Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/161

. This is a singular circumstance amongst a nation of canibals [sic], for such they undoubtedly are. On this subject I have made repeated inquiries, and the result has been to establish the fact incontrovertibly.

I have conversed with several persons who have been eye-witnesses of their disgusting feasts, and by one of them a woman was pointed out, whom, he said, he had seen a few days before eating part of a black child, which had been killed. Indeed I have never heard the fact questioned by any one in the country. The parts which they are said to like best are the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, and the fat of the kidneys; the latter is, I believe, used for superstitious purposes. When Mr. Moreton was murdered by the natives near Portland Bay, in the year 1841, his body was found stretched out with stakes, and the muscular parts cut off from his arms, and