 indicated the
existence of the practice, I began to hope that it was an event of very rare
occurrence, and that I should be spared the horror of witnessing it during my
stay among them: but, alas! these hopes were soon destroyed.
    It is a singular fact, that in all our accounts of cannibal tribes we have
seldom received the testimony of an eye-witness to the revolting practice. The
horrible conclusion has almost always been derived either from the secondhand
evidence of Europeans, or else from the admissions of the savages themselves,
after they have in some degree become civilised. The Polynesians are aware of
the detestation in which Europeans hold this custom, and therefore invariably
deny its existence, and, with the craft peculiar to savages, endeavour to
conceal every trace of it.
    The excessive unwillingness betrayed by the Sandwich islanders, even at the
present day, to allude to the unhappy fate of Cook, has often been remarked. And
so well have they succeeded in covering that event with mystery, that to this
very hour, despite all that has been said and written on the subject, it still
remains doubtful whether they wreaked upon his murdered body the vengeance they
sometimes inflicted upon their enemies.
    At Karakikova, the scene of that tragedy, a strip of ship's copper nailed
against an upright post in the ground used to inform the traveller that beneath
reposed the remains of the great circumnavigator. But I am strongly inclined to
believe not only that the corpse was refused Christian burial, but that the
heart which was brought to Vancouver some time after the event, and which the
Hawaiians stoutly maintained was that of Captain Cook, was no such thing; and
that the whole affair was a piece of imposture which was sought to be palmed off
upon the credulous Englishman.
    A few years since there was living on the island of Mowee (one of the
Sandwich group) an old chief, who, actuated by a morbid desire for notoriety,
gave himself out among the foreign residents of the place as the living tomb of
Captain Cook's big toe! - affirming that at the cannibal entertainment which
ensued after the lamented Briton's death, that particular portion of his body
had fallen to his share. His indignant countrymen actually caused him to be
prosecuted in the native courts, on a charge nearly equivalent to what we term
defamation of character; but the old fellow persisting in his assertion, and no
invalidating proof being adduced, the plaintiffs were cast in the suit, and the
cannibal reputation of the defendant fully established. This result was the
making of his fortune; ever afterwards he was in
