detected in familiarity with my wife.  He was condemned, and I stayed to eat share of him; the ceremony took us up three days, and it was only last night that we finished him.”  Mr. Miller was present at this conversation, and the man spoke with perfect seriousness.  A native of the island of Nias, who had stabbed a Batta man in a fit of frenzy at Batang-tara river, near Tappanuli bay, and endeavoured to make his escape, was, upon the alarm being given, seized at six in the morning, and before eleven, without any judicial process, was tied to a stake, cut in pieces with the utmost eagerness while yet alive, and eaten upon the spot, partly broiled, but mostly raw.  His head was buried under that of the man whom he had murdered.  This happened in December 1780, when Mr. William Smith had charge of the settlement.  A raja was fined by Mr. Bradley for having caused a prisoner to be eaten at a place too close to the Company’s settlement, and it should have been remarked that these feasts are never suffered to take place withinside their own kampongs.  Mr. Alexander Hall made a charge in his public accounts of a sum paid to a raja as an inducement to him to spare a man whom he had seen preparing for a victim:  and it is in fact this commendable discouragement of the practice by our government that occasions its being so rare a sight to Europeans, in a country where there are no travellers from curiosity, and where the servants of the Company, having appearances to maintain, cannot by their presence as idle spectators give a sanction to proceedings which it is their duty to discourage, although their influence is not sufficient to prevent them.

A Batta chief, named raja Niabin, in the year 1775 surprised a neighbouring kampong with which he was at enmity, killed the raja by stealth, carried off the body, and ate it.  The injured family complained to Mr. Nairne, the English chief of Natal, and prayed for redress.  He sent a message on the subject to Niabin, who returned an insolent and threatening answer.  Mr. Nairne, influenced by his feelings rather than his judgment (for these people were quite removed from the Company’s control, and our interference in their quarrels was not necessary) marched with a party of fifty or sixty men, of whom twelve were Europeans, to chastise him; but on approaching the village they found it so perfectly enclosed with growing bamboos, within which was a strong paling, that they could not even see the place or an enemy.

DEATH OF MR. NAIRNE.

As they advanced however to examine the defences a shot from an unseen person struck Mr. Nairne in the breast, and he expired immediately.  In him was lost a respectable gentleman of great scientific acquirements, and a valuable servant of the Company.  It was with much difficulty that the party was enabled to save the body.  A caffree and a Malay who fell in the struggle were afterwards eaten.  Thus the experience of later days is found to agree with the uniform testimony of old writers; and although I am aware that each and every of these proofs taken singly may admit of some cavil, yet in the aggregate they will be thought to amount to satisfactory evidence that human flesh is habitually eaten by a certain class of the inhabitants of Sumatra.