But it seems clear that in the majority of cases, anthropophagy originates in a
constant scarcity of food, and in the lack of cattle and game; though in some it
may be true that the cannibals are attracted by the delicious savour of human
flesh, which they prefer to every other. Maury asserts that among the Cobens of
the Uaupis, man is regarded as a species of game, and that they declare war
against the neighbouring tribes solely for the purpose of procuring a supply of
human flesh. When they obtain more than they require for their present need,
they dry it and smoke it, and store it away for future use.
In Africa, Captain Richard Burton discovered, on the shores of Lake
Tangauyika, a cannibal people, named the Worabunbosi, who fed upon carrion,
vermin, larvæ, and insects, and even carried their brutality to such an extent as to
eat raw and putrid human flesh. Although you may see on every countenance,
says this enterprising traveller,[57] the expression of chronic hunger, the poor
wretched, timid, stunted, degraded, foul, seem far more dangerous enemies to
the dead than to the living.
We are speaking however of a barbarous custom which, from whatever cause it
may have arisen, is rapidly dying out. Owing to the constant advance of the
wave of civilisation, and to the vigorous efforts of our missionaries, the practice
of cannibalism, against which our better nature instinctively rebels, is decaying
even in the darkest and remotest regions of the globe. In Polynesia, for instance,
as in New Zealand, it is almost extinct. And if we owed no other service to the
heroic Soldiers of the Cross, this result would of itself entitle them to our
gratitude, the extermination of Anthropophagy being the first step towards
teaching man to reverence humanity.