292 FIJI ISLANDS. 



and labelled, but a missile weapon, which is thrown with great 

 force with the hand, revolving rapidly in the air as it flies, and 

 striking a very formidable blow, often in the 

 face. Settlers in Fiji told me it was the only 

 native weapon which they feared when fighting 

 with Fijians. The native name of the weapon 

 is " Ula." The head of the ula is usually beset 

 with a circle of large oval knobs, as shown in 

 the figure. These knobs are the stumps of the 

 lateral roots of the tree, from which the weapon 

 is cut. When the ula is carved out of solid 

 wood, a circle of knobs is often cut round the 

 head of it, in imitation of those derived in the 

 original weapon from the lateral root stumps. 

 Some ulas have perfectly smooth heads. 



With regard to Cannibalism, I gathered 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 

 FIJIAN ULA. obtain such food for the chief, went in search 

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

 longing 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. anthropflphagorimi)^ 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 followed the 

 eating of human flesh any more than 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 to a distance as a present from 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 t,ooo New 

 Zealand prisoners have been slaughtered at one time after a 

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



