FIJI ISLANDS. 339 



those derived in the original weapon from the lateral root 

 stumps. Some ulas have perfectly smooth heads. 



With regard to Cannibalism, I gather many of the following 

 details from our interpreter : When visitors of distinction paid a 

 great chief a visit, he was expected to provide human flesh for 

 their entertainment. If there were no prisoners, a man whose 

 special office it was to obtain such food for the chief, went in 

 search and often killed some girl or woman he met with alone, 

 belonging to a village not far off. 



Young woman was considered to be the best eating; 

 Europeans were not thought so good to eat as natives, no 

 doubt because of their very mixed diet, and much greater 

 consumption of animal food. The bodies were prepared with 

 care for cooking, and were usually baked in the well-known 

 oven in the ground. A special vegetable, a species of Solanum 

 (*S. anthrojpophagorum), was eaten with the baked flesh, 

 just as was the case in New Zealand. The vegetable was 

 eaten with human flesh as a suitable condiment, not as an 

 antidote. There is no reason to suppose that ill effects fol- 

 lowed the eating of human flesh any more than from the 

 consumption of any other kind of flesh. The sturdy health of 

 the grey -haired Thackombau is sufficient evidence against such 

 a supposition. 



The flesh was eaten cold as well as hot, and the cold cooked 

 flesh was often sent as a present to a distance by one chief to 

 another. A four-pronged fork of wood was used in eating- 

 human flesh, and was held more or less sacred, but it was also 

 used for eating other food occasionally. 



The New Zealanders were, however, probably the most pro- 

 fusely cannibal race that has existed. As many as 1,000 New 

 Zealand prisoners have been slaughtered at one time after a 

 successful battle, that their bodies might be put into the ovens. 



In 1828, the captain of an English merchant ship, named 

 Stewart, made an agreement with a tribe of Maoris under a 

 renowned chief, Te Eauparaha, to convey a war party to a 

 distant village on the coast, for the remuneration of a cargo of 

 New Zealand flax. The warriors were landed at night, exter- 

 minated the village, and brought off the bodies of the slain to 



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