6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



uan societies, may be given instances showing in high degrees sundry 

 traits which we ordinarily associate only with a human nature that 

 has been long subject to the discipline of civilized life and the teach- 

 ings of a superior religion. One of the latest testimonies is that of 

 Signor D'Albertis, who describes certain New Guinea people he visited 

 (near Yule Island) as strictly honest, " very kind," "good and peace- 

 ful," and who, after disputes between villages, "are as friendly as 

 before, bearing no animosity " ; but of whom the Rev. W. G. Lawes, 

 commenting on Signor D'Albertis's communication to the Colonial 

 Institute, says that their good-will to the whites is being destroyed by 

 the whites' ill-treatment of them : the usual history. 



Contrariwise, in various parts of the world, men of several types 

 yield proofs that societies relatively advanced in organization and 

 culture may yet be barbarous in their ideas, sentiments, and usages. 

 The Feejeeans, described by Dr. Pickering as among the most intelli- 

 gent of unlettered peoples, are among the most ferocious. " Intense 

 and vengeful malignity strongly marks the Feejeean character." Lying, 

 treachery, theft, and murder are with them not criminal, but honor- 

 able ; infanticide is immense in extent ; strangling the sickly habitual ; 

 and they sometimes cut up while alive the human victims they are 

 going to eat. Nevertheless they have a " complicated and carefully 

 conducted political system " ; well-organized military forces ; elaborate 

 fortifications ; a developed agriculture with succession of crops and 

 irrigation ; a considerable division of labor ; a separate distributing 

 agency with incipient currency ; and a skilled industry which builds 

 canoes that carry three hundred men. Take again an African society, 

 Dahomey. We find there a finished system of classes, six in number ; 

 complex governmental ari'angements with oflicials always in pairs ; an 

 army divided into battalions, having reviews and sham-fights ; prisons, 

 police, and sumptuaiy laws ; an agriculture which uses manure and 

 grows a score kinds of plants ; moated towns, bridges, and roads with 

 turnpikes. Yet along with this comparatively high social develop- 

 ment there goes what we may call organized criminality. Wars are 

 made to get skulls with which to decorate the royal palace ; hundreds 

 of subjects are killed when the king dies ; and five hundred are an- 

 nually slaughtered to carry messages to the other woi-ld. Described 

 as cruel and bloodthirsty, liars and cheats, the people are " void either 

 of sympathy or gratitude, even in their own families," so that "not 

 even the appearance of affection exists between husband and wife, or 

 between parents and children." The New World, too, furnished, 

 when it was discovered, like evidence. Having great cities of one 

 hundred and eighty thousand houses, the Mexicans had also cannibal 

 gods, whose idols were fed on warm, reeking, human flesh, thrust into 

 their mouths wars being made purposely to supply victims for them ; 

 and with skill to build stately temples, big enough for ten thousand 

 men to dance in their courts, there went the immolation of twenty- 



