since; but as some part of his cloaths were found which were
bloody, and had been pierced by a spear, it was concluded he had
been killed. A short time after this accident, a report
prevailed, that part of the bones of a man had been found near a
fire by which a party of the natives had been regaling
themselves; this report gave rise to a conjecture, that as this
man had been killed near this place, the people who had committed
the murder had certainly ate him.

Whether any of the natives of this country are cannibals is
yet a matter on which we cannot speak positively; but the murder
of two other men, as related immediately after this, seems to
contradict the conjecture that they are cannibals, as the men
were left on the spot where they were killed: however, the
following circumstance may, in some degree, incline us to
believe, that although the natives in general do not eat human
flesh, yet that that horrid custom is sometimes practised. I was
one day present when two native children were interrogated on the
subject of the quarrels of their countrymen; they were
particularly asked, what the different chiefs did with those they
killed; they mentioned some who burnt and buried the slain, but
they also particularly named one who ate those he killed.

Some short time after the before-mentioned accident happened,
two convicts who had been employed at a little distance up the
harbour, in cutting rushes for thatching, were found murdered by
the natives. It has been strongly suspected that these people had
engaged in some dispute or quarrel with them, and as they had
hatchets and bill-hooks with them, it is believed they might have
been rash enough to use violence with some of the natives, who