346 Notes on Sport and Travel m 



Maori burst out into horrors worse than Bulgarian. 

 Strange that cruelty and ferocity should walk hand 

 in hand with total abstinence in every form of 

 asceticism, Christian or Mohammedan, Judaic or 

 American ! But so it has been and will be. The 

 Maori, the most total ' abstainer ' I know, was the 

 most ferocious and brutal cannibal of whom we have 

 any accurate history. This cannibalism is a curious 

 question, one which has never been thoroughly 

 answered, and probably never will be, there being so 

 many answers, that we, who have given up, or possibly 

 never had, the custom, do not know how to choose 

 the right one. Manning, with that fine tact which 

 prevents a guest commenting too openly on his 

 host's eating peas with a knife (which all our grand- 

 mothers did unrebuked, having round-ended knives 

 for the purpose, their three-pronged fork being utterly 

 impracticable, unless they ate their peas as the ghoul 

 did her rice), passes over this subject very lightly, 

 but it was so prominent a feature in old Maori life 

 that we must take a glance at it, unpleasant as it 

 may be. 



Some say that revenge is at the bottom of all 

 cannibalism, — like Beatrice, ' I could eat his heart in 

 the market-place ! ' Others, that the idea is that 

 eating your conquered enemy gives you the powers 

 he possessed, but as you were the best man, I cannot 

 see that there is much in that ; others that you in- 

 sulted him by annihilating him, as we blow Indians 

 from guns, some fancy connected with the resurrec- 



