Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Natives, If They Return To Their Tribe (Al Monte), Or
Find Themselves Pressed By Hunger, Soon Resume Their Old Habits Of
Anthropophagy.
And why should we be so much astonished at this
inconstancy in the tribes of the Orinoco, when we are reminded, by
terrible and well-ascertained examples, of what has passed among
civilized nations in times of great scarcity?
In Egypt, in the
thirteenth century, the habit of eating human flesh pervaded all
classes of society; extraordinary snares were spread for physicians in
particular. They were called to attend persons who pretended to be
sick, but who were only hungry; and it was not in order to be
consulted, but devoured. An historian of great veracity, Abd-allatif,
has related how a practice, which at first inspired dread and horror,
soon occasioned not even the slightest surprise.* (* "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 accustomed 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 a treat, 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 instances of it were found in every part of Egypt.
It then no longer caused any surprise; the horror it had at first
inspired vanished; and it was mentioned as an indifferent and ordinary
thing.
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