The experience of Captain Marion, a French officer who visited New Zealand June, 1772, with a party of sixteen men and four lieutenants, confirms beyond all question the truthfulness of the statement, that the natives in former times were strongly addicted to this repugnant habit; for no sooner had the Frenchmen landed than they were attacked, murdered and soon after eaten. Next morning when another boat’s crew went ashore, a great swarm of these savages immediately surrounded them, captured and put to death no less than eleven of the twelve constituting the party. The survivor witnessed the dead bodies of his companions cut up and divided among the actors in the scene, each of whom having eaten what he needed, carried away such portions as were left, to be consumed by his absent friends. A similar misfortune overtook Captain Furneaux of the ship Adventure in the year 1773, on Cook’s second voyage. The record is that a boat was sent to the land under the care of a midshipman and a crew consisting of ten men, all of whom were killed and eaten. Hawkesworth verifies the accounts made by other writers, and declares unequivocally that the New Zealanders ate the bodies of their enemies; but he remarks apologetically that their cannibalism originated from an irresistible necessity, occasioned by the pangs of hunger rather than from any natural desire for this form of food. _Kotzebue_, in 1824, directed his course for the _Navigators’ Islands_, and on the second day of April observed the most easterly of the number rising like a high mountain from the ocean. His testimony concerning these people is, that “the inhabitants are the most ferocious people to be met with in the South Sea.” He visited also the scene where De Langle and his comrades fell, now known as Massacre Bay. On the arrival of his ship “La Perouse” it was surrounded by several hundred canoes filled with furious savages, who evidently were disposed to take the vessel by violence. To prevent any assault, however, the sailors were placed at proper stations, fully armed, and with orders to check any attempt at advance. Even with this precaution and in defiance of repeated blows, some of the more resolute succeeded in clambering aboard. Impelled by that covetous emotion which no savage has ever been able to repress, every object within their reach was grasped with both hands, and they held to it so pertinaciously as to require the united efforts of the strongest seamen to remove their grip and throw them overboard. A few who were permitted to remain on deck behaved like wild beasts of the desert, and showed in their movements the most disgusting propensities. Indeed one of them was so much tempted by the accidental display of a young sailor’s bare arm, that unable to control his horrible appetite, he snapped at the same with his teeth, indicating by the most unequivocal signs, that such food was to him both acceptable and palatable. Kotzebue, after other references to the existence of