The Original Caribs

1902

Very mysterious is the origin of the fierce savage, now almost extinct, who were in possession of the Caribs, the smaller West Indian islands, when the white man discovered them.

They showed a distinct Mongolian character and it would be hard to distinguish a Carib infant from a Chinese child. Twenty years ago a Chinaman who had drifted to Dominica declared the Caribs to be his own people and married a pure-bred Carib woman. The resultant child showed no deviation from the native type.

The Caribs have dropped their man-eating ways; but in the sixteenth century they scoured the Spanish main in search of human food and from Porto Rico alone are said to have taken more than 5,000 men to be eaten. Though Spaniards, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, negroes or Arrowaks were all meat to them, the Caribs seem to have shown an interesting preference for certain nationalities. Davis says in his "History of the Caribby Isands," that "the Caribbeans have tasted of all the nations that frequented them, and affirm that the French are the most delicate and the Spaniards are hardest of digestion."

Laborde in one of his jaunts in St. Vincent overtook on the road a communicative Carib who was beguiling the tedium of his journey by gnawing at the remains of a boiled human foot. This man ate Arrowaks only. "Christians," he said, "gave him indigestion."

Joke Is Played on Peddler

1915

Victim Makes Queer Discovery Next Morning

A peddler arrived one evening at a small town and went to the only hotel there. Every room had already been engaged, but the hotel-keeper offered him a room which he could share with a negro. The peddler agreed, and asked to be awakened early the next morning.

Several jokers overheard the proceedings, and while the peddler slept blackened his face.

The next morning, being in a hurry to catch a train he made straight for the station when he was awakened. While passing the mirror in the waiting-room he stopped suddenly and exclaimed: "Hang it all! They've called the wrong guy!"


True to the Last

"Yes," said the traveler, "my wife's mother was the most admirable housekeeper that ever lived. Poor soul, she was eaten by cannibals in Africa."
"You don't mean it!"
"Alas! it's true. Why, when the savages had thrust her into the cauldron and she was beginning to cook, she cried out faintly with her last breath, 'Don't forget the salt and pepper.'"


Can't Look the Part Now

"John, dear," said his wife, "there was a poor man here today asking for old clothes and I gave him that shabby old overcoat of yours that was hanging in the attic. You didn't want it, did you?"
"Of course I wanted it!" exclaimed John wrathfully. "That's the one I always wear when I swear off my taxes."


About Five

[From the Pea Ridge (Ark.) Pod]

Mr. French who lived one mile south of town died Tuesday, of last week, and was buried at Siloam Springs, Wednesday. He leaves a wife and about five children to mourn his death.


Detects Smokeless Powder

United States naval officers have developed a colored glass which renders visible the fumes from smokeless powder.

Henry M. Stanley's Graphic Story Against Africans, Cannibals, In Battle

1878

Stanley's Graphic Story

Incidents of His March across the Continent — Fighting with Cannibals — A Monster Canoe — A Temple of Ivory

Henry M. Stanley continues his graphic story of African exploration in a letter to the New York Herald. We give the most interesting incidents: On January 4, 1877, we came to the first of what proved a series of cataracts, or, to use a more correct term, falls, below the confluence of the Lumami, and the Lualaba, or the Lowa, as the river was now called. Our troubles began now in earnest. We were hunted like game. Night and day every nerve was strained to defend ourselves. Four times on January 4 we broke through the lines of canoes brought out against us, and finally we were halted by the Baswa Falls. The savages seemed to think that we had no resource left but to surrender and be eaten at their leisure.

Again and again were we compelled to repulse the furious charges that they made to drive us over the falls. The people of the Falls Islands also came up to assist the cannibals of Mwana Ntaba. We were at bay, and became desperate. Return we could not, as we could not pull against stream and fight. We pulled ashore first on the right bank, then across river to the left, and made a camp in the woods, drawing our canoes and boat up after us. After constructing a fence of brush around on the forest side the best sharpshooters were placed in position for defence. After a short time the natives retired and left us to rest.

