The fortune of war was all with us. Hot-Water’s troops followed up their advantage, and a fearful scene of carnage ensued. The women of Ramáka came out to meet the victorious soldiers on their return, laden with hopelessly wounded prisoners and dead bodies. Nameless indignities were put upon the slain, and songs were chanted which will not bear translating.
In the impromptu triumphal chants, allusion was made to the men who had most distinguished themselves in the contest. I heard frequent reference to myself as the slayer of the redoubtable Bent-Axe, and also to the might of the white man’s matchless arms.
CHAPTER XX.
THE CANNIBAL BANQUET.
What Homer says of the Cyclops, and Herodotus of the Scythians, and what moreover we are loth to believe of the ancient Britons, must be written against the Fijians as matters of history unmixed with myth or poetic fiction. They were cannibals.
No cup was so highly prized by a Fiji chieftain for drinking the chiefly drink—kava—out of, as that made from a human skull, the value of which would be increased a hundred per cent. by its being the skull of his greatest enemy.
If there is any reason for doubting that the ancient Scots preferred a “ham of herdsman” to a piece of beef, or that Richard Coeur de Lion enjoyed a Saracen’s head more than a leg of pork, there is none whatever to doubt that to a Fijian’s taste there was nothing so delicious as the flesh of one of his countrymen, the more so if that countryman were in any sense his own or his country’s foe. And of the many desirable portions, there was none he so much longed for, or ate with such gusto, as the heart. Query? is it not highly probable that the passion of revenge when at its height of savage success, produces an effect on the conqueror’s appetite, whetting it to ungovernable sharpness, and giving it a keener relish for the flesh of the victim than could ever be felt under the influence of other passions? How else can we account for an act like that of Sir Ewan Cameron, who declared the flesh of an English trooper whom he had killed after a desperate struggle, to be the “sweetest morsel he had ever tasted?” or, for the deed of one of the French revolutionists, who ate the heart of the Princess Lamballe? or, for the still more horrible deeds of every day life in Cannibal-land?
Be this as it may, the acts themselves are unquestionable. No war, however insignificant, was ever waged without enemy eating enemy. The word in general use to express the practice, is a compound of two words, one of which means the “eating,” while the other adds to it the idea of reciprocity. The name of the vile thing, therefore, is the “eating-of-one-another,” even as by a similar compound the language tells how, in battle, the work of the soldiers is the “killing-of-one-another.”
Of the institutions peculiar to Fiji, cannibalism stood at the head. The revolting epithet to which the practice has given rise, has been, and will again be, applied in this work to this country of lovely isles, for the simple reason that no other country on the face of the earth so well deserves it. It would, however, be unfair to argue therefrom that the Fijian race ought in consequence to be placed in the lowest rank of the human family. So far from this being so, they are, when compared with some other uncivilised races not cannibal, a highly civilised people. Cannibalism amongst them is an evidence of that religious fanaticism which originated and perpetuated it, rather than of their own high or low position in the scale of uncivilised nations. It was a part of his religion for the Fijian to be a man-eater, whether his victims were slain in battle, or cast helpless shipwrecks on shore. This was but poor cheer for the experienced and noble swimmer to strike out boldly for dear life. Deprived of his canoe by the cruel storm, he had yet before him many a long furlong of rough sea; shoals of hungry sharks set on tearing him in pieces ere his feet could reach the strand; and last, and more to be dreaded than tempest, sea or sharks, men like himself, waiting to rob him of the life which, in spite of the leaden weight at his heart, he had struggled so hard to keep. As he wades feebly towards the land, he knows there is no hope, for he sees the smoke curling upwards from the oven that is ready to receive him, and he hears the voices of men coming from behind the bushes to greet him,—to slay and eat him; and he knows them to be impelled to the deed, not alone by a liking for human flesh, but also by the unsparing requirements of an inveterate religious superstition. That this was even so there is abundant evidence to prove. The names of gods, priests, and temples, as likewise the character and themes of various imprecations, prayers, benedictions, legends, songs, and witnesses of every description, lead to no other conclusion.
The clear connection of Fiji cannibalism with religion, discovers its relation to the cannibalism practised by the Goands of India, and the Aborigines of America, who believed that the eating of human flesh was a thing in which the gods delighted. Revenge, approved and even instigated by the gods, was the great motive power which enabled the Fijian to engage in the horrible work with zest and freedom from all conscience-pangs. While, however, revenge was in most instances the father of the thought to kill and eat, it should be borne in mind that in cases of shipwreck, revenge could have little or no part in the business, except in so far as it was mixed up in the belief of the eaters of the shipwrecked ones, which belief taught that the gods had taken revenge for offences committed by the castaway sailors.
It will thus appear that the cannibal of Fiji was rarely guilty of hunting up the innocent and those who never did him any wrong, merely to gratify his appetite for this kind of food. Such cannibalism may have been common enough among the Kookees of India, but was not so with Fijians.