"staff of life," but all kinds of animal food are eagerly devoured;
and pedlars offering for sale rats, cats, and dogs, may be seen in the
streets of Chinese towns. It is uncertain whether a depraved taste or
lack of superior animal food, induces a really civilized people to
devour such flesh. Weak tea, without sugar, or milk, is the common
beverage of the Chinese; in the use of ardent spirits they are
moderate. The _Peguese_, worshipping crocodiles, will drink no water
but from the ditches wherein those creatures abound, and consequently
are frequently devoured by them. The _Siamese_, besides a variety of
superior food, eat rats, lizards, and some kinds of insects. The
_Battas_ of Sumatra, prefer _human flesh_ to all other, and speak with
rapture of the soles of the feet and palms of the hands. Warm water is
the usual beverage of the _Manilla_ islanders. The _Japanese_, amongst
other things, drink a kind of beer distilled from rice, and called
_sacki_; it is kept constantly warm, and drunk after every morsel they
eat. Cocoa-nut milk and water, is the common beverage of the natives
of the _New Hebrides_. In _New Caledonia_ so great is the scarcity of
food, that the natives make constant war for the sake of eating their
prisoners, and sometimes, to assuage the cravings of hunger, they bind
ligatures tightly round their bodies and swallow oleaginous earth. The
_New Zealanders_ are cannibals sometimes in a dearth, and to gratify a
spirit of vengeance against their enemies. The _New Hollanders_, near
the sea, subsist on fish eaten raw, or nearly so; should a whale be
cast ashore, it is never abandoned until its bones are picked; their
substitute for bread, and that which forms their chief subsistence, is
a species of fern roasted, pounded between stones, and mixed with
fish. The general beverage of the negro tribes is palm-wine. No
disgust is evinced by the _Bosjesman Hottentots_ at the most nauseous
food, and having shot an animal with a poisoned arrow, their only
precaution, previous to tearing it in pieces and devouring it raw, is