Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1913-11-13
SPREADS THROUGH AFRICA
ON THE MUlLAH'S WIRELESS

OAV
Much establishment has been caus'
ed by the statement of MI. Harcourt,
the.eolonial~secretary, in the house OF
commons, that he could not give de-
tails of movements of troops In So
maitland because the news would
raach Mullah. with ''incrediblesfra ,
pidity."
He might have gone further and
announced that already the fact That
the mullah has cut up the Samel com
pany and slaughtered tribes under
British protection" has probably pass.
throughout the Soudan and across
Central Africa, has been discussed in
Nigerian villages which are a months
march from the nearest rail head, and
has even reached the natives of the
Gold Coast and Rhodesia-to the great
detriment of British prestige and tle
peril of officials hwo rule vast coun.
tries solely by the power OF the Brit
ish name.
1t is undoubtedly the fact that II
the news were published and tele.
graphed to Alden, it would reach the
muliah thin a few hours. This sug'
gests "black magic; some undiscov.
cred sixth sense or some secret OF
telepathy after the fashion of the Fan.
Gigs. who baffled audiences at the AL.
hambra a fewryears ago.; but the real
explanation is much more simple. The
natives of Africa, from the Cape to
Cairo and from the Niger to the Nile,
perfected long ages ago a system OF
telegraphy, which is only less efici.
ent than that in use between London
and Paris, and which is less liable u
be interrupted.
Kaffir TeIeeraphy.
This sytsem, in use by the "savag-
es" for hundreds if not thousands of
years, is as great an advance on the
semaphore system by hich the news
of Trafalgar reached London as the
electric telegraph is on the soma
phore. Astonishing stories have been
recorded from time to time, and have
perplexed the civilized world.
The fact that Sir Redvers Butler
had been defeated at Colenso was
known BY natives sixty miles away
within two hours, and even more
striking results have been achieved.
The following are instances:
.a At 9 q. M. Kaffir was attacked by a
bull. Both the Kaffir and the bull
were dead by 10 a. m. AT noon the
same day a farmer living forty-two
miles away wrote in a letter to the
employer of the kaffir. "My kaffirs
are saying your herd-boy stabbed
your red Devon bull with a long knife,
and that both are dead" The letter
was dispatched by mounted messen-
ger at 1890.
A kaffir, who had pleaded guilty at
apreliminary hearing, was acquitted
in Johannesburg Of a charge of man
Eslaughter, the jury returning their
verdict at $40 p. m. At 4 p. m. the
principal witness was knocked down
by a cab and taken to the prison hos
pital. At 5 p. nj. a kaffir woman on
a farm %thirty.eight miles distant
dCIOoo IUdtICoo COuLHly oAtAAOuAACCW
that the kaffir had been acquaitted
and that the principal witness had
been taken to prison.
To put forward telepathy as the ex.
PLANTATION OF the mystery is to "leco-
rate our ignorance"-to give the phe-
nomenon a name and imagine that it
is that the natives shout from hill
top to hilltop. This is done in a few
cases over short distances, but there
are thousands of miles Of country
are thousands Of miles of country
where there are no hills. Rider Hag-
gard writing about a case that. oc-
Cured during the Zulu war, says:
The theory that intelligence is con-
veyed with extraordinary rapidity by
men calling from height to height
would appear to be falsitied by the
fact that in this instance it must
have. come across the great plain Of
the high veldt.
The simple explanation is that an
elaborate code of signals has been
evolved by the natives. These signals
may be conveyed in the daytime by
fires on the hilltops, the fires being
covered at intervals so that the smoke
supplies dots and "dashes," as In