MBAU AND VITI-LEVU. 167 



them seemed to give as much pain as if I had gone 

 into a Christian churdi and used the cliahce for drinking 

 water.' 



Tliere lias hitherto been a tendency to ascribe most of the 

 revolting practices of the Fijians, such as launching their 

 war canoes over the bodies of tlieir captives, using them, in 

 fact, as rollers, interring them at the base of the posts sup- 

 porting the chief's houses, or boiling or baking them alive, to 

 what is supposed to be an innate ferocity and love of cruelty 

 in these islanders. But it is admitted, that the peculiar 

 features of their religion, and the use made of them by their 

 priests, must have tended to infuse a taste for these revolting 

 practices. It requires, however, no great knowledge of the 

 antecedents of European civilisation, to be aware that the 

 greatest refinements of cruelty, and the most brutal disregard 

 of human suffering, have been, at one time or other and in 

 various places connected with religion at comparatively 

 advanced periods of national progress. Baking and boiling 

 alive have a terrific sound, and are regarded as indications 

 of a very savage condition ; but the slow combustion by fire 

 of the living heretic, the frightful tortures of the Inquisition, 

 or the peine dure et forte, and other brutalities of the civil 

 process, are facts equally remarkable for their cruelty, 

 equally depreciatory of our nature, yet were not deformities 

 belonging to our savage state. We must be careful, there- 

 fore, how we ascribe the ferocities of the Fijians to some 

 radical imperfection in their character. 



In truth, there is evidence to prove there is no lack in 