For the ensuing twenty-four days we had fearful work, constructing camps by night along the line marked out during the day, cutting roads from above to below each fall, dragging our heavy canoes during the day, while the most active of the young men — the boat's crew — repulsed the savages and foraged for food. On January 27 we had passed in this desperate way forty-two geographical miles, by six falls, and to effect it had dragged our canoes a distance of thirteen miles by land and by roads which we had cut through the forest. Our provisions in the meantime we had to procure as we best could. When we had cleared the last fall, we halted two days for rest, which we all very much needed. In the passage of these falls we lost five men only.

After passing this series of falls we entered upon different scenes. The river was gradually widening from the usual 1,500 to 2,000 yards breadth to two and there miles. It then began to receive grander affluents, and soon assumed a lacustrine breadth from four to ten miles. Islands also were so numerous that once a day were we able to obtain a glimpse of the opposite bank. We had reached the great basin lying between the maritime and lake regions.

The first day we entered this region we were attacked three times by three separate tribes; the second day we maintained a running fight almost the entire day, which culminated in a grand naval fight at the confluence of the Aruwimi — the Welle (?) — with the Lualaba. As we crossed over from the current of the Lualaba to that of the Aruwimi, and had taken a glance at the breadth of the magnificent affluent, we were quite taken aback at the grand preparations for our reception. Fifty-four canoes rushing down on us with such fury that I saw I must act at once if I wished to save the expedition. Four of our canoes, in a desperate fright, became panic stricken and began to pull fast down stream, but hey were soon brought back.

We dropped our stone anchors, formed a close line and calmly waited events. Down the natives came, fast and furious but in magnificent style. Everything about them was superb. Their canoes were enormous things, one especially, a monster, eighty paddlers, forty on a side, with paddles eight feet long, spear-pointed, and really pointed with iron blades for close quarters, I presume. The top of each paddle shaft was adorned with ivory balls. The chiefs pranced up and down a planking that ran from stem to stem. On a platform near the bow were ten choice young fellows swaying their long spears ready. At the stern of this great war canoe stood eight steersmen, guiding her toward us. There were about twenty — three-fourths of her size — also fine looking, but none made such an imposing show. At a rough guess there must have been from fifteen hundred to two thousand savages within these fifty-four canoes.

I cannot think that these belonged to one power. I imagine that it was a pre-concerted arrangement with neighboring tribes, got up especially for our entertainment. We had no time even to breathe a short prayer or to think of indulging in a sentimental farewell to the murderous cannibalistic world in which we found ourselves. The enemy, in full confidence of victory, was on us, and the big monster as it shot past us launched a spear — the first. We waited no longer; they came to fight. The cruel faces, the loudly triumphant drums, the deafening horns, the launched spears, swaying bodies, all proved it; and every gun in our little fleet angrily gave response to our foes. We were in a second almost surrounded, and clouds of spears hurtled and hissed for a short time — say, ten minutes. They then gave way, and we lifted our anchors and charged them, following them with fatal result. We were carried away with our feelings. We followed them to the shore, chased them on land into their villages, ten or twelve of them, and, after securing some of the abundance of food we found there, I sounded the recall.

To the victors belong the spoil — at least so thought my people — and the amount of ivory they discovered lying useless about astonished me. There was an ivory "temple," a structure of solid tusks surrounding an idol; ivory logs, which, by the marks of hatchets visible on them, they must have used to chop wood upon; ivory war horns, some of them three feet long; ivory mallets, ivory wedges to split wood, ivory pestles to grind their cassava, and before the chief's house was a veranda, or burzah, the posts of which were long tusks of ivory. There were 133 pieces of ivory, which, according to rough calculation, would realize, or ought to realize, about $10,000. These, I told the men, they must consider as their prize money. In this fight we only lost one man.

