in every way they can to satisfy your needs. Do you wish to hunt? A
native is ever ready to show you the marsh where ducks most abound. Are
you hungry or thirsty? They fly to the cocoanut plantation with the
agility of monkeys. If a swamp or a brook stops your course, the
shoulders of the first comer are ever ready to carry you across. If it
rains, they run to bring banana-leaves or make you a shelter of bark.
When night comes they light your way with resinous torches, and finally,
when you leave them, you read in their faces signs of sincere regret."

Captain Cook, in his eulogies of these gentle savages, probably never
dreamed that they were anthropophagi, and if he had known the fact, his
kindly nature would have found some extenuation for them. Cannibals, as
a rule--certainly those of New Caledonia--do not eat each other
indiscriminately. For example, they dispose of their dead with tender
care, though they despatch with their clubs even their best friends when
dying; but this is with them a religious duty. They only eat their
enemies when they have killed them in battle. This also, in their code
of morals, appears to be a duty. Toussenel, in his _Zoölogie
Passionelle_, has a kind word even for these savages: "Let us pity
the cannibal, and not blame him too severely. We who boast of our
refined Christian civilization murder men by tens of thousands from
motives less excusable than hunger. The crime lies not in roasting our
dead enemy, but in killing him when he wishes to live."

During M. Garnier's expedition he met the chief Onime, once the head of
a powerful tribe, now old and dispossessed of his power through the
revolt of his tribe some years previous. At that time a price had been
put upon his head, and he took refuge in the mountains. There was no
sign of discouragement or cruelty in his manners, but his face expressed
a bitter and profound sorrow. There was not a pig or a chicken on his