A DALLIANCE on a PRIMEVAL ARCHIPELAGO

In a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though fewand simple, are spread over a great extent, and are unalloyed; butCivilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils inreserve;--the heart-burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries,the family dissentions, and the thousand self-inflicted discomforts ofrefined life, which make up in units the swelling aggregate of humanmisery, are unknown among these unsophisticated people.But it will be urged that these shocking unprincipled wretches arecannibals. Very true; and a rather bad trait in their character it mustbe allowed. But they are such only when they seek to gratify the passionof revenge upon their enemies; and I ask whether the mere eating ofhuman flesh so very far exceeds in barbarity that custom which onlya few years since was practised in enlightened England:--a convictedtraitor, perhaps a man found guilty of honesty, patriotism, and suchlikeheinous crimes, had his head lopped off with a huge axe, his bowelsdragged out and thrown into a fire; while his body, carved into fourquarters, was with his head exposed upon pikes, and permitted to rot andfester among the public haunts of men!The fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner ofdeath-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on ourwars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, areenough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized men as the mostferocious animal on the face of the earth.As soon as we succeeded in making the natives understand our intention,they broke out into the most vehement opposition to the measure, andfor a while I almost despaired of obtaining their consent. At the barethought of one of us leaving them, they manifested the most livelyconcern. The grief and consternation of Kory-Kory, in particular, wasunbounded; he threw himself into a perfect paroxysm of gestures whichwere intended to convey to us not only his abhorrence of Nukuhevaand its uncivilized inhabitants, but also his astonishment that afterbecoming acquainted with the enlightened Typees, we should evince theleast desire to withdraw, even for a time, from their agreeable society.