Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/222

210 man would feast with him, he had ordered a young boy to be killed and cooked in his honor, as the greatest delicacy obtainable, and that the joint before them was the best part, the thigh.

One is too apt to associate all sorts of ferocious qualities, cruelty, deceit, brutality, and inhospitality, with the mere word cannibal, thus stigmatizing with these vicious qualities whole races of people who do but retain this one among other ancient habits and customs; whereas in reality cannibals are much the same as other folk whose food is of a less barbarous nature. The very Caribs themselves, from the Latinized name of whom the word is probably derived, the arch-types of what cannibals should be, are described as possessing very different qualities. Their tribes, the remnants of which still linger in one of the West India isles, inhabited the northern part of South America and many of the Antilles before the arrival of the Spaniards, who destroyed almost the whole race. The description their conquerors give of them is more like that of a nation of lotos-eaters than of a sanguinary and ruthless people. "They are quiet, calm, and sedentary, and given up to idleness and day-dreams," say their historians, "but are well made and possess great powers of endurance." The testimony of the writer must be given on the same side; he has had the pleasure and privilege of knowing many cannibals, Feejeean, New Hebridean, Solomon-Islander, and others, and he has, on the whole, found them gentle, quiet, and inoffensive when not engaged in the practice and observance of the special principle that they uphold. It must be confessed, however, that he had not the same appreciation of their character upon the one occasion when he ran the narrowest chance of ministering to'what he then considered a very depraved and morbid appetite.

Early travelers in New Zealand always express astonishment, when they discover the cannibal propensities of the inhabitants, that so gentle and pleasant-mannered a people could become upon occasion such ferocious savages. Earle, who wrote a very readable, intelligent, and but little known account of the Maoris very early in the present century, speaks of the gentle manners and kindly ways of a New Zealand chief, whom afterward he discovered to be an inveterate cannibal. He relates that he visited the place where was cooking the body of a young slave girl that his friend had killed for the purpose. The head was severed from the body; the four quarters, with the principal bones removed, were compressed and packed into a small oven in the ground, and covered with earth. It was a case of unjustifiable cannibalism. No revenge was gratified by the deed, and no excuse could be made that the body was eaten to perfect their triumph. Earle says that he learned that the flesh takes many hours to cook, that it is very tough if not thoroughly cooked, but that it pulls in pieces, like a bit of blotting-paper, if well done. He continues that the victim was a handsome, pleasant-looking girl of sixteen, and one that he used frequently to see about the pah. To quote his own words: