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.
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. But no sooner had the captain sailed away
than the whale-boat dropped to pieces. It was his fortune, some
time afterwards, to be wrecked, of all places, on that particular
island. The Marquesan chief was ignorant of rebates and discounts;
but he had a primitive sense of equity and an equally primitive
conception of the economy of nature, and he balanced the account by
eating the man who had cheated him.
We started in the cool dawn for Typee, astride ferocious little
stallions that pawed and screamed and bit and fought one another
quite oblivious of the fragile humans on their backs and of the
slippery boulders, loose rocks, and yawning gorges. The way led up
an ancient road through a jungle of hau trees. On every side were
the vestiges of a one-time dense population. Wherever the eye could
penetrate the thick growth, glimpses were caught of stone walls and
of stone foundations, six to eight feet in height, built solidly
throughout, and many yards in width and depth.
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