| Show OUTCASTS ABROAD IAn I-An Exile From Maine Seeks Refuge Ref-uge in Darkest Africa THE MURDERER OF MADAGASCAR Queer Land and Queerer People 3forbl Men and Criminals Seek Seclusion In the Wilderness WASHINGTON June 4 lSI1 Special correspondence cor-respondence of THE HCRALDAlmost everywhere from out of the byways and highways of our modern civilization the tide of emigration carries with its flood a great army of admirers Its ebb leaves on the shores of distant and unknown lands tho wrecks of many men Everywhere throughout the still wide and unexplored world on the fringes of African coasts onI I the distant islands of the Southern ocean in the vast Borneo in the Phillipines and Ion I-on the countless geographical dots of the i Indian sea they live isolated lives forgotten i ten by ancient friends lost to the great whirling world of modern society The story and the study of such lives is the I study of the whole history of modern colonial ial aggrandizement They are the forerunners forerun-ners as well as the wrecks of a foreign social system Incited by LEGENDS OF WEALTH or ready conquest by fabled stories of an easy acquisition of power and property amongst race of lower scale of intellect uallty than themselves they selz the political politi-cal opportunity afforded by tho decree of some continental congress and follow the troop ship that carries the advance guard as an army of occupation Their presence is at first symbolized by the fungus growth of ricketty shanties with glaring signs and piles of broken bottles in neglected alleyways alley-ways or in mouldy little back yards overrun over-run with weeds After a while the political politi-cal panorama changes the troops aro withdrawn with-drawn tho military colony sinks back into native neglect and inactivity but tho whit waif is left by the ebbing tide on the shores of chance Little by little from pillar to post as the last echo of the white boom is lost in the forest of his outlandish home he loses his identity and slowly assimilate himself to the manners and customs of the STRANGE PEOPLE about him Now and then a flash of some foreign sail on a distant horizon now and then the visit of some daring missionary brings with him the breath of a forgotten civilization but there Is little else to beguile him from an exile that is broken only by the constant roar of a ceaseless surf on the long familiar beach or the moan of tropic winds amidst the pendant leaves of trees that are never green Nevertheless in himself he represents to the crude minds about him a dim power the stockade he builds of poles about his factory the rum he has to sell the beads be has in store the little broken looking glasses the long neglected neg-lected books all are evidences of his other and more powerful parentage to tho daily cluster of primitive men and women who squat on the hot sands of his reservation and under the shade of his trees In his mind and thoughtsin his dreams and waking wak-ing reveries some day he will return But he never wilL He is THE OUTCAST OF HIS RACE the typical castaway on the banks of the river of his own civilization Countless are tho causes that have led men to seek personal per-sonal exile Many aro tho recruits in every social regiment Men often of character and idea but endowed with morbid thoughts and erratic dispositions Many others of no character at all and whoso only desire is the vain one to sooth an uneasy conscience in peaceful solitude I have met such men The history of their lives and adventures is almost out of joint with the plain tale of modern society Both their existence and the necessity for it is one of the results of civilization Sometimes skirmishers only far in advance of tho main irmy sometimes stragglers they live and die and are buried in the narrow bridle paths long before these are trodden into the great highways of advancing change Once in my wanderings it was my fortune to meet to live with and converse with such a man It was where tho blue waves of the great Mozambique channel edlessly break on the long sandy stretches at SOUTHWESTERN GASCAR Here for miles and miles the scene is unvaried un-varied The shelving yellow beach broken only hero and there by little bays or by the outlets of mighty rivers rushing to the sea Always the din of incessant surf and swish of retreating water always a beck ground against a cloudless sky of rising hills and dark clusters of tropical trees growing into one vast wave of green forest rolling back to a far interior It I q4 w l9Lai fi 4 Ii I J t11t t 1 i drr I had come down with a large party of natIves from the Malagasy capital in north central country across the land of the etsiles race skirted the territory of the dangerous Tauala people to finally strike for the west and the ocean Days and days had been occupied in this romantic Journey Plunged in the twilight of dense forests whose silence Is to the traveler almost Unearthly un-earthly we had struggled up tho sidesov and down again the lofty mountain ranges that for a thousand miles sweep north and south on the western coast of tho great African Island Fording rushing muddy rivers making wide detours to avoid the thundering cataracts we toiled ever west Sometimes in the very depths of woods we would come out on an unexpected clearing to find a village of rude huts but