Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1899-10-13
SOME STRANGE TOWNS
QUEER PLACES WHERE HU-
 VANITY coNGRE0ATEs.
One Built on the Ocean. Another on Ice and Another Is Womanless-On the Mountain of the Monks"--Even to the Animals.

The marine village of TupuseIei, in New Guinea, would take a lot of beat ing on the score of singularity. Here the houses are all supported on piles and stand right out in the ocean, some considerable distance from the shore.
 fhe object of this strange position is t9 pT9teet the inhabitants against sud ~er attacks of the dreaded head-hunt- cSs. @ho are always on the lookout for x ms. Other villages in this happy la@i are perched up in all but inac- cessible trees, for the same weighty reason.
 Another curious place is a town without name on one of the arms of Lake Huron. This consists of some 500 wooden huts. During the summer these little dwellings are hidden away Tn a clearing on shore, and the town contains not a single inhabitant. But on the arrival of winter, when the lake IS frozen over with a thick coating of ice, the owners of the huts arrive and proceed to move their houses out onto the surface of the lake. The floor of the nuts is taken up and a hole cut through the ice. Through these holes tue residents fish, carrying on their operations until the spring releases the lake from its icy bonds, when this ex- traordinary town is once more broken up, the shanties go back to their rest ing place and the fishermen scatter over the country This place even boasts curing factory and a church, not to mention several saloons-alI on the ice
 Athos, town situated on a promon- tory on the coast of Macedonia, well deserves the title of the most curious town in the universe. The peninsula is known as "The Mountain of the Monks, from the fact that a score or so of monasteries are dotted about the rough hillsides or the valleys. In these establishments dwell a numerous body of aseetics, kind and hospitable to wanderers, but full of superstition, and believing in the doctrine of separation to a wonderful degree
 The actual town, as distinct from it's monastie environs, is called Caryes, and supplies the simple wants of the monks. Here are to be found streets of shops, crowded bazars, flourishing trades and all the hustle and energy of modern town. But one thing soon strikes the visitor as strange. There is not female to be seen anywhere. for the gentler sex is vigorously ban ished from the place. Even the small Turkish garrison, from the command ant down to the privates, consists of bachelors.
 This extraordinary law is carried out even among the domestic animals. Only the wild birds evade it, and then only when free, for no female bird 4s ever brought to table; the fowl one has for dinner is sure to be a cockerel. For this unparalleled state of affairs there is only legend to account. AL though to our practical minds fiimsy to degree, 1t is implicitly believed in by the inhabitants. It appears that in one of the chief monasteries OF the prom ontory there is a miraculous icon, which is a picture or image sacred to members of the Russo-Greek church. This particular picture is a representa- tion of the Virgin and the legend says that one day as the Empress Pulcheria, who had literally endowed the church, as we'll as beautifed and restored 1t, was engaged in her devotions, the Vir- gin spoke, asking what she, woman, was doing in the church. The pious lady, no doubt amazed, did not reply, whereupon the voice commanded her to leave, saying that the feet of & woman should never again tread the floor. The empress, probably surprised at the seeming ingratitude of the speech, as well as awe-struck, left the place, which no female has since en- tered. How the prohibition thus ar- bitrarily established came to compre- hend the length and breadth of tho promontory is not very clear. As a residence for bashful bachelors we should imagine Athos would be hard to surpass.