the when he left the island she still kept white-hot stones on the pit-bottom. | him in her memory.

Some of the stones cracked under One exploit made Ramsay world- the intense heat, broke in two at a famous and changed the name of the touch of the poles and exposed their island. glowing.cores.

TIN-CAN MAIL

Then the priest and a group of Niua Fo'ou is girt with rocks, and twelve men and women advanced, for six months in the year variable All were bared to the waist and bare-winds and hurricanes would mean footed. The leader chanted a prayer destruction to a ship venturing too and struck stones and ground with close to the shore. his branch of ti. With sublime Consequently mails -confidence in the powers he had in-quent and irregular. - voked, he paced leisurely into the thought Ramsay devised a method of smoking inferno. Calmly he stepped swimming out, pushing the letters in across the writhing stones, placidly his band followed him.

"

what

ONE GET THROUGH One of the tourists said jokingly to another, "Now, then, you're an exponent of island stunts, about doing your abuT?”

Under the spell of what he just seen, the second man went porarily "mad." He slipped shoes and socks, walked over sizzling grass leading to the stones, and quietly crossed them, almost suffocated by the smoke.

had teri

off the

The only mark on his feet at the other end was dirt from the ashes. Yet a Frenchman who tried it im- mediately afterwards took two steps on to the stones and was carried to hospital, his feet burned to the bone.

The tourist, the only white man ever to have passed unscathed through the fire rite, was. Charles stuart Ramsay, author of "Tin Can Island" (Hurst and Blackett, 15s.), in which he gives the first authentic story of life en a South Sea Island.

•

For twenty-five years Ramsay traded cópra on Niua Fo’ou, island in the Tongan group.

an

were infre

After long

front of him in two biscuit tins at- tached to a long pole, and swimming back with the mail for the island in the same way.

F

By night and day, in fair weather or foul, he swam out with his "tin can mail," making more than 112 journeys in all. He soon became a centre of attraction for tourists, who gave the island its new name.

After twenty-five years his firm had to leave his beloved 'Niua Fo'ou closed their trading station, and he

and the beautiful Ilaisane. Only once was he able to revisit the island as assistant-director of cruise (when he walked over the fiery stones).

a

Since then he has found civilisa- tion an indifferent substitute for peace..

GOLDFISH CAN KICK

Swindon magistrates spent quite

a long time discussing the nature of goldfish.

"Some have called me a white

With the expert assistance of the native," he writes. "For me, steep-Clerk to the Bench and the Deputy ed in the thoughts and habits of the Polynesian, the term holds no oppro- brium." On his sun-baked South Sea island this. Wiltshire farmer's lad found a peace that civilisation could not give him.

TWO WOMEN

There

Nor was romance absent. were two women in his life during his sojourn. He describes his first. glimpse of Musie, the first love in his life

Town Clerk, they decided that:---

Goldfish are not articles of food or drink.

Goldfish can kick. Therefore goldfish are animate objests.

Therefore a goldfish can be described as "any article, what- soever."

girl

IN EXCHANGE FOR RAGS Thomas Elley, of Rosher-road, The question arose when George "As though to aid my straining with giving a goldfish to a

Stratford, London, E. was charged sight, the lamp was moved within of eight in exchange for rags, etc., the house, and a beam of light fell while he was collecting old clothes, upon her willowy figure, standing rags and other articles at Swindon. stretched to its full height before Te sell me. A bucket upraised above her der fourteen “any article of food or deliver to a child un- head cascaded its contents in a glis-drink or any article whatsover" is tening shower over soft, rounded forbidden to old clothes and rag shoulders and ran in rivulets down merchants or their collectors by the her bare, slender body and dimpled Ace under which the proceedings brown legs.".

were taken.

"NIKS".

or

A NICE POINT -Mr. A. E. Withy; the magistrates' clerk, wondered whether a gold- fish was an article of food or drink or any article whatsover. The De- puty Town Clerk, Mr. Heath, who was prosecuting, said there was a difficulty as a goldfish was an ani- mate object.

Mr. Withy, Yes, a goldfish is animato, it kicks, doesn't it? Are the Bench prepared to hold that (a goldfish is

gan "article what- -809ver??-

The Bench were so prepared, and Elley, who wrote pleading guilty, will have to pay ten shillings,

Page

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