Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-11-26
A MAN WITH A TAIL.
He Greatly Regrets That Tails in His
Tribe Are Now Becoming Very Rare.
From the New York Sun.

He Greatly Regrets That Tails in His
Tribe Are Now Becoming Very Rare.
From the New York Sun.
A man with a tail is one of the latest dis
coveres reported by an explorer. Mr.. Paul
d'Enjoy an official Of France in French
Cochin China, has had the felicity of max
ing this addition to knowledge. He met the
gentleman with the caudal appendage
among the wild Moi who live in the north of
French Cochin China, and his discovery is
reported in the Bulletin of the Paris Geo
graphical Society.
Mr. d'Enjoy entered the country of these
wild people in the spring Of 1890, and the
first village he saw in the unbroken forest
greatly surprised him. There was only one
habitation, and 1t was in the form of a tun-
mel 100 feet long, made of sticks meeting at
the top like the sides of the letter a, and
covered with leaves. The tunnel was a lit
tie more than three feet high, six or seven
feet wide at the base of the triangle, end
was oper at each end.
Some children who were playing outside
raised a howl as they saw the white man
and his party, and at once some wild-look-
ing creatures rushed out of the tunnel and
scampered away into the woods like SO
many monkeys. The explorer suggests that
these Moi tribes are very likely the
monkeys whose battles with the gods are
described in the sacred books of India.
One man was up in a tree engaged in
gathering honey. He was greatly alarmed
by the flight of his companions, and down
he came as fast as he could. stepping on
bits of wood that had been driven into the
tree, till he was fifteen feet from the
ground, when he sprang down and tried
with lowered head, to break through the
circle of men who had surrounded the tree;
but he was captured.
After a while he was induced to talk. He
was tall, well-made fellow, with vigorous
limbs, and looked like a bronze statue
His ankle bones were enormous, like those
of his friends, and, wonderful to relate, he
had tall Here is a faithful translation
of what Mr.. d'Enjoy says about 1t:
This discovery stupefied me. l approach
ed him, and to be certain that l was not
the plaything of an illusion l felt with my
hand his caudal appendage. l satisfied my
self in this way that the vertebral column
of the Moi prolonged beyond the body
by three or four vertebrae, so as to form
a little tail like that of a fawn."
When the white visitor spoke to the pris-
oner about his tail, its fortunate possessor
drew long sigh as he remarked that once
all the Mois had tails. The TAIL he said,
was a mark of the pure race, and 1t was
becoming rarer with every generation.
There was a time when Moi king had a
tail that was three cubits in length, but he
had been driven from the rich plains of his
fathers, and, in the later degenerate ages,
tails had been gradually disappearing.
Here curiosity that the civilized
world Is longing to see. There is no telling
what light this man and his caudal ap-
pendage might have thown upon the theory
of evolution If he had been taken to Eu-
rope. Apparently it is not the fault of Mr..
d Enjoy that the native Is not now delight
ing the savants of the old world. At any
rate, he put a guard over the man that
night but in the morning the prisoner had
disappeared, and his guard was delirious
with fever. In an evil moment the guard
had been induced to drink the juice of a
Llama, and he was bereft of his faculties
and his prisoner at the same time. There
are evidently prizes in the wilderness of
the Mois that will tempt other explorers
into that region.