Then,
Through Vistas Of Tropical Foliage Appeared A Procession Of Savages,
Naked Save For Gaudy Loin-Cloths.
They advanced slowly, uttering
deep guttural cries of triumph and exaltation.
Slung from young
saplings carried on their shoulders were mysterious objects of
considerable weight, hidden from view by wrappings of green leaves.
Nothing but pigs, innocently fat and roasted to a turn, were inside
those wrappings, but the men were carrying them into camp in
imitation of old times when they carried in "long-pig." Now long-
pig is not pig. Long-pig is the Polynesian euphemism for human
flesh; and these descendants of man-eaters, a king's son at their
head, brought in the pigs to table as of old their grandfathers had
brought in their slain enemies. Every now and then the procession
halted in order that the bearers should have every advantage in
uttering particularly ferocious shouts of victory, of contempt for
their enemies, and of gustatory desire. So Melville, two
generations ago, witnessed the bodies of slain Happar warriors,
wrapped in palm-leaves, carried to banquet at the Ti. At another
time, at the Ti, he "observed a curiously carved vessel of wood,"
and on looking into it his eyes "fell upon the disordered members of
a human skeleton, the bones still fresh with moisture, and with
particles of flesh clinging to them here and there."
Cannibalism has often been regarded as a fairy story by
ultracivilized men who dislike, perhaps, the notion that their own
savage forebears have somewhere in the past been addicted to similar
practices.
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