The Wambembe also of Central Africa ate human flesh to such an extent that, when they could not obtain it otherwise, they traded their animals to secure the coveted article.
A Negro race called the Babooke living near the Niam-Niams is even more notoriously cannibalistic than that people; and Baker tells of the Makkarika tribe, dwelling about two hundred miles west of Gondokoro, who consumed the flesh of man with great avidity. When the slave-traders made a “razzia,” these natives accompanied them for the sake of eating the slain. The traders complained that they were bad associates, as they insisted upon killing and eating the children. Their method was to catch a child by its ankles, dash its head against the ground, and thus deprived of life, it was boiled and eaten.
A horrible act of cannibalism at Gondokoro is thus described by N’Yanza: “The traders had arrived with their ivory from the west, together with a large number of slaves; the carriers of the ivory being Makkarikas. One of the slave girls attempted to escape, when a slave dealer fired at her with his musket. The ball struck her in the side, wounded her and she fell to the ground. No sooner had the poor creature fallen than the Makkarikas rushed upon her in a crowd, killed her with their lances and at once divided her by cutting off the head, and separating the body into as many pieces as were required. The slave women and their children who witnessed this scene rushed panic-stricken from the spot and took refuge in trees. The Makkarikas seeing them in flight were excited to give chase, and pulling the children from their refuge among the branches killed several, and a great feast was prepared for the whole party.”
Paul De Chillu, with whom the writer has conversed, says that the natives of the gorilla country in Western Africa manifest no repugnance toward human flesh as food, but take it with a relish. The Fans, one of the West African tribes, are known to have indulged in this depraved taste for human food, and they purchase dead slaves for culinary purposes from other tribes, at the high rate of an elephant’s tooth apiece. In polite Fan society, it is accounted a very courteous act to exchange bodies for table use with the neighboring tribes with whom at the time the Fans happen to be at peace. It is narrated that, on one occasion a war party of this tribe while on the march, finding a newly-buried body in a grave, dug it up, cooked it in the pot buried with it, and ate the flesh for breakfast as an especial dainty.
War reports on record in England show that when Gen. Sir Charles Macarthy was killed in the first Ashantic battle, the Fantis, known as one of the most cruel and vindictive of the negroloid races, ate the heart of this brave officer to give them a share of his courage. With them superstition and all the absurdities and abominations of the fetich still remain in force. Their religion is accompanied with so much noise that white-faced strangers are driven almost mad by their pandemonia. Drums are beaten, horns are blown, and all the population unite in producing the greatest possible din as well as confusion.
The Kamrasi cement friendship by making an incision in the bodies of their friends, having taken out some of the blood, mixing it with farinaceous food. This act is supposed to perpetuate a friendship coeval with life.
The people of Maneana south of the Gambia and Senegal’ Mollien states are man-eaters; but their preference is for elderly persons; nor are they particular as to whether the vital spark of life has been extinguished.
According to Abdallatiphus, during the famine which desolated Egypt, A. D. 1199, in consequence of the Nile not overflowing its banks, many of the Nubians living on the river were forced by the pangs of hunger to kill and eat their own children.
In the interior of New Guinea (the great link by which the Molucca Islands are connected with New Holland on the one hand and the Polynesian Archipelago on the other) is a race of Haraforas who live in the hollows of trees, which they ascend by means of long notched pieces of timber. The agility of the youth of this race among the branches of trees is wonderful; they will climb and spring from one branch to another almost with the ease of monkeys, and like those animals when attacked all take to the trees as refuges, where they can defend themselves with great chance of success. Their habits are essentially the same as those of other tribes already named. Beccari bears testimony to the fact of having seen some of them wearing bracelets of human jaw-bones, and necklaces made of the spinal vertebræ which had evidently been subjected to the action of heat. Their habitations in the tree-tops were also decked with human skulls, which led to the belief that the taste of human flesh was not unknown to them.