CANNIBALISM. 
309 
away the lower jaw-bones of the most distinguished 
among the slain, as trophies, and often the bones 
of the arms or legs, forming with them tools for build - 
ing canoes, or fish-hooks, while others converted the 
skulls of the slain into drinking vessels to be used at 
the feast of victory. Sometimes they piled the bodies 
in a heap, and built the skulls into a kind of wall 
around the temple, as at Opoa, but they were com¬ 
monly laid in rows near the shore, or in front of 
the camp, their heads all in the same direction. 
Here the skulls were often so battered with the 
clubs, that no trace of the countenance or human 
head remained. The bodies of females slain in 
war were presented to two of the daughters of 
Taaroa, and were treated with equal barbarity, and 
a degree of brutality, as inconceivable as it was 
detestable. 
In addition to the preceding indignities, their 
bodies were sometimes laid in rows along the 
beach, and used as rollers, over which they dragged 
their canoes, on landing, or launching them after 
a battle. We do not know that the Tahitians ever 
feasted on the bodies of the slain in a regular 
banquet, although this is practised by the Mar- 
quesians on the one side, and the New-Zealanders 
on the other—by the inhabitants of the Dangerous 
Archipelago in the immediate neighbourhood of 
the Georgian Islands in the east—and in several of 
the Hervey Islands in the west, especially Aitu- 
take, where it continued till the abolition of idola¬ 
try in 1823. 
Here the warriors were animated to the mur¬ 
derous combat by allusions to the inhuman feast 
it would furnish at the close. In New-Zealand, it 
is stated that a warrior has been known, when 
exulting over his fallen antagonist, to sever his 
