the desert, begins to lust after
flesh-pots. Add to this the evidences of over-population and imminent
famine already adduced, and I think we see some ground of indulgence for
the island cannibal.

It is right to look at both sides of any question; but I am far from
making the apology of this worse than bestial vice. The higher
Polynesian races, such as the Tahitians, Hawaiians, and Samoans, had one
and all outgrown, and some of them had in part forgot, the practice,
before Cook or Bougainville had shown a topsail in their waters. It
lingered only in some low islands where life was difficult to maintain,
and among inveterate savages like the New Zealanders or the Marquesans.
The Marquesans intertwined man-eating with the whole texture of their
lives; long-pig was in a sense their currency and sacrament; it formed
the hire of the artist, illustrated public events, and was the occasion
and attraction of a feast. To-day they are paying the penalty of this
bloody commixture. The civil power, in its crusade against man-eating,
has had to examine one after another all Marquesan arts and pleasures,
has found them one after another tainted with a cannibal element, and
one after another has placed them on the proscript list. Their art of
tattooing stood by itself, the execution exquisite, the designs most
beautiful and intricate; nothing more handsomely sets off a handsome
man; it may cost some pain in the beginning, but I doubt if it be near
so painful in the long-run, and I am sure it is far more becoming than
the ignoble European practice of tight-lacing among women. And now it
has been found needful to forbid the art. Their songs and dances were
numerous (and the law has had to abolish them by the dozen). They now
face empty-handed the tedium of their uneventful days; and who shall
pity them? The least rigorous will say that they were justly served.

Death alone could not satisfy Marquesan vengeance; the flesh must be
eaten. The chief who seized Mr. Whalon preferred to eat him; and he
thought he had justified the wish when he explained it was a vengeance.
Two or three years ago, the people of a valley seized and slew a wretch
who had offended them. His offence, it is to be supposed, was dire; they
could not bear to leave their vengeance incomplete, and, under the eyes
of the French, they did not dare to hold a public festival. The body was
accordingly divided; and every man retired to his own house to
consummate the rite i