Page:Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature.djvu/76

70 These people are armed with small bows bound tightly round with snake skins, and strung with a reed or rush. Their arrows, short and slender, but made of hard wood, are shot with great rapidity. They have iron axes, the handles of which are bound with snake skins, and swords with scabbards of the same material; for defensive armour they employ elephant hides. They cut their skins when young, so as to produce scars. "Their butchers' shops are filled with human flesh instead of that of oxen or sheep. For they eat the enemies whom they take in battle. They fatten, slay, and devour their slaves also, unless they think they shall get a good price for them; and, moreover, sometimes for weariness of life or desire for glory (for they think it a great thing and the sign of a generous soul to despise life), or for love of their rulers, offer themselves up for food."

"There are indeed many cannibals, as in the Eastern Indies and in Brazil and elsewhere, but none such as these, since the others only eat their enemies, but these their own blood relations."

The careful illustrators of Pigafetta have done their best to enable the reader to realize this account of the 'Anziques,' and the unexampled butcher's shop represented in fig. 12, is a facsimile of part of their Plate XII.

M. Du Chaillu's account of the Fans accords most singularly with what Lopez here narrates of the Anziques. He speaks of their small crossbows and little arrows, of their axes and knives, "ingeniously sheathed in snake skins." "They tattoo themselves more than any other tribes I have met with north of the equator." And all the world knows what M. Du Chaillu says of their cannibalism—"Presently we passed a woman who solved all doubt. She bore with her a piece of the thigh of a human body, just as we should go to market and carry thence a roast or steak." M. Du Chaillu's artist cannot generally be accused of any want of courage in embodying the statements of his author, and it is to be regretted that, with so good an excuse, he has not furnished us with a fitting companion to the sketch of the brothers De Bry.