On the 24th, we went to visit our friends at the Hippah or village on the point of the island near the ship’s station, who had come off to us on our first arrival in the bay. They received us with the utmost confidence and civility, shewing us every part of their habitations, which were commodious and neat. The island or rock on which this town is situated, is divided from the main by a breach or fissure so narrow, that a man might almost leap from one to the other: the sides of it are every where so steep as to render the artificial fortification of these people almost unnecessary: there was, however, one slight pallisade, and one small fighting-stage, towards that part of the rock where access was least difficult.

The people here brought us out several human bones, the flesh of which they had eaten, and offered them to sale; for the curiosity of those among us who had purchased them as memorials of the horrid practice which many, notwithstanding the reports of travellers, have professed not to believe, had rendered them a kind of article of trade. In one part of this village we observed, not without some surprize, a cross exactly like that of a crucifix; it was adorned with feathers, and upon our enquiring for what purpose it had been set up, we were told that it was a monument for a man who was dead: we had before understood that their dead were not buried, but thrown into the sea; but to our enquiry how the body of the man had been disposed of, to whose memory this cross had been erected, they refused to answer.

Voyaging Accounts