Captain Cook Was Rather Sceptical Upon The Subject,
Until, One Day, In A Harbour Of New Zealand, He Deliberately Tested
The Matter.
A native happened to have brought on board, for sale, a
nice, sun-dried head.
At Cook's orders strips of the flesh were cut
away and handed to the native, who greedily devoured them. To say
the least, Captain Cook was a rather thorough-going empiricist. At
any rate, by that act he supplied one ascertained fact of which
science had been badly in need. Little did he dream of the
existence of a certain group of islands, thousands of miles away,
where in subsequent days there would arise a curious suit at law,
when an old chief of Maui would be charged with defamation of
character because he persisted in asserting that his body was the
living repository of Captain Cook's great toe. It is said that the
plaintiffs failed to prove that the old chief was not the tomb of
the navigator's great toe, and that the suit was dismissed.
I suppose I shall not have the chance in these degenerate days to
see any long-pig eaten, but at least I am already the possessor of a
duly certified Marquesan calabash, oblong in shape, curiously
carved, over a century old, from which has been drunk the blood of
two shipmasters. One of those captains was a mean man. He sold a
decrepit whale-boat, as good as new what of the fresh white paint,
to a Marquesan chief.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 153 of 305
Words from 40760 to 41012
of 80724
