The Butler Weekly Times Newspaper, December 28, 1887, Page 4

Ss ; ee pia nenan Ro —a maveremyeomnmananeeroeneasee mama CRUMB PICKER. ing a somersault from the republi- can party into the union labor J. D. Attex & Co., Proprietors, can, the great weight of conducting the party affairs in Bates county has devolved upon the Record. That Austin fully appreciates the enormi- ty of the task is evident from his early and vicious attack upon the democratie members of the county court in the last issue of the Record. The fact, that he was airing a little personal spleen will make the average reader look upon his accusations with a grain of allowance. The Record accuses the democratic members of the court of being op- posed to retrenchment and reform in public expenditures, because they de cided to give what little printing there was to the democratic papers. Will any democrat in Bates county, or, for that matter, any liberal, fair- minded republican, say they did wrong in that act? Mr. Austin went before the court like a whipped cur, and begged for a crumb, and because the court said him nay, he snarls and snaps like a starving dog over the loss ofabone. Judges John H. Sullens and T. J. Boswell need no defense at our hands of the course they pursu- ed in this matter. In the recording of their votes it left a record that any democrat might be proud to emulate. In its arraignment of the court the Record fails to make mention of the time when the county court let the printing to the lowest bidder, and Mr. Austin, as proprietor of the only republican paper in the county, pooled with the only other paper, and the court had to giye them the work at their own price and that too when the public printing was worth something. Judge Sullens held the same office then that he does now. And also the time when the Record published the delinquent list for the county, and charged $1700 for the same, and paid the Globe Democrat $75 for doing the work. “Another item. The court issued a warrant to Sid Franklin for two hundred dollars for guarding the jail. What do our tax payers think of this?” Our tax payers think that the court but allowed an account which Mr. Franklin could haye foreed them to pay, by law. The law makes pro- visions for a guard when the county jail is insecure, and if Mr. Austin had taken the pains to examine the circuit court records he would have found that both sheriffs Simpson and Hanks were allowed guards, not only one but at times three or four. And furthermore Judge Clark Wix, the republican member of the court, voted with Judge Sullens to allow this ac- count, Judge Boswell being absent from the court room at the time. “What do the tax payers think of that?” Yes, this is the same democratic court that took charge of the county affairs when a republican court had sunk the county over sixty thousand dollars in debt, ferreted out the de- faleations of a republican sheriff and collected over fifteen thousand dol- lars off of his bondsmen; and Mr. Austin’s paper was the mouth-piece of that same o!4 court which let wooden bridges for the enormous sums of fifteen thousand dollars, is- sued railroad bonds upon the town- TERMS OF SUPSCRIPTION: TheWerexty Times, published every Wednesday, will be sent to any edaress one vear, postage paid, for $1.25. BUTLER MISSOURI. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 28th, 1887, In another column will be found the full text of the Woods Local Option Law. We advise the tax- payer to read it carefully, think of it seriously and make up his mind to vote dispassionately. It is a new departure and one which lasts for four years either way it goes. If it is a bad law we will have to bear with it for that length of time, ifa good law then we will be blessed for the same period. It is an expe- riment and voters should not be in- fluenced either way by impassioned appeals, but cool judgment and ar- guments should carry the day. Ex-Secretary of the Treasury, Dan- iel Manning, died at his home in Albany, N. Y., Saturday, Dec. 24th. Daniel Manning was born in Al- bany, N. Y., in August, 1831, and began life at an early age as a print- er’s apprentice. He advanced from that position in the office of the Albany Atlas (subsequently merged in the Argus,) until he became the editor in-chief of the Argus in 1873, occupying successively the place of foreman of the composing room, manager of the mechanical depart- ment, reporter of legislative proceed- ings, and associate editor. He} also became a considerable owner of the paper, and his position brought him into relations with the prominent politicians of his party in New York. He was for some years a director in