South Africa, says — but, as we deem it, rather reluctantly — that the Bechanan negroes are sometimes cannibals. — Page 56.
That this trait of negro depravity and appetite was as much in vogue among them in the country of old Canaan, even prior to the time of Moses, and the conquest of those nations by the Hebrews, as it was in ancient Africa, or any of the adjacent islands at any time, appears from some remarks in the writings ascribed to Solomon, on this very subject. It is said of Solomon, in the Scriptures, that he was a wise man, and, of necessity, a well read man, or he could not have been wise. Solomon was, no doubt, acquainted with the history and manners of the ancient nations of the country over which he reigned, and who, in part, had been conquered by his own arms. He had access to the writings of all former ages, even those of Noah and Melchisedek, as well as of the other patriarchs. On these accounts, we may rely upon what he has said on the subject of negro cannibalism in the book of Wisdom, as set forth in the Apocrypha, chap. xii, as follows: "For it was thy will (O Lord) to destroy, by the hands of our fathers [the Hebrews], both those old inhabitants of thy holy land [Canaan], whom thou hatest, for doing most odious works of witchcrafts and wicked sacrifices, and also those merciless murderers of children, and devourers of man's flesh, and the feasts of blood, with their priests, out of the midst of their idolatrous crew, and the parents that killed, with their own hands, babes destitute of help."
Respecting these ancient nations of Canaan, the
