142 A MISSION TO VITI. 



mile across, and full of fruit-trees. It was pointed out 

 as the spot where, only a twelvemonth ago, a man was 

 baked and eaten. Cannibalism in Fiji will soon num- 

 ber amongst the things that have been. The influence 

 of all the whites residing in or visiting the group is 

 steadily directed towards its extinction, and though a 

 person who ought to have had more charity has asserted 

 in print that he had been told some of the white resi- 

 dents were habitual partakers of human flesh, I think, 

 for the honour of our race, such second-hand stories 

 ought to be indignantly rejected. Antiquaries know 

 that cannibalism of a certain form lingered in Europe 

 long after the Reformation ; that mummies, said to be 

 Egyptian, were extensively used medicinally, and that 

 only after it was found out patients had not partaken 

 of the contemporaries of Thothmes I. or Eameses the 

 Great, but of bituminized portions of their own fellow- 

 countrymen, this precious quack medicine fell into abso- 

 lute disuse. Even in our own times we may still meet 

 in certain parts of Europe people doing what has been 

 recorded with horror of the Fijians that of drinking 

 the living blood of man ; but mark ! with this essential 

 difference, that the former, watching their opportunities 

 at public executions, do it in hopes of thereby curing 

 fits of epilepsy, whilst the latter did it to gratify re- 

 venge and exult over fallen enemies. As for a Euro- 

 pean, even of the lowest grade, coolly sitting down to a 

 regular cannibal feast, the idea is too preposterous to 

 have ever been allowed to disgrace the pages of a mo- 

 dern publication. 



Taudromu, another of the islands of Ga loa Bay, 



