Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/221

Rh says: "In Brass (or the Mimbe country) cannibalism often occurs. Even within the last year a chief of that district, named Imamy, killed two of the Acreeka people before mentioned, who were sacrificed to the manes of his father. In Brass, as in Bonny, they eat all enemies taken in war; and they put forth, as a justification for this, that devouring the flesh of their enemies makes them brave." The account given by the same writer of the killing of a native for the purposes of cannibalism, of which he was an eye-witness, is most admirably graphic and striking, but it is, unfortunately, too long, if not too terrible, to quote in these pages.

Nor is cannibalism confined to the Ethiopian and Polynesian races alone; it is prevalent to an astonishing extent among the inhabitants of the Malayan Islands, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo. Some of the earliest voyagers to the Eastern seas came back with stories of how the people of those parts were man-eaters; but, however much credence their tales may have received at the time, they have been greatly doubted since. But Marsden and other writers prove that the statements of those early pioneers of travel and observation were entirely correct. Marsden, in his account of Sumatra, says that, although he had heard reports of the cannibal habits of some of the tribes, he had always discredited them until the truth of the statement was made entirely clear to him. He says that the Battas, one of the peoples of Sumatra, eat human flesh regularly, not to satisfy the cravings of hunger, but as a sort of ceremony to show their detestation of certain crimes by this most ignominious punishment, and as a savage display of revenge and insult to their unfortunate enemies. People killed or badly wounded by them in war are eaten, and the captured sold as slaves. These same Battas show a certain amount of culinary art in the preparation of this food, for they broil the flesh over a brisk fire, and flavor it with salt, lemon, and red pepper.

A friend of the writer's, who for more than forty years has been in the employment of the Dutch Government, bears personal witness to the prevalence of the custom in Sumatra up till recent times. He was once making scientific investigations in the interior of that island, and was being entertained in the most hospitable manner by the native rajah, or chief, of the place he was then in. A feast had been made to which he was bidden, and to which he went, taking his own native servant with him. The banquet had proceeded for some time without interruption, when at last, as crown of the feast, a beautiful brown roast joint was brought from the back of the house to the open, airy place where the repast was being held. This was cut up without remark and handed round, and the Dutch gentleman was on the point of eating his portion, having raised part of it to his lips, when his servant rushed forward and stopped him, saying, "Master, master, do not eat; it is a boy!" The chief, on being questioned, admitted, with no small pride at the extent of his hospitality, that, hearing that the white