On the eastern parts of the continent there are two
cannibal tribes, the Wadoe and the Wabembe; and it is curious to
find the former occupying the position assigned by Ptolemy (iv.
8) to his anthropophagi of the Barbaricus Sinus: according to
their own account, however, the practice is modern. When weakened
by the attacks of their Wakamba neighbours, they began to roast
and eat slices from the bodies of the slain in presence of the
foe. The latter, as often happens amongst barbarians, and even
amongst civilized men, could dare to die, but were unable to face
the horrors of becoming food after death: the great Cortez knew
this feeling when he made his soldiers pretend anthropophagy.
Many of the Wadoe negroids are tall, well made, and light
complexioned, though inhabiting the low and humid coast regions--
a proof, if any were wanted, that there is nothing unwholesome in
man's flesh. Some of our old accounts of shipwrecked seamen,
driven to the dire necessity of eating one another, insinuate
that the impious food causes raging insanity. The Wabembe tribe,
occupying a strip of land on the western shore of the Tanganyika
Lake, are "Menschenfresser," as they were rightly called by the
authors of the "Mombas Mission Map.
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