166 THE CRUISE OF THE ' CURAQOA.' 



an act of supreme revenge upon a fallen enemy, and we are 

 informed that the most violent exhibition of wrath one man 

 can manifest to another is to say to a person, ' I will eat 

 you.' ' In any action,' observes Dr. Seemann, ' where the 

 national honour had to be avenged, it was incumbent upon 

 the King and principal chiefs — in fact a duty tliey owed to 

 their exalted station — to avenge the insult offered to tlieir 

 country by eating the perpetrators of it.' But the same 

 writer thinks it worth enquiry, if their practice of cainiibal 

 feasts did not in some degree partake of a religious cere- 

 mony. His supposition, he thinks, countenanced by a very 

 singular fact. Not only are the ovens used for this purpose 

 never appro})riated to any other use ; but, whereas, every 

 other kind of food is eaten witli the fingers, three or four 

 pronged forks made of hard wood — generally of a species 

 of Casuarina — are used for eating human flesh. ' Every one 

 of these forks,' he says, ' is known by its particular — often 

 obscene — name ; and they are handed down from generation 

 to generation ; indeed, tliey are so much valued, that it 

 required no slight persuasion, and a handsome equivalent, 

 to obtain specimens of them for our ethnological collection ; 

 and, when they were aftei^wards shown to persons who 

 did not know how we came by them, they always looked 

 grave, and were especially anxious, that they should not 

 be displayed, especially before children.' ' ' My handhng 



' ' Viti,' by Seemann, p. 179, 382. See also p. 192 of the same work 

 for an able comment on some of the charges against the character 

 of these islanders based upon some of their most repugnant practices. 



