Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1884-11-06
People Living in Trees.

81 am prepared to swallow the whole
story, except the pouches in the mouth, :"
said gentleman the other day, to
whom Prof. George G. Shelly, anthro-
pologist and member of the Geograph-
ical Society, was recounting the story
of the capture of hairy family, clearly
human, but bearing many strong re-
semblanoe to the anthropoid apes,
which were secured by himself and the
well-known explorer, Carl, aided by
some native soldiers, in the wilds of
Laos in the year 1882. II a sgt
s.There are" said the professor,
s'three distinct races of men who live in
trees. These are Indians in South
America, who inhabit the borders of the
Orinoco, Tucuya and MADEIRA rivers;
the Veddas of Ceylon, and the Krao-
Moniek of Laos, a dependency of Siam.
Krao-Moniek means man-monkey. Laos
is part of the world which has never
been thoroughly explored, and but COM
paratively little is known about it by
geographers and scientists. 1t con-
tains from eight hundred to one thou
sand square miles, and lies between the
fifteenth and twentieth degrees of north
latitude, north of Siam, east of the
Menam Khong, west of AMMAN, and
about four hundred miles southwest of
Tonquin. The reason why Loas
has not been thoroughly ex-
plored is because almost everyone
who has attempted it has died of
malarial fever. That paat of the coun-
try in which the Krao lives is very
swampy, is inhabited only by the men
who live in trees and by elephants and
snakes. The people live in trees to es-
cape the snakes and the wet ground.
They weave the branches together and
build huts therein. In climbing the
trees they use their toes as a monkey
does. They do not grasp the trees with
their legs, as we do. They do not use
fire. They live on dried fish, wild rice,
and the rind of green cocoanut. Their
only weapon is a club.
Ten years ago Carl Book, the au-
thor of The Man Hunters of Borneo'
and My Travels in SIAM was travel
ing in Asia on behalf of Mr.. Farini, the
English Barnum, to look for the tall
people which were said to live there.
In the court of the king of Burmah 1
saw and talked with a hairy family,
which were kept by the King for his
amusement, as European kings former
ly kept fools and dwarfs. Book tried
in every way to secure them to take to
Europe, but he failed. He offered
S1OO,0 for one of them, but money is
no object there; they have more of it
than they know what to do with. These
people that Book saw were. the grand
children of hairy couple which Craw-
ford, who went to Burmah in 1885 as
English plenipotentiary, saw there,
and of which he published an account
in his book, "A Mission to the Court of
Ava Crawford said that these people
had been given to the King of Burmah
by the King of Laos. a.
Early in 1888 joined Carl Book at
Singapore. Wewent up the Straits of
Malacca and made an expedition into
Rumbo, in the Malay peninsula, where
it was reported that hairy race lived
called Jaccoons, but we did not find
them. We then went to Rangoon and
thence to Bangkok, the capital of Siam.
Book had once cured the Prime Minis
ter of Siam of a malignant. disorder.
This was the means of procuring US an
escort, twenty elephants, and letters to
the King of Laos. After a four months
Journey, partly by land and partly by
river, we reached Kjang-Kjang, the
capital of Laos. bes 'i'siH
sour letter from the King of Siam
procured Us the good offices of the