STORY OF CYPRIPEDIUM CURTISII 187 



that if Marco Polo's ' kingdom of Mangi, called Concha,' 

 lay in those parts, as geographers believe, some race of the 

 neighbourhood was cannibal in the thirteenth century. 

 'They commonly eat men's flesh, if the person die not of 

 sickness, as better tasted than others.' That is the motive 

 still-— the only one adduced — mere liking. Elsewhere the 

 practice may be due to superstition in one form or another ; 

 among the Battas it is simply gourmandise. The head Rajah 

 questioned gave a matter-of-fact answer. 'You Dutch eat 

 pig,' said he,^ ' because you like it ; we eat man because that 

 is our fancy.' To be devoured alive is the punishment of 

 four offences among themselves — adultery, robbery after 

 nightfall, unprovoked assault, and marrying within the clan ; 

 the last an interesting item of which Sir John Lubbock 

 should certainly take note for his next edition of "the Origin 

 of Civilisation. The instinct of 'exogamy' has no such 

 striking illustration elsewhere. As for foreigners and 

 strangers there is no rule ; they are devoured at sight. And 

 it may well be believed that people so fond of eating one 

 another do not demand unquestionable evidence when a man 

 of low station is charged with one of the four crimes which 

 may give them a meal. I must not repeat the horrors 

 which Ericsson learned. Suffice it that the victim is tied up, 

 and those present exercise their choice of morsels. At a 

 former time, they say, not long ago, the flesh was cooked — 

 a statement which confirms the theory, so far as it goes, of a 

 recent introduction. At this present they dip the slice in 

 salt and pepper and eat it on the spot. 



A good many missionaries, English, Dutch, French, and 

 American, have not only settled on the confines of the Batta 

 territory, but have travelled in the interior. The earliest of 

 these, Messrs. Ward and Burton, found the people kindly, 

 which again must be noted as suggesting that they were not 

 so ferocious in 1820. The second party, Messrs. Lyman 



