78 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



find the following trait of brutality given as an illustration of the 

 vindictive character of a Nubian tribe—" Among the Hallenga, 

 who draw their origin from. Abyssinia, a horrible custom is said 

 to attend the revenge of blood ; when the slayer has been seized 

 by the relations of the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at 

 which the murderer is brought into the midst of them, bound 

 upon an angareyg (or sofa), and while his throat is slowly cut 

 with a razor the blood is caught in a bowl and handed round 

 among the guests ; every one of whom is bound to drink of it at 

 the moment the victim breathes his last."* 



That cannibalism is also practised in various islands of the 

 South Seas, where neither necessity nor the desire of vengeance 

 can be urged in palliation of the revolting practice, cannot be 

 doubted. About forty years since, a respectable Scotchman who 

 had been long in command of a Government vessel out of this 

 port, at a time when it was customary to resort to certain of the 

 South Sea Islands for supplies of pork for the King's stores, told 

 me that when he was lying at the Marquesas in one of his voyages 

 to these islands, he had seen human viscera hung up for use in 

 the same way as those of a sheep or bullock are frequently seen 

 in England ; and that, on inquiring on one occasion of an elderly 

 woman what had become of a little orphan boy she seemed to be 

 rearing, and to whom he had himself got somewhat attached, he 

 was horrified to learn that the boy had been killed and eaten. 

 Nay, he assured me that he was once offered a human finger 

 himself as a peculiar delicacy. 



In further illustration of the manner in which the South Sea 

 Islands, and especially the solitary and remoter islands have been 

 peopled in the course of ages past, I may state that it has been 

 ascertained that the dialect of the Chatham Islands, situated only 

 a few hundred miles to the eastward of New Zealand, has a 

 much greater resemblance to that of Tahiti or the Society 

 Islands than to that of New Zealand ; but that the dialect of 

 Aitutaki, a solitary isle, and much nearer Tahiti, is identical with 

 that of New Zealand. The only explanation that can be given 

 of these remarkable facts is that some canoe with a party of 

 natives on board had been blown off the coast of Tahiti by some 

 sudden tempest, and had after a voyage of upwards of a thousand 

 miles, reached the Chatham Islands ; and that, in precisely 

 similar circumstances, a canoe with a party of New Zealanders 

 on board had been blown off their own island, and had, after a 

 vovage of perhaps still greater length, been driven upon the 

 remote and solitary island of Aitutakai. 



Taking into consideration, therefore, the fact that the state of 

 things I have been describing has been in existence and operation 



* Burckliardt's TraTels in Nubia, p. 356. 



