Forgotten Books: "Among Cannibals" from the Norwegian explorer Carl Lumholtz

One of the drawings of the book. The old women saving a fallen warrior from certain death.
One of the drawings of the book. The old women saving a fallen warrior from certain death. 

Carl Lumholtz got what he wanted: 4 years living in the wilderness of the northern Australia of the 1880s. 

This was a wild experience for the explorer and scientist of the Royal Society of Sciences of Norway, but he managed to live "in huts with natives of Australia who never come into contact with the white man."

In Queensland, he saw hunts of kangaroos and wallabies with spears and nets and also skirmishes between native groups. 

He wrote detailed descriptions of boomerangs - did you know that all were not curved? - and the warlike "nolla-nollas", the clubs used by hunter-warriors.

Sometimes the drama gets high in the narrative:

Suddenly an old man uttered a terrible war-cry, and swung his bundle of spears over his head.

But Lumholtz says that there were few deaths because elder women rescued the fallen ones - the defeated warriors usually lost their wives. 

On the part of cannibalism, Lumholtz wrote:

The greatest delicacy known to the Australian native is human flesh. The very thought of talgoro makes his eye sparkle.

Eventually, Carl Lumholtz ended in danger after the betrayals of some guides and left. 

The book is available in Amazon - the link is affiliate. Remember that Lumholtz's expedition happened in 1880 and Among Cannibals was published in 1889, so take the language in the context of those times.  

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