The constant pressure of population upon the limits of subsistence throughout Oceanica has occasioned a low valuation of human life.  Among natural peoples the helpless suffer first.  The native Hawaiians, though a good-natured folk, were relentless towards the aged, weak, sick, and insane.  These were frequently stoned to death or allowed to perish of hunger.[1017] In Fiji, the aged are treated with such contempt, that when decrepitude or illness threatens them, they beg their children to strangle them, unless the children anticipate the request.[1018] In Vate (or Efate) of the New Hebrides, old people are buried alive, and their passage to another world duly celebrated by a feast.[1019] However, in the Tonga Islands and in New Zealand, great respect and consideration are shown the aged as embodying experience.[1020] The harsher custom recalls an ancient law of Aegean Ceos, which, ordained that all persons over sixty years of age should be compelled to drink hemlock, in order that there might be sufficient food for the rest.[1021]

[Sidenote:  Cannibalism in islands.]

Many customs of Oceanica can be understood only in the light of the small value attached to human life in this island world.  The overpopulation which lies back of their colonization explains the human sacrifices in their religious orgies and funeral rites, as also the widespread practice of cannibalism.  This can be traced in vestigial forms, or as an occasional or habitual custom from one end of the Pacific to the other, from the Marquesas to New Guinea and from New Zealand to Hawaii.  All Melanesia is tainted with it, and Micronesia is not above suspicion.  The cause of this extensive practice, Stevenson attributes to the imminence of famine and the craving for flesh as food in these small islands, which are destitute of animals except fowls, dogs and hogs.  In times of scarcity cannibalism threatens all; it strikes from within or without the clan.[1022] Ratzel leans to the same opinion.[1023] Captain Cook thought the motive of a good full meal of human flesh was often back of the constant warfare in New Zealand, and was sometimes the only alternative of death by hunger.  Cannibalism was not habitual in the Tonga Islands, but became conspicuous during periods of famine.[1024] In far-away Tierra del Fuego, where a peculiarly harsh climate and the low cultural status of the natives combine to produce a frightful infant mortality and therefore to repress population, cannibalism within the clan is indulged in only at the imperious dictate of mid-winter hunger.  The same thing is true in the nearby Chonos Archipelago.[1025]

These are the darker effects of an island habitat, the vices of its virtues.  That same excessive pressure of population which gives rise to infanticide also stimulates agriculture, industry and trade; it develops ingenuity in making the most of local resources, and finally leads to that widespread emigration and colonization which has made islanders the great distributors of culture, from Easter Isle to Java and from ancient Crete to modern England.