I tarried; and toward evening they conducted me with much ceremony to an open space in the midst of the village.

There I found planted in the ground a thick stake, and around it a ring of flaming brushwood.

To the stake was fastened an Indian warrior, captured, so my interpreter informed me, from some hostile tribe above the falls.

His arms and ankles were secured to the stake by means of thongs passed through incisions in the flesh; his body was stuck over with countless pine splinters, each burning like a miniature torch; and on his shaven crown was tied a thin plate of copper heaped with red-hot coals.

A little to one side appeared another stake and another circle of brushwood: the one with nothing tied to it as yet, and the other still unlit.