“Unblest the man, whom music wins to stay Nigh the cursed shore, and listen to the lay. No more that wretch shall view the joys of life, His blooming offspring, or his beaut’ous wife! In verdant meads they sport; and wide around Lie human bones that whiten all the ground: The ground polluted floats with human gore, And human carnage taints the dreadful shore. Fly swift the dangerous coast; let every ear Be stopped against the song! ’tis death to hear! Firm to the mast with chains thyself be bound, Nor trust thy virtue to the enchanting sound.” Continuing his journey, Ulysses and his men reach the whirlpools in which _Scylla_ and _Charybdis_ lurked, and their experience here is thus given in the Odyssey: “Now, through the rocks, appall’d with deep dismay, We bend our course, and stem the desperate way; Dire Scylla there a scene of horror forms, And here Charybdis fills the deep with storms. The rock re-bellows with a thundering sound; Deep, wondrous deep, below appears the ground. Struck with despair, with trembling hearts we view’d The yawning dungeon, and the tumbling flood; When lo! fierce Scylla stoop’d to seize her prey, Stretch’d her dire jaws and swept six men away, Chiefs of renown! loud echoing shrieks arise: I turn, and view them quivering in the skies; They call, and aid with outstretch’d arms implore: In vain they call! those arms are stretched no more. In the wide dungeon she devours her food, And the flesh trembles while she churns the blood.” It would appear that even the old cynic philosopher _Diogenes_ was somewhat given, theoretically at least, to anthropophagy, for we read of him as saying that the flesh of man was good, and might as well be an article of food as the flesh of any of the lower animals. Whether this remarkable sage ever put his theory to the test is not known, for no such confession appears among his precepts or teachings. Referring now to accounts far less legendary, it is safe to admit that beyond all successful dispute man’s earliest home was in Asia. History plainly points to this land as the cradle of the human family. In looking over this vast continent, among the earliest people who practiced cannibalism were the Chinese. Their mode of preparing a human body previous to eating the same was as repulsive as any of the peoples who never rose to the dignity of an organized government. Having previously boiled the parts designed to be consumed, especially the heart, they made soup of the same and partook of it with no little relish. This was called by them drinking the heart’s blood of the enemy, and favored perhaps as much of bravado as a desire to satisfy appetite.