SIGNIFICANCE OF ANTHROPOPHAGISM. 181 
gratify it to an alarming extent, and who could no more 
break themselves of the habit, though death stared them 
in the face, than any confirmed drunkard can of his vice. 
But as a general rule dokola was not regarded in the 
shape of food; and when some of the chiefs told fo- 
reigners, who again and again would attack them about 
a custom intimately connected with the whole fabric of 
their society, and not to be abolished by a single reso- 
lution, that they indulged in eating it because their coun- 
try furnished nothing but pork, being destitute of beef 
and all other kinds of meat, they simply wished to offer 
some excuse which might satisfy their inquisitors for 
the moment. 
Fijians always regarded eating a manas the very acme 
of revenge, and to this day the greatest insult one can 
offer is to say toa person, “I will eat you.” In any trans- 
action where the national honour had to be avenged, 
it was incumbent upon the king and principal chiefs 
—in fact, a duty they owed to their exalted station— 
to avenge the insult offered to the country by eating 
the perpetrators of it. I am convinced however that 
there was a religious as well as a political aspect of this 
custom, which awaits future investigation. Count Stre- 
letzki, whose powers of observation have given him an 
insight into savage life few travellers have attained in 
so eminent a degree, fully agreed with me when some 
time ago this subject was the topic of conversation be- 
tween us. There is a certain degree of religious awe 
associated with cannibalism where a national institution, 
a mysterious hallow akin to a sacrifice to a supreme 
being, with which only the select few, the tabu class, 
