is turned from by
every unpolluted appetite, has now become an enjoyment in which they not
unfrequently indulge without any reference to the considerations which
originally tempted them to partake of it. Indeed, such a result, instead
of being incredible or improbable, would appear to be almost an
inevitable consequence of the general and systematic perpetration, under
any pretext, of so daring an outrage upon Nature as that of which these
savages are, on all hands, allowed to be guilty.

The practice of cannibalism, which has prevailed among other nations as
well as the New Zealanders, has probably not had always exactly the same
origin. According to Mr. Mariner, it is of very recent introduction
among the people of Tonga, having been unknown among them till it was
imported about fifty or sixty years ago, along with other warlike
tastes, by their neighbours of the Fiji Islands, whose assistance had
been called in by one of the parties in a civil struggle. Here is an
instance of the practice having originated purely in the ferocity
engendered by the habit of war. In other cases it has, perhaps, arisen
out of the kindred practice of offering up human beings as sacrifices
to the gods.

Humboldt, in his work on the indigenous inhabitants of South America,
gives us an interesting account of the introduction of this latter
atrocity among the Aztecs, a people of Mexico, whose annals record its
first perpetration to have taken place so late as the year 1317.

But the most extraordinary instance of cannibalism which is known to
exist in the world is that practised by the Battas, an extensive and
populous nation of Sumatra. These people, according to Sir Stamford
Raffles, have a regular government, and deliberative assemblies; they
possess a peculiar language and written character, can generally write,
and have a talent for eloquence; they acknowledge a God, are fair and
honourable in their dealings, and crimes amongst them are few; their
country is highly cultivated. Yet this people, so far advanced in
civilization, are cannibals upon principle and system. Mr. Marsden,[J]
in his "History of Sumatra," seems to confine their cannibalism to the
accustomed cases of prisoners taken in war and to other gratifications
of revenge. But it is stated by Sir Stamford Raffles, upon testimony
which is unimpeachable, that criminals and prisoners are not only eaten
according to the law of the land, but that the same law permits their
being