As the Fijians set such a value on human flesh, it is to be expected that they will invent a variety of excuses for obtaining it. For example when a chief builds a house, he kills at least one human victim to celebrate the event. If he builds a large war canoe, a series of sacrifices takes place. A man is killed, for example, when the keel is laid, and, if the chief be a very powerful one, he will kill a victim as each plank is fixed in its place. Even when it is finished the slaughter is not over, as, in the first place, the planks of the new vessel have to be washed with human blood, and, in the next, the launch must be commemorated in the same way as the building. One chief gained some notoriety by binding a number of men, and laying them side by side along the shore to act as rollers over which the canoe was taken from the land into the sea. The weight of the canoe killed the men, who were afterward baked and eaten. Even after the canoe is launched, excuses are found for carrying on the system of human butchery. Whenever it touches at a place for the first time, a man must be sacrificed in honor of taking down the mast, this being done to show that the vessel means to make some stay at the place. If a chief should arrive in a new canoe, and keep up his mast, the people understand the signal, and bring on board a newly-slain victim, so that the mast may be taken down. On one occasion, when a war canoe had been built at Somo-somo, the missionaries exerted themselves so successfully that the canoe was launched without the sacrifice of a single life. Eventually, however, their well-intentioned interference rather increased than diminished the number of victims. When the canoe arrived at Mbau, the chiefs were so vexed that it had reached them unhonored by human blood that they straightway attacked a village, killed some fourteen or fifteen men, and ate them in order to do honor to the ceremony of taking down the mast. Sometimes, in order to secure a victim whenever one is wanted, the chiefs pick out secretly a certain number of men, and put them, so to speak, on the black list. Whenever a sacrifice is needed, all the executioners have to do is to find out how many victims are wanted, and then to go and kill the requisite number of the black-list men. Whole towns are sometimes put on the black list, a curious example of which custom is given by Mr. Williams. “Vakambua, chief of Mbau, thus doomed Tavua, and gave a whale’s tooth to a Nggara chief, that he might at a fitting time punish that place. Years passed away, and a reconciliation took place between Mbau and Tavua, but, unhappily, the Mbau chief failed to neutralize the engagement made with the Nggara. A day came when human bodies were wanted, and the thoughts of those who held the tooth were turned toward Tavua. They invited the people of that place to a friendly exchange of food, and slew twenty-three of their unsuspecting victims.