The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-02-14

racket" has been worked before Tray-
elers nave told us at various times about
tailed men. But further acquaintances
with these interesting If backwoods peo-
pies has shown that the travellers deceived
themselves, or accepted too much on mere
hearsay. Puchas in the sixteenth cen
with tayles like dogges a spanne long
1thoSe agents spelled Vilely, Charles
serve), who dwelt in the Kingdom of Lam
brI-Lambri in the Philippines. and of
certain people in the island of Sumatra,
who were called the Daraqui Dara
whiche have tayles like sheepe."
Again, Gabriel Harvey, the friend of
Spencer, learned from "a reliable and
truthful man" that in the island of 8oT-
neo-Whence the reliable ana truthful man
had just retufned-tailed men were COM
mon. If we are 10 credit authorities such
as the present Rajah Of Sarawak, Sir
Spencer st. John and Mr.. Carl Box, all
of whom speak from practical acquaint-
ance with certain parts of BOrneo, the
tailed men still inhabit the island-or at
any rate. the tradition survives No Eu-
ropean has seen them with his own eyes,
and it is trifie suspicious that when you
make inquiries the caudate tribes live still
one days journey further in the interior:
But, on the other hand, the evidence of
natives said to be of good report is unan-
imous as to their existence and consistent
as to details of the appendage; and this
counts for something.
John Struys, who visited Formosa IN
1865, makes reference TO the same kind of
thing in connection with the murder of
one of his party by native, and the sub
sequent execution of the murderer. "As
the crime was so atrociOuS," he says lit
was determined to burn the man. He
was tied up to a stake, where he was kept
for some hours before the time of eXeCu-
ton arrived. 1t was then that / beheld
what ] had never thought to see, He
had a tail more than foot long, covered
with red hair, and very like that of a
COW. That the man had a tail |
saw as distinctly as that he had head,
which is certainly plain talk. We need
not GO so far back as the seventeenth
century in order to find chronicles of tall
ed men. Capt. S. Turner was sent on an
embassy to Thibet in the earlier years of
this century, and in the account of his
journey he assures US that in an inter
view with the Deb Rajah of that country
he was informed that in the range of
mountains north of Assam there was
straight tails. These tails, his informant
stated, were not of any use, nor were
they ever turned to the slightest advant-
age; on the contrary, they were Tex
tremely inconvenient, by reason OF their
inflexibility, owing to which they were
obliged to dig holes in the ground before
race enjoys any blood relationship with
the Mois whom M. d'Enjoy found on the
Annamese borders?
Africa is another continent rich in tailed
men myths. There is supposed TO be
caudate race of pigmies somewhere in the
uplands of Abyssinia. The N1am-NlaBls
are a celebrated case. A GOOD many years
ago. the French government despatched
NJ. Descouret with instructions to explore
some of the least-known parts of Africa,
and to ascertain the exact degree of truth
in the various stories about the NAM
Mans. He describes the people is being
mostly under five feet in hight, ill-propor-
toned. thin, weak. and ugly, with short,
woolly hair and with an external elonga-
ton of the vertebral column, which, he
says, lin every individual, male or female,
forms a tail of two or three inches long"
A year or two later NJ. Castelman supplied
further particulars. The Haussas made
an expedition against the tailed men. The
Mann Mans were sleeping in the sum- the
HausSas approached, and falling on them,
massacred them to man. Says the ex-
plorer: "They had all of them tails forty
centmetres long and from two to three in
diameter The organ is smooth. Among
the corpseS were several women who were
deformed in the same manner"
DIR. Hubseh, while physician to the hos
pitfalls at Constantinople, tells us more in
connection with a tailed negress whom he
saw in that city. Her master. a slave deal
er, told him that she was a. Mann MAN,
and that all the tribe had tails, some of
them two feet long. She was as black as
ebony and ate raw meat Il have seen a