CANNIBALISM AS A CUSTOM. 211 



" While listening to this frightful detail, we felt sick almost to 

 fainting. We left Atoi " (the chief who had killed the girl), " and 

 again strolled toward the spot where this disgusting feast was cooking. 

 Not a native was now near it ; a hot steam kept occasionally bursting 

 from the smothered mass, and the same dog that we had seen take the 

 head of the girl now crept from beneath the bushes and sneaked to- 

 ward the village : to add to the gloominess of the whole, a large hawk 

 rose heavily from the very spot where the poor victim had been cut in 

 pieces. My friend and I sat gazing in this melancholy place ; it was 

 a lowering, gusty day, and the moaning of the wind through the bush- 

 es, as it swept round the hill on which we were, seemed in unison with 

 our feelings." 



Earle goes on to relate how he, and three other compatriots whom 

 he summoned from the beach for the purpose, with the Englishman's 

 usual impertinent interference and intolerance of customs differing 

 from his own, determined to frustrate Atoi's intention. They together 

 visited the hill where the flesh was cooking, and, destroying the oven, 

 buried the remains in the earth. They found the heart put on one 

 side for the special delectation of their constant friend and companion, 

 Atoi. Earle was afterward good-humoredly told by the chief that 

 their interference had been of no avail, as they had found the grave 

 where the flesh had been buried, and opening it, soon after he and his 

 friends had left, had finished cooking it and eaten it all. Earle argued 

 long, and probably loudly, with the chief upon this question. Atoi 

 asked him what they did with their thieves and runaways in England, 

 and he told. him, "Flog them or hang them." "Then," replied the 

 Maori, " the only difference is that we eat them after we have killed 

 them." The same chief told him that before the introduction of po- 

 tatoes the people in the interior had nothing to eat but fern-roots and 

 Jciimera (another edible root) ; fish they never had in the rivers, so 

 that human flesh was the only sort that they ever partook of. 



Another early traveler in New Zealand, Ellis, who had admirable 

 opportunities for arriving at the real motive for this custom, tells us 

 that the Maoris "eat the bodies of their enemies that they might im- 

 bibe their courage " ; and that they exulted greatly at the banquet 

 upon the body of a great chief, for they thought that they would thus 

 obtain his valiant and daring spirit. 



The eastern Polynesians made war chiefly for the purpose of ob- 

 taining bodies ; hence, when clearing away the brushwood from a place 

 where they expected to engage an enemy, they cheered each other 

 with cries of " Clear away well, that we may kill and eat, and have a 

 good feast to-day ! " Their haughtiest threat was always, " We will 

 kill and eat you ! " and to be eaten was always the greatest dread of 

 the exiled and conquered. Dr. Turner, in his most interesting work 

 on Samoa, tells us that in New Caledonia " it was war, war, war, in- 

 cessant war," and that all the good bodies were picked out from the 



