People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20234, 19 February 1934, Page 6

People and Their Doings .

A Party of Fijian Fire-walkers in Christchurch Baffled a Special Committee of Scientists : A Spotting Priest Goes to the West Coast : A Loss to the N.Z. Police Force.

T HE UNHAPPY EXPERIENCE of the doctor who essayed the fire-walking act at Tahiti, with painful results, is recalled by J.C., who says that Colonel W. E. Gudgeon, who was then the New Zealand Government Resident in the Cook Group, passed unscathed barefooted across the “ umu-ti ” at Rarotonga, under the direction of a native wise man from Raiatea Island, some thirty years ago. With him were three other Europeans of the island. Writing to New Zealand, Colonel Gudgeon said of the feat: “I can only sav that we stepped across boldly. Only one of the party was badly burned. He. it is said, like Lot’s wife, looked behind him—a thing against all rules. I knew quite well that I was walking on red-hot stones, and could feel the heat, yet I was not burned. I felt something resembling slight electric shocks, both at the time and afterwards, but that was all. I do not know that I should recommend everyone to try it. A man must have mana to do it.” Colonel Gudgeon had a keen scientific .sense, and he looked into the fire-walking puzzle from all angles and confessed that a solution of the mystery of the rite was beyond him.

<l2? 'J'HE FIJIAN fire-walking ceremony has been seen in New Zealand. In December, 1906, a large party of Fiji natives was taken to the New Zealand Exhibition at Christchurch. About a score of the firewalkers from famous Benga Island were among them; the hereditary performers Of the “vilavila-i-revo,” as it is termed in Fiji. These people gave four exhibitions of walking on hot stones at Christchurch and one in Wellington. The stones they used at Christchurch 3vere brought up from Fiji, but as some people said there must be some special quality in the stones of Benga, those on which they walked at the Wellington ceremony were procured from a quarry near the city. The performance showed that the virtue lay in the walkers, not the

atones; and the Wellington rocks, however, were not so suitable as the hard, black] volcanic stones from Fiji, for they had a tendency to break up under great heat and so prei»ent rough edges. sS? 12? FIRE OVEN was about twenty feet in diameter. The stones were carefully raked and levelled for a long time, with poles, until they formed a fairly level surface, across which the natives walked unhurriedly, circling the oven, while the leader recited his chant of incantation. In Christchurch a committee of men of science, university professors, from Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, closely watched the ceremonies. They failed to discover the reason for the walkers’ immunity from harm. But none of the professors was sufficiently enthusiastic in the cause of scientific research to take off his boots and walk with the men of Benga. 3? T IIE TRANSFER of the Rev Father J. Quinn from Christchurch to a scattered parish south of Ross, on the West Coast, will mean a loss to two branches of sport in the city. Father Quinn, with Miss Irine Poole, is the holder of the interclub combined doubles tennis championship, and, with J. Mercer, he was runner-up in the men’s doubles championship. Father Quinn is a member of the Cathedral A grade team and plays a bold and attractive game. As a golfer he has played at the Templeton and Harewood Clubs. He is on a ten handicap and is regarded *»s the longest hitter in the city. He is credited with a 330-yard drive and has landed h'; ball over the creek at the seventeeth °t Shirley. One of his best cards was handed in last week at Harewood, where he went round in 76, or one over bogey.

J)ETECTIVE-SERGEANT O’SULLIVAN. who has just died in Auckland, was engaged in the famous Nurse Kerr case. Last year he arrested a criminal who subsequently admitted nearly forty housebreaking crimes in Auckland. The same criminal he had arrested some years previously, but the man absconded from bail and went to Australia. Some time after his return many serious crimes of housebreaking were committed in the suburbs of Auckland Detective-Sergeant O’Sullivan believed they were his work, and set himself to catch him. Detective-Sergeant O’Sullivan was born in Ireland on December 6, 1886. He joined the New Zealand Police Force in Wellington on July 12. 1912, and was immediately transferred to Auckland for duty as a constable, and he performed all his duty in that city. He was forty-eight years of age. ® SIXTY YEARS AGO (from the “Star” of February 19, 1874) : Tauranga, February 18. —The Hon Mr Fox is expected this afternoon, overland, from Napier. He proposes starting a Good Templar lodge. A great Native runanga will be held shortly at Ohinemuri, respecting land. Mr Mackay appears on behalf of the Government. Grahamstown, February 18.—A deputation from the Railway Committee proceed to Auckland to-day, to interview the Premier. and lay before him data urging the construction of the Thames Valley railway. The interview takes place to-morrow. Dunedin, February 17.—A deputation of passengers by the Surat waited on the Superintendent for assistance to recover their luggage from the parties who bought the ship, and who refuse to give it up. The Superintendent recommended them to ask the Surat Fund Committee to purchase the clothes, and said the Government would give some assistance.