She's Worth $1,000 a Pound

1909

She's Worth $1,000 a Lb.

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Because she was jilted and lost twenty-five pounds weight in consequence, Miss Luella Lowstetter wants $25,000 damages — $1,000 for each pound lost. She is a school teacher of the fashionable suburb of Sheraden. Her suit is against Prof. Earl W. Reed, principal of the school. Miss Lowstetter asserts that Professor Reed jilted her in a most humiliating fashion after she had agreed to marry him and had got her trousseau ready. She and her attorney said in court today that she lost at least twenty five pounds owing to worry over her jilting, and that the wedding clothes would not fit her now.


Eskimo Is a Cannibal

ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland — Tragedy in the far North formed the burden of the news brought to port by the Hudson Bay Company's steamship Adventure, which arrived with the crew of the lost Dundee whaler Paradox. The crew told of an Eskimo, who driven to cannibalism by starvation, ate his child and after shooting several neighbors who attempted summary punishment, fled into the trackless wilderness of ice.


Tramp Heir to $25,000

William Close, who ran away from his Baltimore home when he was 16 years old, was found — a typical tramp — in a lodging house in Chicago Thursday night and informed that he had fallen heir to a fortune of $25,000 left him by his father. The next morning he started for Baltimore with Attorney J. D. Goldboro of that city, who has been searching for the prodigal for two years. Close, attired in a new suit of clothes, bathed and barbered, ascribed all his troubles to drink and declared he was determined to reform.

River in Paraguay Leads Only To Mystery

1903

A GREAT MYSTERY

A Land From Which No Traveler Has Returned

One of the great mysteries of the world that is left for explorers to solve is the course of a river in South America and the land through which it runs.

The river is the Pilcomayo, and the land is the territory known as the Chaco in Paraguay. Explorer after explorer has entered this unknown country and none has returned. Last year the famous explorer, Erland Nordenskiold, one of the great Nordenskiold family of explorers and naturalists, tried to follow the Pilcomayo to its source, but, although he penetrated further than any other man ever managed to go and return, he did not succeed.

Enemies who could not be seen surrounded him day and night, and at last the mysterious terrors of the region forced even him to return. He has announced that Chaco still waits for the traveler who can conquer its secrets. So constant and unchangeable has been the doom of the explorers who tried it that the natives have named the Pilcomayo the River of Death and they speak of the Chaco as the Unknown Land.

Geographers know where the Pilcomayo river begins. It is in the high plateau of Bolivia. Near Asuncion in Paraguay, a broad and beautiful river empties into the Paraguay river. It is called the Pilcomayo, and it is supposed that it is that river. But no man knows for no man has followed the great stream from its source to its mouth.

Men have tried to follow the Pilcomayo in canoes that were hung with hides to serve as protection against Indians who occupy the Chaco. But after days of fighting they were beaten back and accounted themselves lucky to escape alive. Some of the best men of South America have lost their lives there, and of their parties not one man escaped to tell what fate had befallen them.

Fiercest of the several tribes of Indians who hold Chaco against exploration are the Tobias and Chorotes Indians. They are utterly uncivilized, subsisting entirely on game, fish, wild honey and roots. Their few garments and shelters are made from jaguar skins. They rub pieces of wood together to make fire.

Most of them are gorgeously painted and tattooed and they ornament themselves still further with feathers and flowers.

They do not know anything about metal working and do not even use flints for their weapons, but make them entirely out of hard wood, even their arrows being made simply out of pointed wood.

They bore holes through their lips and ears and thrust a piece of polished wood through them. They are splendidly formed, immensely strong and agile, but hideous in countenance; and they will not have anything to do with strangers, but seek to kill them as soon as they find them. They fight fiercely among themselves, also, and it is believed that they are cannibals — at least part of them.

This is the county that has lured explorer after explorer in the last twenty years without letting one return. It appears probably that it will continue to defy the world for many years to come. — Ex.