Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/26

16 face was always destitute of vegetation. But Katalewe lately met with a fatal disaster. His mataqali died out in the direct line, and a pious enthusiast named Saiasi, a native Wesleyan teacher belonging to Vutia, well inculcated in the principle "Hors de l'église point de salut," laid violent hands upon this heathenish shrine and valiantly dislodged Katalewe, carrying him home to his house in derision and disgrace, and giving him to his wife to use like a paper-weight for keeping down the corners of the mats she was plaiting. After this treatment he was thrown into the fire-hearth, and there he fell a prey to the consuming element, an indignity which he resented by crumbling away to powder and mingling with the ashes among Mrs. Saiasi's yam-pots, becoming, I was assured, quite intangible. The devout but misguided iconoclast suffered misfortune if not remorse—had his mind racked by the commission of indiscretions on the part of his wife, divorced her, and became depreciated in the estimation of his pastors in consequence of the unholy dilemma in which he was involved; and, finally, a broken and dispirited man, relinquished his cure among the good people of Bulu and returned to his native yavu at Vutia, where death shortly afterwards put an end to his troubles.

The description and singularity of the physical qualities of this stone, and of its finally crumbling away to dust under the influence of fire, lead to the supposition that it may have been a waterworn or artificially rounded fragment of limestone. Only two kinds of limestone are met with in Fiji, the one of purely coralline origin and the other more distinctly metamorphic (dolomite). Coral would have been easily recognisable to the natives of this part of the country, but it is more than probable that before European influence put an end to warfare and raiding, the