 this particular clan toward the
neighbouring tribes, I cannot so confidently speak. I will not say that their
foes are the aggressors, nor will I endeavour to palliate their conduct. But
surely, if our evil passions must find vent, it is far better to expend them on
strangers and aliens, than in the bosom of the community in which we dwell. In
many polished countries civil contentions, as well as domestic enmities, are
prevalent, at the same time that the most atrocious foreign wars are waged. How
much less guilty, then, are our islanders, who of these three sins are only
chargeable with one, and that the least criminal!
    The reader will, ere long, have reason to suspect that the Typees are not
free from the guilt of cannibalism; and he will then, perhaps, charge me with
admiring a people against whom so odious a crime is chargeable. But this only
enormity in their character is not half so horrible as it is usually described.
According to the popular fictions, the crews of vessels, shipwrecked on some
barbarous coast, are eaten alive like so many dainty joints by the uncivil
inhabitants; and unfortunate voyagers are lured into smiling and treacherous
bays; knocked on the head with outlandish war-clubs; and served up without any
preliminary dressing. In truth, so horrific and improbable are these accounts,
that many sensible and well-informed people will not believe that any cannibals
exist; and place every book of voyages which purports to give any account of
them, on the same shelf with Blue Beard and Jack the Giant-Killer. While others,
implicitly crediting the most extravagant fictions, firmly believe that there
are people in the world with tastes so depraved, that they would infinitely
prefer a single mouthful of material humanity to a good dinner of roast beef and
plum pudding. But here, Truth, who loves to be centrally located, is again found
between the two extremes; for cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is
practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon
the bodies of slain enemies alone; and horrible and fearful as the custom is,
immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those
who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.
 

                                 Chapter XXVIII

    Fishing Parties - Mode of distributing the Fish - Midnight Banquet -
    Time-keeping Tapers - Unceremonious Style of eating the Fish.
 
There was no instance in which the social and kindly dispositions of the Typees
were more forcibly evinced than in the manner they conducted their great fishing
parties. Four times during my stay in the valley the
