sold in the markets; and many mothers ate their own children. At the time, in which Belisarius was employed in the Gothic war, a horrible famine afflicted Italy. Procopius assures us, that multitudes, in the agony of their want, committed suicide. Numbers ate acorns and the grass of the fields. Many mothers even destroyed their own children, and ate them and one woman, who lived by letting lodgings, murdered, and ate no less than seventeen strangers, who had lodged at her house in succession. Her enormities coming, by accident, to the knowledge of the eighteenth, after he had entered her house, he dispatched her. The Jews, above all other people, are accused of this disgusting practice. An instance is recorded, in the second book of Kings, where two women are described, as agreeing to eat their two sons, during the famine in Samaria ‘. And when the Jews destroyed upwards of 200,000 Romans, in the time of Trajan, they were said to have glutted their rage by feeding on their bodies. These enormities were even foretold by their prophets. In Baruch it is written, that "the man shall eat the flesh of his own son, and the flesh of his own daughter d. a Ch. vi. v. 28. с b Dr. Martin relates*, that an Indian woman “dug up a favourite child, which had been dead some months, separated the bones from the flesh, and having boiled them together, drank the broth; after which she wrapped up the bones in palm-leaves, and returned them to the ground.” e Ch. ii. v. 3. d In Deuteronomy †, Moses describes it as being one of the curses, entailed upon their heirs, for the crime of disobedience :-" Thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body; the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters in the siege, and in the straitness, wherein thine enemies shall distress thee. The tender and delicate woman, which would not set the sole of her foot to the ground, for delicacy and tenderness, shall eat the children which she shall bear ; for want of all things, secretly, in the siege." Josephus says, that during the siege of Jerusalem, "Women snatched the food out of the very mouths of their husbands, and sons of their fathers, and mothers of their infants." (Lib. i. 5, c. 10, p. 3.) "In every house, if there appeared any semblance of food, a battle * Trav. in Brazil, p. 692. + Ch. xxviii. v. 53, During the great famine at Moscow, not less than 500,000 persons perished. Multitudes were seen in the roads and streets; some dead; some expiring; and some with hay and straw in their mouths. Children sold their parents for bread; and even mothers and fathers satisfied their hunger with the bodies of their children. During the reign of Shâh Husseyn, Ispahan was besieged by Mahmud, chief of the Afghauns; when the besieged, having consumed their horses, mules, camels, the leaves and bark of trees, and even cloth and leather, finished,—so great was the famine, with not only eating their neighbours and fellow-citizens, but their very babes. During this siege more human beings were devoured, than was ever known in a siege before. Mahmud having at length listened to terms of capitulation, Husseyn clad himself in mourning; and with the Wali of Arabia, and other officers of his court, proceeded to the camp of his adversary, and resigned the empire. The Afghaun chief, in receiving his resignation, exclaimed, “Such is the instability of all human grandeur! God disposes of empires, as he pleases, and takes them from one to give to another!" This occurred in the year 1716. During a late revolution at Naples, too, the lazaroni roasted men in the public streets and begged alms of the passengers, to enable them to buy bread, wherewith to eat their meat. This fury was directed against the Jacobins a. b During the famine, which desolated Egypt, A. D. 1199, in consequence of the Nile not overflowing its banks, many women were executed at Cairo for killing and eating their ensued, and the dearest friends and relatives fought with one another, and snatched away the miserable provisions of life." (Josephus, 1. ii. c. 3.)— During the famine of 1033, in France, "Men lived on roots and dead carcases; guests were sacrificed by those who had welcomed them to the enjoyment of hospitality; children were enticed into secret places and slain; and human flesh was exposed for sale in the market-place of Tournus, in Burgundy."-Glaber, lib. iv. c. 4; Ranken, iii. 318, 19. a See also what occurred in the Russian campaign, where the French soldiers fed on human flesh, in Segur. b Abdallatiphus, Hist. Egyp. lib. ii. c. 2. own children; and at the siege of Antioch by the Crusaders 2, in 1097, a famine existing in the Christian camp, thistles were boiled and eaten, and human flesh eagerly devoured. At the siege of Marra, too, the Crusaders ate bodies, taken from the graves of their adversaries; and one of the historians", who records the fact, even expresses surprise, that they should prefer the flesh of dogs to that of Saracens and Christians. The people of Maniana, south of the Gambia and Senegal, are cannibals. They eat spiders, beetles, and old men. "When a stranger dies," says Mollien ", " they purchase his corpse for the purpose of eating it." of eating it." Other tribes of Africa have been convicted of this practice. eat men, when dead, but they begin to alive. It has the sanction not only of custom, but