SIGNIFICANCE OF ANTHROPOPHAGISM. 181 



gratify it to an alarming extent, and who could no more 

 break themselves of the habit, though death stared them 

 in the face, than any confirmed drunkard can of his vice. 

 But as a general rule boJcola was not regarded in the 

 shape of food; and when some of the chiefs told fo- 

 reigners, who again and again would attack them about 

 a custom intimately connected with the whole fabric of 

 their society, and not to be abolished by a single reso- 

 lution, that they indulged in eating it because their coun- 

 try furnished nothing but pork, being destitute of beef 

 and all other kinds of meat, they simply wished to offer 

 some excuse which might satisfy their inquisitors for 

 the moment, 



Fijians always regarded eating a man as the very acme 

 of revenge, and to this day the greatest insult one can 

 offer is to say to a person, " I will eat you." In any trans- 

 action where the national honour had to be avenged, 

 it was incumbent upon the king and principal chiefs 

 in fact, a duty they owed to their exalted station 

 to avenge the insult offered to the country by eating 

 the perpetrators of it. I am convinced however that 

 there was a religious as well as a political aspect of this 

 custom, which awaits future investigation. Count Stre- 

 letzki, whose powers of observation have given him an 

 insight into savage life few travellers have attained in 

 so eminent a degree, fully agreed with me when some 

 time ago this subject was the topic of conversation be- 

 tween us. There is a certain degree of religious awe 

 associated with cannibalism where a national institution, 

 a mysterious hallow akin to a sacrifice to a supreme 

 being, with which only the select few, the tabu class, 



