The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1894-11-02
FEEDING A VAMPIRE
BY PHIL ROBINSON.

The man-llZard" bones in a cave on
The Amazon some time in the forties?
Perhaps not But it created a great
stir at the time in the scientific world
ind in lazy sort of way interested
men and women of fashion. For dav
pr two 1t was quite the correct thing
FOR Belgravia to talk of connecting
inks" of 1.-The evolution OF man from
The reptile" and "the reasonableness
Of the ancient myths" that spoke of
,entaurs and mermaids as actual exist
ences.
The fact was that German Jew, an
India rubber merchant, working his
way with the usual mob of natives
through a cahucho forest along
the Maranon, came upon some bones
On the river bank where he had pitched
his camp. Idle curiosity made him try
10 put them together, when he found,
TO his surprise. that he had before him
the skeleton of creature with human:
legs and feet, a dog-like head and i'm
mense bat-like wings. Being a shrewd
man, he saw the possibility OF money
being made out of such a curio sity; SO
he put all the bones he could find into
a sack and, on the back of llama, they
were in due course conveyed to Cha
chapoyas, and thence to Germany.
Unfortunately, his name happened
to be the same as that of another Ger
man Jew, who had just then been try
ing to hoax the scientific world with
some papyrus rolls of date anterior
10 the flood, and who had been found
out and put to shame. SO when his
namesake appeared with the bones of
a winged man, he was treated with
scant ceremony.
However, he sold the india rubber
very satisfactorily, and as for the
bones, he left them with a young med
ical student of the ancient University
of Bierundwurst, and went back to his
cahucho trees and his natives, and the
banks of the Amazon. And there was
an end of him.
The young student one day put his
fragments together, and, do what he
would, could only make one thing OF
them-a winged man, with a dogs
head.
There were few ribs too many, and
some odds and ends OF backbone which
were superfiuous, but what else could
be expected of the anatomy of SO ex-
traordinary a creature? From one
student to another the facts got about,
and at last the professors came to hear
of it, And, to cut long story short,
the students skeleton was taken TO
pieces by the learned heads of the col
lege, and put together again by their
own learned hands.
But, do what they would, they could
only made one thing of it-a winged
man with dogs head.
The matter now became serious;
the professors were at first puzzled,
and then got quarrelsome; and the re-
suit of their squabbling was that pam
phlets and counterblasts were pub
lished, and SO all the world got TO hear
of the bitter controversy about the
imam lizard of the Amazon"
One side, declared, of course, that
such creature was an impossibility,
and that the bones were a remarka bly,
clever hoax. The other side retorted
by challenging the skeptics to manu-
facture a duplicate. and publishing
the promise of such large rewards to
anyone who would succeed in doing
SO that the museum was beset for
months by competitors. But no one
could manufacture another man-lizard.
The man part was simple enough,
provided they could get a human
skeleton. But at the angles Of the
wings were set huge claws, black,
polished and carved, and nothing that
ingenuity could suggest would initiate
ttem. And the ''genuinists, as these
who believed in the monster called
themselves, set the "imposturists."
another poser; for they publicly chal-
ienged them to say what animal either
,he head or the wings had belonged to,
f not To the man-lizard? And the
answer was never given.
So victory remained with them, but
not, alas, the bones of contention.
For the imposturists by bribery and
burglary got access to the precious
skeleton, and 10. one morning the
rlory of the museum had disappeared.
The man half of it was left. but the
head and wings were gone, and from
that day to this no one has ever seen
:hem again.
And which of the two faction was
light? AS a matter of fact, neither;
as the following fragments of mar
'ative viii go to prove:
Once upon time. so say the Zap oro
indians, who inhabited the distric.
between the Amazon and the Mara
aon, there came across to Pampas de
Sacramento a company of gold seek
.rs, white men, who drove the natives
rom their workings and took posses
lion of them. They were the first
white men who had ever been seen
.here, and the Indians were afraid of
their guns; but eventually treachery
lid the work of courage, for. pretend
.ng&to be friendly, the natives sent
heir women among the strangers,
and they taught them how to make
:ucupi of the bread root, but did not
leu them how to distinguish between !
The ripe and the unripc. So the l
Hretched white men made tucupi out |
IF the uIripe fruit (which brings on 1
Cts like epilepsy, and when they /
we're living about the camp helpless |
the Indians attacked them and killed 1
them ell.
All but thrae. These three they gave
20 the vampire.
But what was the vampire? The Ia
Poros did not know. Very long ago" |
sald they, there were many vampires 1
IN Perm, but they were all swallowed /
up in the year of the great earthquake,