CANNIBALISM. 461 



When the king launched a canoe, ten or more men were 

 slaughtered on the deck, in order that it might be washed 



O * ' 



with human blood. But there is even worse to be told. The 

 Fijians were most inveterate cannibals, and so fond were they 

 of human flesh, that "the greatest praise they can bestow 

 on any delicacy is to say that it is as tender as a dead man." 

 Nay, they were even so fastidious as to dislike the taste of 

 white men,* to prefer the flesh of women to that of men, and 

 to consider the arm above the elbow and the thigh as the 

 best joints ; and so greedy, that human flesh was reserved for 

 the men, being considered too good to be wasted upon the 

 women. When the king gave a feast, human flesh always 

 formed one of the dishes, and though the bodies of enemies 

 slain in battle were always eaten, they did not afford a 

 sufficient supply, but slaves were fattened up for the market. 

 Sometimes they roasted them alive and ate them at once, 

 while at others they kept bodies until they were far gone in 

 decay. Ea Undre-undre, Chief of Eakiraki, was said to have 

 eaten nine hundred persons himself, permitting no one to 

 share them with him.-f- 



It was not from any want of food that the Fijians were 

 cannibals. On one occasion they offered to the God of War 

 "ten thousand yams (weighing from six to twelve pounds 

 each), thirty turtles, forty roots of yaquona (some very large), 

 many hundreds of native puddings (two tons), one hundred 

 and fifty giant oysters, fifteen water-melons, cocoa-nuts, a 

 large number of violet land-crabs, taro, and ripe banauas."J 

 At a public feast Mr. Williams once saw " two hundred men 

 employed for nearly six hours in collecting and piling cooked 

 food. There were six mounds of yams, taro, vakalolo, pigs, 

 and turtles : these contained about fifty tons of cooked yams 



* So also did the Australians, t Figi and the Figians, vol. i. 

 the Tongans, and the New Zea- p. 213. 

 landers. I Ibid. vol. i. p. 44. 



