Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/52

40 point of a blunt needle. Their dialects differ but little in degree, and consequently the unification of their language is quite complete. Many of their superstitions, their myths, and their beliefs are most interesting, and when one comes to consider their advancement in certain directions it is certainly very remarkable, as Bickmore remarks, that "all of them, beyond the territory under the Dutch Government, are cannibals. Those living on this plain also feasted on human flesh until the Dutch conquered

them, and obliged them to give up such fiendish custom. The Rajah of Sipirok assured the Governor of Padang that he had eaten human flesh between thirty and forty times, and that he had never in all his life tasted anything that he relished half as well. This custom has prevailed among the Battas from time immemorial."

Marco Polo claims that the Battaks have been cannibals for a time extending at least as far back as the year 1290; and Sir Stamford Raffles, who was among them in 1820, found some of their laws to be very severe. For crimes for which we give but