The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-09-29
SETS HER TEETH IN ARM OF. AUTHORIZES Woman Seeks Inspiration
 Among Cannibals SOME LITERARY GOSSIP J. M. Barrie Confesses That He Is No Longer an Ardent Fisherman-ls
 Entertaining His Friend,
 Anthony Hope
SOME LITERARY GOSSIP
By HAYDEN CHURCH

London. September 2S.-(Special. )--That most venturesome of women writers. Beatrice Grimshaw, who gave us When the Red Gods Call" has been having some more adventures. Incidentally she has new novel ready for publication, and the adventures befell her while in quest of material therefor-but never mind the book now. Miss Grimshaw has sought trouble in most of the out of the way corners of this planet-in Fiji, New Guinea, Ceylon and the Australian bush" to name only a few-since she left her native land. which is Ireland, and set out on her wanderings-and she seems to like best of all to be in places where she stands good chance of being eaten.
 The news that an English missionary named Chalmers had furnished a feast for the inhab bitants of the island Of Goari-Bari, in the Gulf of Papua, and that several other foreigners had been killed and eaten there, had the same eff feet on her that an unusually attractive circular from a tourist agency has on the ordinary woman, and she packed her trunk and set out for the island forth with.
 Here is an extract from a letter which she wrote to a friend In London, who showed it to me.
 "rhe natives were extremely excited and ju1npy. When I and two others were in one of the houses they came and held up Joint of cooked human flesh before me, laughing. It looked horrid and smelt worse. think it was ribs. There was also a canoe full of skulls in the river and many skulls in the houses. They made no attack. however. and we walked all through the village, saw general family sleeping house 1s0 yards long, divided into numberless compart- ments-the flat system evidently-human bodies laiG out in the branches of the trees to decay, which is their method of burial and some strange Images. Perhaps the Goar-Barites were fed tip literally with white meat by that time. If they let Miss Grimshaw alone, however it was not, at any rate, be- cause they did not consider her 'situa- blee for the authoress has been highly complimented on her desirability from the cannibal point of view.
 This was while she was risking her skin among the Fijians. She had camped out for the night with some native wom- en, and this happened;
 Has Unique Caress
 "One young woman, shoe-brush-haired, wild-eyed and long of tooth, caressed my
  so far as to set her teeth gently in the flesh, and exclaim longingly, 'Vinaka ma kakana' CWhat good foodD I knew that she was too young to have been can nlbal and that her exclamation was only ompliment-somewhat left-handed, 1t is true-to my British skin, but the. re- mark was interesting as an unconscious outbreak of heredity."
 One can only conclude. after reading her tr,i,. 1,tt hap letters that the capacity for fear has been left out of Miss Grimshaw's compo- stion. Once for example, she went down in a divers dress among pearl shell beds off Thursday Island. The place swarmed with sharks and allgators. but the au- thoress was told these could be scared off by loosening the wrist of the dress so s to let some air out. 'So I chanced it, says she, land came up all right after good walk at the bottom on a coral reef It was most interesting"
 In the part of New Guinea which Miss Grimshaw went to to get material for her new novel, Guinea Gold" she was again in danger of being eaten--not by cannibals this time. though there were a lot of them in the neighborhood, but by alligators.
 "I lived for while" she writes, "in a houseboat moored on the beach of
 
 mangroves, in a lonely place. and I am sorry to say the alligators selected 1t for a regular rendezvous One night there was a big fight in the deep water right at the stern of the houseboat. They bel lowed like bulls, and the place was filled with horrible husky smell. Another night an alligator cruising hungrily around got right underneath the boat, and evidently planted himself in the water under the part where my bed was. The husky smell was so stihing that I had to get up and shift. It must have been equally annoying for the alligator to find himself within a foot or so of a good meal and not he able to touch it.. as the floor intervened. On very dark nights they haunted the shore I had to cross, and always used q lantern to keep them off In the end had to leave the place, as 1t became rather trying for the nerves. lantern will nearly always, but not quite always. protect you. If an alligator Is desperately hungry he may rush the light'
 The authoress left Port Moresby in 70 ton coasting steamer, and camped for week on the beach at the mouth of the Lakekamu river. ''There is a hostile tribe in this country she writes. "who are called the Kukukukus. and are cel-' ebrated for being always invisible. They attack only in the dark. One of the men I met at this time has since been shot right through with an arrow by them
 In spite of dangers like these, Miss Grlmshaw always travels without any white escort She has walked and rid den thousands of miles with only native attendants-often in places where no white woman ever has been and few white men. She says however, that on reaching the goldfield in New Guinea, she found one other white woman there in the person of a nurse who had been sent lip by the government to act as matron to the field hospital. This must have been a great disappointment for Miss Grimshaw.
 Letter From Barrie
 Oddly enough. also was shown a let ter this week from no less person than H. NJ. Barrie, who used to be an ardent fisherman. but who declares. in the course of the screed above referred to. that he is one no longer. The letter was addressed to friend of mine who halls from Kirriemuir-Barrie's own birth plaee-and who wrote him a while ago. congratulating him upon the sport he must he having at Amhuinsmdh, in the North Hebrides, which the author recent ly took on a long lease. <
 'It won't do about the fishing." Barrie wrote. there you are about 35 years to late I hshed then and revelled in it. but nowadays I only talk of Jack Scotts and Silver Doctors d. e. salmon t1ies) to generation that politelvs disregards my views. My rod has been in use once this year, and now lies in every ones way with a broken gut. That tells it's simple taler
 At his new seat, by the bye Barrie has been entertaining his brother nov-