372 TAHITI. 



that the whole analogy of nature was in favor of cannibalism. 

 He was surprised at the horror of it felt by D'TJrville. Big 

 fish, he said, eat little fish; insects devour insects; large 

 birds feed upon small ones ; it is in accordance with the 

 whole analogy of nature that men should eat their enemies.* 



Tahiti. 



Tahiti, the Queen of Islands, has excited the wonder 

 and admiration of almost all those by whom it has been 

 visited. In some respects the Tahitians were surpassed by 

 other South Sea Islanders ; the Feegeeans, for instance, being 

 as we have seen, acquainted with pottery, but on the whole 

 they may be taken as representing the highest stage in civil- 

 isation to which man has in any country raised himself before 

 the discovery or introduction of metallic implements. It is 

 not, indeed, at all probable that any inhabitants of the great 

 continents were so far advanced in civilisation during their 

 Stone age. Doubtless, the Society Islanders would not have 

 remained without metal, if the country had afforded them 

 the means of obtaining it. On the other hand, the ancient 

 inhabitants of Europe were confined to the use of stone- 

 weapons only until they became acquainted with the su- 

 periority of, and acquired the art of working in copper, 

 bronze, or iron ; and it is evident that a nation would in all 

 probability discover the use of metal, before attaining the 

 highest pitch of civilisation which, without such aid, it 

 would be possible for mankind to attain. 



The tools of the Tahitians when first discovered were made 

 of stone, bone, shell, or wood. Of metal they had no idea. 

 When they first obtained nails, they mistook them for the 

 young shoots of some very hard wood, and hoping that life 

 might not be quite extinct, planted a number of them care- 

 fully in their gardens, f 



* Vol. ii., p. 548. f Ellis, Polynesian Researches, p. 298. 



