r children either strangle them or bury them alive. Bent tells
me that human sacrifices are often made to their gods, when the priests
and chiefs feast on the victims. We see many people with fingers cut
off, and we hear that they have been devoted as offerings to their
chiefs who have died, or may only have been ill. No crime is more
common than that of killing children, especially girls, indeed, it is
remarkable that these people do not seem at all sensible that they are
committing crimes. At all events they glory in their shame.

I might note down many more things we see and hear during our stay in
this group, but I feel sick at heart as I write and think of all that is
told me; and every day, as I tread these blood-stained shores, the very
air seems polluted, and the shrieks of the wretched victims of their
fellows cruelty, ring in my ears. Wars seem never to cease among them.
One tribe is always attacking another, and those inhabiting islands
within two or three miles of each other cannot live at peace. The
desire to retaliate is the great cause of all their quarrels. If a man
is killed by those of another tribe, his friends are not content till
they have killed some of that tribe; then the people of that tribe do
not rest till they have avenged the death of their relations; and so it
goes on, each murder producing another, till there is not a man among
all their tribes who does not feel that there are numbers ready to take
his life, while he is also on the watch to kill certain people with whom
he is at feud.

Of another thing I hear, which, had I not seen so many horrible things
they do, I could scarcely credit. If the people of a small island
offend a chief, he does not kill them at once, but he takes away all
their canoes, so that they cannot escape. Then, whenever he wants
victims to offer in his temples, or to feast any friendly chief who may
visit him unexpectedly, he sends and brings off one or more families, or
parts of families, from the doomed island. No one knows who will be
next taken, but they live on with the full consciousness of what their
fate will be. They see their relatives and friends taken and carried
off to be baked, and they know that, perhaps, their turn may come next.
Bent was some time among them, protected by one of their chiefs, to whom
he made himself useful, yet he says that he never felt sure of his life
an hour together; and whenever he saw the chief handling his club, h