180 A MISSION TO VITI. 



eat human flesh, nor go near the bures when any dead 

 bodies have been brought in, and who abominate the 

 practice as much as any white man does, attributing to 

 it those fearful skin diseases with which their children 

 are so often visited. But their opponents, the Conser- 

 vatives, maintain that in order to strike terror in the 

 enemy and lower classes, it is absolutely necessary for 

 great chiefs and gentry a duty they owe to society 

 to eat human flesh. The feeling which the common 

 people have regarding it seems somewhat akin to the 

 horror inspired by that part of our nursery tales when 

 the giants come home, and begin to smell the children 

 concealed. The same enlightened party also objects to 

 the killing of women, urging that it is just as cowardly 

 to kill a woman as a baby. But here again those who 

 advocate inhumanity are triumphant, arguing that if the 

 women are killed the men will fret, and thus suffer an 

 almost direct punishment ; and further, that as whenever 

 there is a quarrel a woman is sure to be at the bottom 

 of it, justice demands that her sex, having caused the 

 bloodshed, should not escape scot-free. 



It is owing to this powerful ferment, which had pe- 

 netrated the whole Fijian community, that cannibalism 

 was so speedily abolished in all districts where Chris- 

 tian missionaries or European consuls were able to aid 

 the good cause by supplying the combatants with fresh 

 arguments, and backing them up with all the advan- 

 tages derived from their position as respected foreigners. 

 There may have been, and I dare say there are to this 

 day, individual natives, who, like Naulumatua, have a 

 morbid appetite for human flesh, sufficient opportunity to 



