2o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



unnatural and monstrous. It is not to be gainsaid that in Feejee the 

 habit quite exceeded necessary requirements ; but, without wishing to 

 deny that fact, there is much, when the question is considered judi- 

 cially, to palliate the offense in those parts. Until the introduction 

 of pigs, toward the end of the eighteenth century, the only animal 

 indigenous to Feejee and the adjacent islands was a rat. Birds and 

 fish there certainly were, but no other animal, and the turning to prof- 

 itable account of the body of an enemy slain in battle is, under those 

 circumstances, perhaps very easily understood and condoned with. A 

 friend of the writer's, who settled, very early in the history of that 

 colony, on the banks of the Wai-ni-mala River, has related to him, 

 with graphic simplicity, many deeds of horror that he has witnessed 

 within very recent years ; how haJcolo, as human flesh is called there, 

 was sent from one chief to another, much as one gentleman sends game 

 to another in our country ; and how the sound of the death-drum — 

 heard only once by the writer, but beaten then for himself — was so fre- 

 quent in his district as to pass almost unnoticed by him. 



The same excuse can not be urged in defense of the inhabitants of 

 the West Coast of Africa, who, with a supply of animal food sufficient 

 for all their wants, still indulge, much more frequently than is credited, 

 in this strange flesh, even in those parts where for more than half a 

 century the elevation and improvement of the native races have been 

 the constant labor of the resident white traders, missionaries, and in- 

 habitants. Hutchinson, who was for many years H. B. M. consul on 

 the Gold Coast, writes in 1861, "People in England would scarcely 

 believe that in these days, while I write, cannibalism is almost as ram- 

 pant on the West Coast of Africa as it has ever been." He quotes, 

 in support of this statement, from the report of the sixty-eighth anni- 

 versary of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection in that colony : 

 " Mr. Priddy, who is employed by the society, stated that the cruel 

 and barbarous practice of cannibalism was still indulged in during the 

 late war ; and that he saw hampers of dried human flesh carried on 

 the backs of men, upon which they intended to feast." Mr. Hutchin- 

 son goes on to say that " cannibalism exists in the Oman country, up 

 the Cross River ; and I am informed that the Boole tribe, who reside 

 far interior to Corisco Bay, come down the river to get some of the 

 sea-shore-dwelling people to make " chop " of them, because they are 

 reputed to have a saltish, therefore a relishable flavor." This last state- 

 ment only shows how taste varies in different quarters of the globe, 

 for Feejeeans prefer a brown man to a white one on the very grounds 

 that a white man is saltish, and therefore not so pleasant. 



Until Mr. Hutchinson wrote it was not generally credited that the 

 Western Africans were addicted to cannibalism, but his evidence is not 

 to be doubted. "In 1859," he says, "human flesh was exposed as 

 butcher's meat in the market at Duketown, Old Calabar." It almost 

 seems that some religious grounds may actuate them, as the same writer 



