vealed in the shocking spectacle I had just witnessed. I longed
to have torn off the folds of cloth, and satisfied the awful doubts under
which I laboured. But before I had recovered from the consternation into
which I had been thrown, the fatal packages were hoisted aloft and once
more swung over my head. The natives now gathered round me tumultuously,
and laboured to convince me that what I had just seen were the heads of
three Happar warriors, who had been slain in battle. This glaring
falsehood added to my alarm, and it was not until I reflected that I had
observed the packages swinging from their elevation before Toby's
disappearance, that I could at all recover my composure.

But although this horrible apprehension had been dispelled, I had
discovered enough to fill me, in my present state of mind, with the most
bitter reflections. It was plain that I had seen the last relic of some
unfortunate wretch, who must have been massacred on the beach by the
savages, in one of those perilous trading adventures which I have before
described.

It was not, however, alone the murder of the stranger that overcame me
with gloom. I shuddered at the idea of the subsequent fate his inanimate
body might have met with. Was the same doom reserved for me? Was I
destined to perish like him--like him, perhaps, to be devoured, and my head
to be preserved as a fearful memento of the event? My imagination ran riot
in these horrid speculations, and I felt certain that the worst possible
evils would befall me. But whatever were my misgivings, I studiously
concealed them from the islanders, as well as the full extent of the
discovery I had made.

Although the assurances which the Typees had often given me, that they
never ate human flesh, had not convinced me that such was the case, yet,
having been so long a time in the valley without witnessing anything which
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 from the
second-hand evidence of Europeans, or else from the admissions of the
savages themselves, after they have in some degree become civilized. The