More strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism,nothing so surely unmortars a society;nothing,we might plausibly argue,will so harden and degrade the minds of those that practise it.
And yet we ourselves make much the same appearance in the eyes of the Buddhist and the vegetarian.We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites,passions,and organs with ourselves;we feed on babes,though not our own;and the slaughter-house resounds daily with screams of pain and fear.We distinguish,indeed;but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog,an animal with whom we live on terms of the next intimacy,shows how precariously the distinction is grounded.The pig is the main element of animal food among the islands;and I had many occasions,my mind being quickened by my cannibal surroundings,to observe his character and the manner of his death.Many islanders live with their pigs as we do with our dogs;both crowd around the hearth with equal freedom;and the island pig is a fellow of activity,enterprise,and sense.He husks his own cocoa-nuts,and (I am told)rolls them into the sun to burst;he is the terror of the shepherd.Mrs.Stevenson,senior,has seen one fleeing to the woods with a lamb in his mouth;and I saw another come rapidly (and erroneously)to the conclusion that the CASCO was going down,and swim through the flush water to the rail in search of an escape.
It was told us in childhood that pigs cannot swim;I have known one to leap overboard,swim five hundred yards to shore,and return to the house of his original owner.I was once,at Tautira,a pig-master on a considerable scale;at first,in my pen,the utmost good feeling prevailed;a little sow with a belly-ache came and appealed to us for help in the manner of a child;and there was one shapely black boar,whom we called Catholicus,for he was a particular present from the Catholics of the village,and who early displayed the marks of courage and friendliness;no other animal,whether dog or pig,was suffered to approach him at his food,and for human beings he showed a full measure of that toadying fondness so common in the lower animals,and possibly their chief title to the name.One day,on visiting my piggery,I was amazed to see Catholicus draw back from my approach with cries of terror;and if I was amazed at the change,I was truly embarrassed when I learnt its reason.One of the pigs had been that morning killed;Catholicus had seen the murder,he had discovered he was dwelling in the shambles,and from that time his confidence and his delight in life were ended.We still reserved him a long while,but he could not endure the sight of any two-legged creature,nor could we,under the circumstances,encounter his eye without confusion.