The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-07-06
Held in Abeyance.
DARK MEAT PREFERRED.
White Men in the Pacific Often Killed
 But Seldom Eaten.

It was only recently that news came out of the western Pacific of the killing of missionary on one of the Solomon Islands to be the funeral baked meat of cannibal feast
 Private advices from the official charged with the investigation of the murder comment upon the probability that the story had come out to civiliza- tion as tale of cannibalism The mis- sionary had been killed, the writer said, Tor tresspassng upon the sacred pre- cincts of one of the native secret socie- ties while their solemn mummery was in progress, due. warning of which had been given by the deep reverberation made by energetic swinging of the bull roarer
 But there was no evidence of any sort to offset the statement made by the murderers that they had not eaten the white man. Their statement found con firmation in the condition of such of the bones as were recovered, for each had been brought to a high polish and stained with tumeric to a brilliant yellow
 The charge of eating white men seems very hard to down. Even now, when ev- cry one should know better, it is by no means unusual to find the statement that the Hawaiians at Kealakekue ate Capt
 
 In the western Pacific. where cannibal- ism is constantly practiced, except under the immediate eye of white men, it is natural to be suspicious of practitioners of such gastronomy. Yet it is highly inn probable that a white man, who might be killed in the most jovial way by these lightsome savages would ever be eaten by them.
 Here is piece of testimony on the sub s1At lived for 30 years and more among these cannibals of the Pacific Herr Parkin- son. of the Bismarck Archipelago:
 During my long residence in these isl ands,' he writes, ..I have not yet been able to establish to my satisfaction a single case in which white men, though butchered, have actually been eaten by the Malanesians. The bodies of the mur. dered have often enough been dismem bered and single pieces sent to remote districts as in some sort trophies of the perpetration of the murder, but as to the eating of any of these portions no defi nite information can be had
 "It seems quite difficult to comprehend 1 why the cannibal who eats his own kind should reject the white man as an article | of food. Yet if we consider the senseless superstition of the Malanesian. which ir | my opinion has driven him to cannibal | ism, because through eating the bodies o1 ] the slain he expects to come into full enjoyment of all the powers of him wnc 1 is eaten thus does it become compre. hensible that he will not eat the body oi a white man whom he has killed because | of his belief that the spirit of the mur- | dered man will exert an influence over 1 him which he does not at all regard as | desirable.
 "The late King Goroi, of the Shorthand Islands, once told me in answer to my question the not particularly fatterins reason, Spirit belong all white man nc good. In general one receives the reply that the white man as meat does moi i taste good. This l hold to be a subter fuge under which the sly native hides his dread of the spirit of the slain"