rarely any people They had fled from the bad fetish of the white man in their countr Some women were braver and remained to stare at us in blank amazement and silent wonder or even offer fruit or little bunches of the orchilla weed in trade They were the Tauala CRUEL CRAFTY AND DREADED by the traveler Steeped in the blackest superstition the ordeal of the taugena cup I the sacrifice of the retinue of a chief at his death the worship of the bones of animals the rites of blood brotherhood and all the beliefs of the lowest order of savage life were theirs No wonder they looked upon the white man us the accursed of Godthe albino marked for evil by his bleached complexion Yet among these people I met a white outcast We were glad when the rivers widened slowly and rushed moro impetuously towards the sea Weary limbs got new vitality tho long column closed up and savage songs from the Bara men who followed broke the deadly silence of I the woods In u few days more we C3t10 running out of the jungle into the shingle I of u beach with the western ocean breal InS at our feet To my delight I I saw at once close at bund ris inS from a grove of very tall I cocoa trees the circular stoelcade that in i this country always indicates the refuge of some white man Iran over and banged tne bamboo door It onened presently and there stood before meA me-A STRANGl SPECIMEN or HUMANITT He was a tall man with bronzed faco and deepset eyes a prominent nose badly sunburned sun-burned and the remnants of a grizzly beard Ho had on his head a dilapidated derby bat which he wore very much on one side a flannel shirt and patched woollen trousers His feet were bare of covering in the hot sand and the corners of his mouth I noticed were black with something he was chewing chew-ing Hullo ho said Hullol I I said And so I met my outcast In a littlo whllo I had told him the story of iny wanderings and asked and answered a host of questions He was not a very tlkative person however and dragged out his Inquiries and drawled out his replies quite out of accord with my patience He took me into a low thatched hut in one corner of tho stockade and spread out a mat upon the ground for us to sit upon This he said as he squatted down with i his long legs bent under him is IDj living house those on the other side ere mere sloro houses I looked over the open door the view was i a desolate one There was about half an aero of land surrounded by a tall paling against which leaned the gouty trunks of a few palm and cocoanut trees These in pressed mo with tho idea that they would like to get out On the side opposite me < stood two Ions shanties roofed with dry I leaves On tho sands were squatted a group of natives whose black bodies and blacker shadows were planted in vivid patches under the remorseless sun A DESOLATE AND CUEEHLE5S ILACE Indeed for anyone to call home I turned xi the huta ain and took one of the pipe uy now friend handed me After a white ivo fell to talking again he half addressing address-ing himself to me nndhalf speaking to tin air about him like one true communes with himself in a tongue lone unused to while I listened eagerly to the strange story of his exile exile4Iti Yes he drawled out Ive been in this damned country a good many years going on twentyfour this coming rainy season since I shoved off for Frisco Quite a nip sir out of a life of a man to look upon nothing but nigf ers to eat iioth jug but fish and rice to be dry as a bone hot scorching hot one half the year and wet as a sponce the other half Quite a tmo never to know whins going on out in the world out thereand whats become of ones kith and kin Why sir year after year goes 3gHinK along here till I have forgot to count them might as well be dead ama am-a fact to them that knew joun Ben owden in the sixties The story Is a short onetill I came here there it is shorter stiUono day is a gcoa deal like another day I was born in Maine in Bathand I my family was a seagoing family I and I fell into that naturally They were religious and temperance people I too and I was brought up so till I was put i on one of their ships and sent to sea to learn tho profession I wa over thirty considerable I con-sIderable and had been knocking about all parts of the world in all sorts of pakets when in 59 i Limed up in Frisco first mate of a big bark and I loaded with grain for Sjdnej The story ot her voyage was a bloody story Our skipper was a down caste from Damarascotta and a brute SUE WAS A HELL AFLOAT I tell you and I found myself afore the mast on her before we got in for being a parson and a preacher the skipper said So I left her and shipped again at Iclbourneina little brig bound to the I Cape in ballast We men got there but I was blowed up the channel in a hurricane her bones and her crews bones except mine are bleaching the beach about fifty miles north of here That was in 01 And here Ive been ever sincehere and up country among the Taualas and such I havent seen u newspaper in eighteen years nor a white face except twice in twenty One of these was a Swedish missionary pnary and the other a Portugese trader Yes I was married afore I lef ho States hud two children too when I sailed away God knows whats become of them Ho knocked the ashes out of his pipe thoughtfully and then got up Come Ill show you around tho place There