The _Papuans_ were considered great adepts at cooking their fellow-men, and with them man-eating, plain, unmistakable and vile, existed up to a very late period. It is intimated that some of these natives have not yet lost their relish for human food. The Papuans who live inland are described as frightful and hideous in appearance, making themselves more so by the peculiar manner of arranging their hair, which they form into enormous bunches. This startling head gear is about three feet in circumference, and adorned with the feathers of birds. New Guinea contains several varieties of the Papuan race. The black men of the south-east coast, from Cape Valsche to Cape Possession are different from the Arfaks inhabiting the mountainous northwest coast inland. The inhabitants of the Isle of Pines, on the south of New Caledonia, where the sea abounds with coral reefs, are also known to have been tinctured with a gastronomic liking for their own species. Among the New Caledonians the priests claimed the hands of the slain as their special perquisites; and as those parts of the human body are said by anthropophagous connoisseurs to be the best, war was frequently fermented by the priests, in order that their larders might be the more abundantly supplied. D’Entrecasteaux thus recounts the skill displayed by the women in their methods of serving up the human body for food: “Sometimes it was placed before their lords and masters completely roasted but in a sitting posture, fully equipped in war costume, to represent the pièce de résistance; then again it would be served up as a side dish, skillfully cut in slices to tempt the appetite.” He states also that on their arrival the natives felt the calves and brawny arms of his men, and manifested much pleasure at the prospect of a feast, which might possibly be in store for them. This race did not confine itself to bipedal diet, perhaps for the reason that the supply was not equal to the demand; but like many other of the Oceanic people depended for the main portion of their sustenance on cocoa-nuts, roots, shell-fish, spiders, etc. When all other things failed they have been known to stay the pangs of hunger by filling their insatiable stomachs with clay, which though it affords no nutriment, yet for a time allays the cravings of the appetite.