anthropophagi

Updated: June 2, 2025

The ouvriers libres deserted and fled in all directions, for fear of being "put in a cannibal pot" and being eaten by the white anthropophagi. The history of missionary enterprise in the Congo regions is not less interesting than the slave-trade.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2

It always puts me in mind of Shakespeare's magniloquence concerning "the Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, of antres vast and deserts idle," when he exhibited his learning in language which no one, however, can imitate, and which he makes the lady seriously incline and listen to, simply because she did not understand a word that was said.

Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle - Canada and the Canadians: Volume I

And further, it seemeth very likely that the inhabitants of the most part of those countries, by which they must have come any other way besides by the north-west, being for the most part anthropophagi, or men-eaters, would have devoured them, slain them, or, at the leastwise, kept them as wonders for the gaze.

Richard Hakluyt - Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage

"The anthropophagi and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders" that is presented to our imagination; and sometimes we are informed of the visions beheld by the temporarily disembodied spirits of trance mediums, or other modern thaumaturgists, flitting about among the planets.

Garrett Putman Serviss - Other Worlds: Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries

His eye, wearied with the continual confinement and want of distance, longed for the boundless expanse of the desert, for the jagged outlines of those far-off hills, which he had watched from boyhood rising mysteriously at morn out of the eastern sky, and melting mysteriously into it again at even, beyond which dwelt a whole world of wonders, elephants and dragons, satyrs and anthropophagi, ay, and the phoenix itself.

Charles Kingsley - Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face

'Tis hodie mihi, cras tibi: there are some Anthropophagi who devour dozens of us, the old, the young, the tender, the tough, the plump, the lean, the ugly, the beautiful: there's no escape, and one after another, as our fate is, we disappear down their omnivorous maws. Look at Lady Ogresham!

William Makepeace Thackeray - The Virginians

It has been told us by many that the Eboe people are confirmed anthropophagi; and this opinion is more prevalent among the tribes bordering on that kingdom, than with the natives of more remote districts." From what the travellers could learn, it was pretty certain that Obie would not let them go without exacting a considerable ransom.

Jules Verne - Celebrated Travels and Travellers: Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century

There is a dim remembrance of these monstrosities in Shakespeare's reference to "The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders." In the mythical travels of Sir John Maundeville there are illustrations of these curious beings, one of which is here reproduced. Other tracts of country were supposed to be inhabited by equally monstrous animals.

Joseph Jacobs - The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known

That old Johannes Maartens, with no hint of romance in that stolid face and grizzly square head of his, sought the islands of Solomon, the mines of Golconda ay, he sought old lost Atlantis which he hoped to find still afloat unscuppered. And he found head-hunting, tree-dwelling anthropophagi instead.

Jack London - The Jacket (Star-Rover)

It is obvious he could not have done so by the channel of the Nile, for the Anthropophagi barred all communication in that direction.

John Hanning Speke - What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile