430 



sick, but who were only hungry ; and it was not 

 in order to be consulted, but devoured. An 

 historian of great veracity, Abd-Allatif, lias re- 

 lated, how a practice, which at first inspired 

 dread and horror, soon occasioned not the slight- 

 est surprise*." 



Although the Indians of the Cassiquiare readi- 

 ly return to their barbarous habits, they display, 



* Account of Egypt by Abd-Allatif, Physician of Bagdad, 

 translated into French by M. Silv. de iSacy, p. 360 — 374. 

 " When the poor began to eat human flesh, the horror and 

 astonishment caused by repasts so dreadful were such, 

 that these crimes furnished the never ceasing subject of every 

 conversation. But at length the people became so accus- 

 tomed to it, and conceived such a taste for this detestable food, 

 that people of wealth and respectability were found to use 

 it as their ordinary food, to eat it by way of regale, and even 

 to lay in a stock of it. This flesh was prepared in different 

 ways, and the practice being once introduced, spread into 

 the provinces, so that examples of it were found in every 

 part of Egypt. It then no longer caused an}' surprise ; the 

 horror, it had at first inspired, vanished j and it was men- 

 tioned as an indifferent and ordinary thing. This fury of 

 devouring one another became so common among the poor, 

 that the greater part perished in this manner. These wretches 

 employed all sorts of artifices, to seize men by surprise, or 

 decoy them into their houses under false pretences. This 

 happened to three physicians among those who visited me ; 

 and a bookseller, who sold me books, an old and very corpu- 

 lent man, fell into their snares, and escaped with great diffi- 

 culty. All the facts which we relate as ocular witnesses fell 

 under our observation accidentally, for we generally avoided 

 seeing spectacles, which inspired us with so much horror." 



