4 S2 CANNIBALISM, 



planters, that cannibals were known to be in the forests ; and that, if 

 I went without sufficient force to protect me, I should be killed and 

 devoured by these monsters. Several Indians also corroborated the 

 absurd notion ; and they were quite sure that I should become a 

 prey to the men-eaters. But I was not to be frightened at shadows, 

 nor forced to change my own ideas, by old grandmothers' stories. 

 Determining, in my own mind, never to give cause of offence to any- 

 body, I journeyed amongst the natives without any fear of having my 

 flesh cooked to suit their present appetites, or of its being salted for 

 future use. During the whole of the time which I spent in the 

 regions extending from that part which Captain Stedman terms the 

 wild coast of Surinam, near the Atlantic Ocean, to the Portuguese 

 frontier fort on the Rio Branco (see the " Wanderings "), I never fell 

 in with a cannibal. 



Still, I could wish to mention a circumstance, which a stranger 

 would consider tantamount to proof positive, that certain Indians of 

 Guiana have really a liking for human flesh, in its dried state ; as 

 hands of this description have occasionally been discovered in 

 pegalls, which are a kind of band-box composed of a species of reed, 

 and used for the purpose of conveying their hammocks, with other 

 little matters, from place to place. This ominous discovery is thus 

 explained. Whenever the fugitive or maroon negroes had mustered 

 sufficient force in the forests to place the colonies in jeopardy, then 

 it was that armed troops were despatched into the interior to attack 

 their settlements. In these warlike expeditions, the Indians acted 

 the part of auxiliaries to the colonists, who rewarded their services, 

 for every maroon taken or slain, under the following condition: viz., 

 that the Indian, when he came to claim the reward, should produce 

 the right hand of the maroon. Now, as flesh will not keep sweet 

 more than a day in those hot climates, the Indian cut off the dead 

 maroon's hand, dried it over a slow fire, and then packed it in the 

 pegall, as described above ; to be produced at head-quarters, when 

 the promised reward was claimed. This is the true history of dried 

 hands having been found in the pegalls of the Indians : a dis- 

 covery certainly, at first sight, suspicious enough to fasten on there 

 natives of Guiana the unenviable reputation of being genuine 

 cannibals. 



