They would never eat a man who had died
a natural death.
They had eaten white man; he was salty and fat, but
he was good, though not so good as "Fiji man." One of them had tasted
a certain Mr. - - , and the meat on his legs was very fat. They
chopped his feet off above the boots, which they thought were part
of him, and they boiled his feet and boots for days, but they did not
like the taste of the boots. They often kept some of their prisoners
and fattened them up, and when the day came for killing one, it was
the women of Namosi's duty to take him down to the large stone by the
river, where they cut him open alive and tore his heart out. Lastly,
I asked if they would still like to eat man if they got the chance,
and they were not afraid of being punished, and there was no hesitation
in their reply of "Io" (yes), uttered with one voice like the yelp
of a hungry wolf, and it seemed to me that their eyes sparkled. They
were certainly a very obliging lot of cannibals.
Cannibalism is, of course, practically extinct now in Fiji, but in
recent years I am told that there, have been a few odd cases far back
in the mountains. On one occasion a man told his wife to build an oven
and that he was going to cook her. This she did, and he then killed,
cooked, and ate her. Whilst in Fiji I met an Englishman who in the
seventies had tasted human meat at a native feast, he believing it
was pig, and at the time he thought it was very good. I was told
that in the old days when they wanted to know whether a body was
cooked enough they looked to see if the head was loose. If the head
fell off it was thought to be "cooked to perfection," but I will not
vouch for this story being correct.
I gave the "Buli" a box of matches, and he seemed as pleased as if it
was a purse of gold; they light all their fires here by wood friction,
Some of the pet pigs around here were very oddly marked with stripes
and spots of brown, black and white. Whilst in Fiji I often came
across natives far from any village who were being followed by pet
pigs, as we in England might be followed by dogs. Masirewa amused
me more each day by his cheek and self-assurance. Once I asked him
what he said to the chief of the hut we were in, and he replied:
"Oh! I tell him Get out, you black fellow.' "
We left Namosi early the next morning, a large crowd seeing us off, and
I was sorry to bid farewell to one of the most beautiful spots in this
wide world. We passed through the villages of Nailili and Waivaka,
where I called at the chiefs' huts and held a kind of "at home"
for a few minutes, the people simply swarming in to look at me.
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