of law; and the crimes, for which the victims are delivered to this punishment, are midnight robbery, adultery, treacherous attacks, and intermarrying in the same tribe. The Battas not only eat them even when In Celebes several instances have occurred, in which, after they have slain their enemy, they have cut out the heart, and eaten it while it was warm 8. The natives of New Zealand, New Caledonia, and New Holland, also, are cannibals. When Columbus first landed at Guadaloupe, he saw human limbs suspended, as if for drying, from the beams of houses; and that cannibals still exist among the Chippewa, Miamim, Potawatomi ", and other Indians; among the ManiWilliam of Malmesbury, 433; Bernardus, 691. b Albert. a Avidissime devorabant. Maffæius and Molina say of the Brazilians, that they were cannibals; and that they often declared, that the flesh of those who had been baptised lost much of its flavour.-Vid. Maff. xv.; Molina, 167. d Trav. in Afric. p. 302, 4to. e Vossius de Nili Origine, c. 18, 19. f Raffles' Life, 432, 4to. Vid. also Anderson's Account of the Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra, in 1823, p. 35. & Hist. Java, Append. F., vol. ii. 179. h Hawkesworth, ii. 389; iii. 447. i D'Entrecasteaux's Voy. ii. 199. 295. * Voy. in Search of Perouse, i. 173. m 1 P. Martyr, Ep. Pompon. Leto. No. 147. Major Long's Exped. to the Source of the St. Peter River, p. 261. tioritanoes, a tribe in Peru, the Carribees ", and the inhabitants of Nootka Sound, is no longer to be doubted: also in New Zealand d. Knight is said to have found " man-eaters" on the coast of Labradore; and when the American Indians go to war, they put a large kettle on the fire, as an emblem, that they are about to destroy their enemies, and will have the satisfaction of eating them after they are dead. Even in King George's Sound, where the natives are reported to be mild and inoffensive, they offered to our ships human skulls, hands, and feet, with the flesh hanging upon them, by way of barter, with the same indifference, that they would have offered beef or mutton. That the Indians of Hudson's Bay, also, have this disgusting propensity, is attested by Mr. Swaine, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Hearne f. The first of these gentlemen assured Dr. M'Keevor, that he knew an Indian woman, who dug up one of her own relatives, and fed upon the body for several days. And Mr. Ellis says, that an Indian, in his route to Hudson's Bay, with his wife and family, finding but little game on the way, subsisted, for some time, on two of their children. Lamberth and M'Keevor, also, assure us, that the North American Indians frequently drink the blood of their wives, and the wives of their husbands, when they are weak, or seriously indisposed. They open a vein, and quaff the blood, warm from the wound. a Garc. de la Vega. Hist. des Incas. i. c. 12. b Bancroft's Nat. Hist. 260. c Cook, 3rd Voy. ii. 271. d Earle says, the New Zealanders are brave, active, generous, unwearied in obliging, faithful, and industrious: yet, that they are cannibals; and he is persuaded that nothing will cure them of this dreadful propensity, but the introduction of animals. They, nevertheless, have a great dislike to liquors of all kinds, though fond of tobacco. "Why,” inquire they of the sailors, "do you like to make yourselves mad?"— Vid. Earle's Residence in New Zealand, p. 122. e Purchas's Pilgrims, iii. 827. Voy. up the Copper-Mine River, p. 85. h Trav. through the United States of America. i Voy. to Hudson's Bay, 61. f Voy. to Hudson's Bay, p. 65. The Paramahausans of Hindostan are even more disgusting than these; for they eat the putrid bodies, which they find floating down the Ganges. They esteem the brain the most exquisite of food; and many of them have been seen, near Benares, floating on dead bodies, feasting upon them raw. We have now to relate a still more curious custom. The Derbices slew their fathers and ate them. The Indians, also, ate the bodies of their parents and when Darius inquired of the Greeks, what reward could induce them to follow such example? they replied, "No recompense under heaven!" They shrunk with horror at the bare suggestion; but we are told, that when the Indians were advised to burn the bodies of their friends, their horror and disgust was fully equal to that of the Greeks: grounding their preference to their own custom on the piety of making themselves the tombs of their parents! Strabo accuses the Irish of this practice 2. INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. To contrast and variety of climate has been attributed the principal lines and shades of national characters. Mons. Denina, in a paper, preserved in the "Memoirs of the Berlin Academy;" and Tasso, in his parallel between France and Italy; have given it as their decided opinion, that a country, marked with gentle eminences, and gradually rising mountains, are the most remarkable for men of genius, talents, and learning. Vitruvius band Vegetius attribute to climate an influence on the temper and constitution of men: to the same influence Servius refers the subtlety of the Africans, a Lib. iv. 201. They live on human flesh," says he, "and think it a duty to eat the bodies of their deceased parents." Solinus says, "When they gain a victory, they drink the blood of the slain.”—C. xxiii. |