CANNIBALISM. 



363 



fond were they of human flesh, that " the greatest praise they 

 can bestow on any delicacy is to say that it is as tender as a 

 dead man." Nay, they were even so fastidious as to dislike 

 the taste of white men,* to prefer the flesh of women to that 

 of men, and to consider the arm above the elbow, and the 

 thigh as the best joints ; and so greedy, that human flesh was 

 reserved for the men, being considered too good to be wasted 

 upon the women. When the king gave a feast human flesh 

 always formed one of the dishes, and though the bodies 

 of enemies slain in battle were always eaten, they did not 

 afford a sufficient supply, but slaves were fattened up for the 

 market. Sometimes they roasted them alive and ate them at 

 once, while at others they kept bodies until they were far 

 gone in decay. Ra Undre-undre, Chief of Raki-raki, was 

 said to have eaten nine hundred persons himself, permitting 

 no one to share them with him.f 



It was not from any want of food that the Feegeeans were 

 cannibals. On one occasion they offered to the God of War 

 "ten thousand yams (weighing from six to twelve pounds 

 each), thirty turtles, forty roots of yaquona (some very large), 

 many hundreds of native puddings (two tons), one hundred 

 and -fifty giant oysters, fifteen water-melons, cocoa-nuts, a 

 large number of violet land crabs, taro, and ripe bananas. "J 

 At a public feast Mr. Williams once saw a two hundred men 

 employed for nearly six hours in collecting and piling cooked 

 food. There were six mounds of yams,, taro, vakalolo, pigs, 

 and turtles : these contained about fifty tons of cooked yams 

 and taro, fifteen tons of sweet pudding, seventy turtles, five 

 cartloads of yaquona, and about two hundred tons of un- 

 cooked yams. One pudding, at a Lakemba feast, measured 

 twenty-one feet in circumference." Yet so habitual has 

 cannibalism become, that they have no word for a corpse 



* So also did the Australians, the f Figiandthe Figians,vol. i., p. 2 13. 

 Tongans, and the New Zealanders. J Ibid. vol. i., p. 44. 



