LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



has murdered four or five sailors, and one of them lay 

 sick at his house when he came up with his club and with 

 savage coolness knocked him in the head. 



' Their wars are occasionally very bloody. When a 

 village is taken, the men are put to death, and the women 

 and children are made prisoners; sometimes the boys 

 are driven in a band to the town of their cruel conquerors, 

 who then set their own children to work killing them with 

 clubs to teach them how to fight. What schooling this, 

 my children! But such is education among the Feejees, 

 they are taught every species of vice : to lie, steal, and 

 murder, and to glory, too, in their brutality. He is the 

 best warrior who can butcher his fellow-man with the 

 most coolness, and this is the height of their ambition. 

 But this is not all. They are cannibals. They not only 

 murder, but cook and eat their murdered victims. The 

 whole village assembles at the feast, and the night is one 

 of general debauchery. The body, which has been baked 

 as they would bake a pig, is pulled to pieces and devoured 

 with hearty appetites. The dance and song follow, and 

 scenes too horrid for description, and these, their cannibal 

 orgies, they continue till daylight. 



' While at anchor off a Feejee village we were informed 

 that two of their men had been killed a few days before 

 in a fight with a neighboring village, and eaten by the 

 murderers. A few weeks afterwards, at early daylight, 

 we dropped anchor at this place, and the anchor was no 

 sooner down than the water was alive with canoes, pull- 

 ing toward our ship. As they reached us we perceived 

 that some of them had human bones in their hands and 

 other bones were lying in the canoes. Soon after, they 

 climbed up the ship's sides and brought their bones with 

 them, and while aboard continued eating the human flesh, 

 as unconscious of notice as we would eat an apple. They 

 had just finished the carousals of the night, and these 

 were the remains of the cannibal feast. The skull of one 

 of the men that was eaten was purchased of them, and is 

 now at Washington. A large charred spot on the top of 

 the head tells its own tale of horror. 



' We were told that they sometimes keep their prison- 

 ers penned up, and take them out as the appetite of the 

 chief calls for gratification ; and at times, if without their 

 victims, a slave is butchered for the purpose. There is 



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