wasnt much to see any more than J have already described We went Into the store houses and be showed me a pile of bales of trading cloth bolts of cheap cotton stuff of English make several native baskets of German beads and trinkets and a couple of casks of bad rum These are what I do my trading with he explained with the rum principally We went behind the house and he pointed me out about twenty natives squatted on native mats lazily sorting out orchilla weed spread in littlobeaps before them You see these fellows bring this stuff down from the far interior They get It in the forests and swamp WHERE SO WHITE HAS DARE GO They bring it generally in little bundles soon as they get thirsty enough or want anew a-new ragout down here and I trade them for it Then when they sleep off their drunk I set them a sorting of ttu niles till they get tired and go back for more When I get a bale or two I send it down const by canoe to the French settlement at Tulle bay southwest from here and it goes to 1 the cape and London Purple dye you know is valuable at home Yes Ive been often back far back in the Tauala country Its a bad place a dangerous place but I am used to it Fact is Im in blood brotherhood broth-erhood with most of the chiefs and they dont molest me very much and wont so long as the rum lasts I reckon Woll ye Im married into several of their families too Had to you know Its the custom Come back to tho house and Ill introduce you to NUMBER SIX AND THE LATEST We crossed the hot sand again and Into the hut Kabodo he called and in a moment tho ricketty door of a room on onside on-side opened and a woman wrapped from chin to too in a coarse blanket stepped out She was well formed and tall and not will out a native grace of motion She bad avery a-very black but withal a somewhat comely and gOJdnat red face Herhair was done up in tight balls saturated with beef fat and her forehead wa ornamented with white broad parallel lines ot clay She had her servant with hera Sakalara hoI ho-I squatted on tile ground and dug his assepc in the sand and glared at me Shes a Tauala said Lowden and I brought hljr down from up the country a year ago qer father is a big chief up there and never comes to tho coast She has been fixing herself up to see you you see No lyo never talked English to her nor to any of them I suppose in her mind she only associates as-sociates you with tho race that makes the beads and cloththats about as far as her brain goes i7 J f s I spent three days with this strange man and his surrounding then I gathered my I party together for u start up tho long bench to tho next trading station The light before we started the last night I spent with Lowdenwe were visited bone b-one of the most terrible thunderstorms I lad ever experienced It was a forerunner of the apprcachm rainy season Lowden and myself tool early refuge in onr little hut I had learned to know bun well dur jog my short stay and in view of my own bright thoughts of nearing home and friends I felt great pity for HIS DKEAItr SOL1TVRT LIFE Once or twice I had broached the subject of his return with me but he always ivoided always gently and with many simplo thanks This last night as the tropical flood came thundering down hushing hush-ing for the while the ceaseless roar of the ocean near soaking the long stretches of heated sands and rattling against the dried laves of our shaky roof I spoke again to him of that far off lane where certainly here must be some still alive who lived and cared for him No lad he said gently not now I air long dead to them and this world Let ne rest in pccce Many months afterwards in New York I delivered a lecture on the subject of my 1 recent experiences in ii Great M ditrascar II 1oC On coming out from zt the hail I felt myself touched the J I t I J upon 1L rl shoulder and turning f around was confronted confront-ed by an elderly gentleman IfjW L gen-tleman with gray f i hair and whiskers f He asked me to name 1 = JtJW X a time and place I JkirJtt Z I where he could call I f ir j4W1i upon me I did so 7 and he called 1 tt t ii promptly rJ i ftf prompt-ly I saw ho lt 7i 1 said in one of the sJ 4tmtf stereopticon views t y ut your lecture the fi d picture of a white l man Have yon that tTkZI = Y photocraoh I bad z I nnd I gave it to him 1I t He looked at it long 1 i und earnestly through his glasses H r It this from life J sir I4Se It Is > tl 1 Has this man a j slight limp in his t4aIq j gaitDoes P 1i1 Lr Does he drawl out his words zI Has he a habit of walking up and down when excited and a score of other Inquiries to which I answered in tho affirmative and told him the story It is the man he exclaimed it is the sane man Twenty five years ago ho came with his LIES AND FORGERIES to our houe in San Francisco We appointed ap-pointed him first officer of one of our finest vessels He sailed for Sydney He got tho crew in a state of mutiny and with his own hands murdered the captain and threw his body overboard He sold the ship and cargo in Sydney on false orders from use us-e paid off the crow three times t hair wanes and then disappeared He is the most infernal scoundrel that ever took tho breath of life I am not sure but that the tide this time had better have drowned than thrown upon the beach of Madagascar this outcast out-cast LIOIET MASON W SHUFELDT U S Navy |
