22) TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H, 
Note that the soul must have been considered as in some way and for a 
time still associated with its late body if, as is commonly and perhaps rightly 
held, the slayer sometimes ate some part of the body of the slain in order to 
acquire some of the qualities of the slain. E 
Again, there can be little doubt that men were sometimes killed for sacrificial 
purposes, the material bodies of the victims being placed at some spot (perhaps 
the tomb) considered to be frequented by the disembodied spirit of some 
ancestor for whom it was desired to provide a spirit attendant. It may be 
noted that this sacrificial use of the body might be combined with an eating 
of the same body when once it had served its first purpose of attributing the 
spirit which had been in it to the service of the honoured ancestor. 
It has been laid to the charge of the Fijians (as to that of many other folk 
of savage and even of civilised culture) that they habitually killed strangers, 
especially such as had been washed or drifted to the islands by the sea—who, 
in early times at least, must have been almost the only strangers to arrive. 
The charge, like that of cannibalism, has been exaggerated, and the facts— 
as far as there were any—on which this charge was founded have been mis- 
understood. 
Here, again, the attitude of the Fijian in this respect was hardly different 
from that of the lower animals under similar circumstances. The Fijian knew of 
no reason to be glad of the arrival of strangers, unless these could, in one way 
or another, be useful to him; and, as has already been explained, he knew 
of no reason why he should not make the best use possible of the stranger, of his 
body or his spirit, separately or together. 
While, as must have been the case in earlier times, the new-comers were 
dark-skinned men like himself, the Fijian might without the slightest prick of 
conscience separate their bodies from their spirits, and dispose of the body or 
the spirit separately; or without effecting this separation, he might simply 
enslave the new-comers; or, again, if he suspected that the new-comers were too 
strong for him, he might yield himself to them as a slave. 
And later, when Europeans began to arrive, sometimes as refugees from 
passing ships and sometimes as survivors from ships wrecked on the surrounding 
reefs, the bearing of the Fijian towards this new kind of stranger would have 
been on the same principles, only that in this case the new-comers, being of far 
less readily understood kind, would be regarded with more suspicion and also 
more respect. I believe that very seldom, if ever, was an inoffensive white man, 
wrecked sailor or other, killed, or treated with anything but kindliness and 
courtesy, even though the wrecked man’s property might naturally be appro- 
priated by the natives. It was only when white-skinned strangers became com- 
moner, and frequently more offensive, and when familiarity had bred contempt, 
that they were killed, as nuisances, and, especially during the great outbreak of 
cannibalism, were eaten. 
This point in the bearing of the islanders to white men might be further 
illustrated by a circumstance which, to my surprise, I have never found men- 
tioned, 7.e., that during the whole period while the missionaries were, with a 
rashness only justified by the circumstances, testifying against the natives in 
Fiji not one of these was killed, till at a much Jater period, when European 
influence was all but predominant in Fiji, Baker was killed and eaten under very 
special circumstances. 
If it were possible to ascertain in each case the facts as to the reception by 
‘savages’ of the first white men they saw, it would almost certainly be 
found that the reception was apparently kindly, though this kindness may 
really have been due to fear and not to charity. It was, however, quite probable 
that at any moment the savage might find that his dread of the white man was 
unfounded, and in that case he might kill him (i.e., separate his soul from his 
body) without hesitation, and after doing this his fear—he probably never had 
any affection for him—of the disembodied spirit of the white man might be as 
great, or even greater, than before. 
Incidentally it may here be noted, as a further curious point, that a Fijian 
who thus quite remorselessly set free the soul of a stranger from its body would 
probably not often and not for long in his dreams be revisited by his victim, 
if a native; and perhaps not even if the victim were a white man, unless very 
