Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/473

 VIWA AND MBAtr. 439 Speaking of the temple, he says : " The building stood on a raised platform, and was surrounded by a few trees of graceful foliage, under one of which lay the large wooden '■ lali,' or sacred drum, beaten at festivals and sacrifices ; and overshadowed by another was the place where the bodies of the victims are dedicated to the Jcalou or evil spirit, pevious to their being handed over to those who are to cook them for the banquet. The lower branches of the tree had evidently been lately cut away to the height of eight or ten feet from the ground ; and we were told that this had been done after the reduction of Lokia, a town belonging to Rewa, a few months before, when a mound of no fewer than eighty corpses, slain in battle, had been heaped up on the spot." " We came at last upon an irregular square, on which stood a building, probably one hundred feet long, the * stranger's house, still occupied by the Mbutoni people, and we entered it by a door in the centre. The interior struck me at first as resembling the lower deck of a ship of war, there being a passage down the centre, and the families living in separate messes on either side; divided, however, from each other in some cases by partitions of coloured native cloth. We met the usual welcome from the people who happened to be there, and several of them followed our party out, through an opposite door to that by which we had entered, to a small level space between the back of the house and the hill, which rises somewhat abruptly behind. The first objects of interest to which our attention was called by these strangers, as if to vaunt the goodness of their reception in the capital, were four or five ovens, loosely filled in with stones, which had served to cook the human bodies presented to them after the payment of their tribute. They certainly did not understand the expressions of disgust which rose to our lips ; for, leading us to a neighbouring tree, they pointed to where, suspended from the branches, hung some scraps of flesh, the remains of the wretched creatures slaughtered to satisfy the monstrous appetite of these fellows, who had not even the miserable excuses of enmity or hunger to plead for their fiendish banquet." The visitors had come to Viwa strongly disposed to doubt what had been told of the horrors of Fijian cannibalism ; but, writes Captain Erskine, " a very short acquaintance was necessary to undeceive us." Thoroughly convinced now of the real state of the case, the English party approached the house of the Chief The visit is thus narrated by Captain Erskine. The description of the Chief has already been quoted, at pp. 82, 83,