several corporations, and in 1882 became president of the National Commercial bank at Albany. He took an active part in the politics of his state, being for several years chairman of the democratic state committee, and was credited with controling the state delegation in the national convention of 1880 and 1884. In 1885 he acepted the treas- ury portfolio, serving in that capaci- ty until sickness forced him to re- sign in the early part of the present year. He was made president of a new national bank of New York, but has been too sick to take active charge. He spent some time at an English ocean watering place, but returned not much improved in health. The supreme court decision in the Wood local option law will be read with great interest, by the temper ance people all over the state and the effect will be that about twenty counties which have been holding back their petitions, awaiting the decision, will have elections. These counties are Marion, Monroe, Cole, Callaway, Pettis, Howard, Clark, Worth, Ripley, Gentry, Pemisscott, Audrain, Barry, Montgomery, Me- Donald, Bates Cass, Carter, Johnson, Randolph, Ralls, Buchanan. Elec- tions are now pending in the follow- ing counties: Bollinger, Butler, Tron, Platte, Macon and Mor- gap. More than three-fifths of the territory of the state will have voted before the middle of February. The following counties in Missouri have already gone dry: Daviess, Grundy, Ray, Nodaway, Dunklin, Putnam, Ozark, St. Francois, Mercer, DeKalb, Mississippi, Atchison, Sullivan, Crawford, Newton, Pulaski, Lincoln, Jasper, Carroll, Lynn, Wayne, How- ard, Clinton, Pike, Laclede. Madison, Lewis, Livingston, Shelby, Lawrence, Washington, Christian, Henry and Scott. ships and became so notoriously cor- rupt that such honest men as John Atkinson and M.S. Cowles. deserted the party and helped to defeat them. But did their mouth-piece (the Rec- ord) discover these frauds? Not one, for its editor, O. D. Austin, the present reformer, was living off the fat of the land. It is at all go into bones and y arted and expose times disagreeable to 1 re} The following have becomes wet: Andrew, Polk, Cooper, Clair, Miller, Caldwell, C May, Schuyler, Holt, tection party, was performed by the Republi- | phe victims Buried Under the House Since the gymnastic feat, of turn- | long | THE KELLY FIENDS. Seven More Corpses Unearthed. and in the Barn. Wichita, Kan., Dee. 24.—S. T-} Gregg, a traveling man, came in from No-Man’s-Land to-day and brought particulars of other crimes in the strip as well as confirmation of the Kelly family horror, with more facts concerning it. Speaking of the matter this afternoon he said: “There is no law in the sfrip and it is now being occupied by despera- does of the worst type. Mr. Ran- dolph tells facts concerning the Kelly family. but I don’t know him and would like to meet him and compare notes. I stopped about two months ago at that house in company with a ranchman of north- ern Texas and another traveling man. We were treated well and saw no signs of intended maltreatment. I am just from there and learned the latest developments. Numbers of- parties went from the nearest town soon after suspicions were aroused to make an investigation. Looking under the floor they found three bodies, one of which was not buried —evidently the last victim. The other two were buried about two feet deep and eight feet apart. The last was a well dressed man, and it would seem the two buried were cattle Digging deeper they were satistied of no more bodies be ing there and commenced to look the premises over. nen. SEVEN MORE BODIES FOUND. About 200 feet west of the house on the opposite side of the road stands a barn—I judge 25x50 feet —frame, in which the horses of the traveling public stopping there were left. They went to the barn or sta- ble and commenced to dig at the door. Just at the entrance the ground was hard and no corpse was found there, for you see it would not do to loosen the dirt for horses going into the barn at the door. Just to the left of the door the dig- gers found the dirt had been loosen- ed up, and going about three feet found a body almost completely de- composed. . It was unrecognizable, but the skull was broken, causing the suspicion that he had been mur- dered, probably by being struck on the head with an axe. They kept on digging along the side of the barn and found seven bodies in the fifty feet. The fourth found was that of a woman, and the fifth was about in the same stage of decompo- sition as the first making it reasona- ble to suppose that they had been traveling together across the coun- try, and stopping there had been murdered. The one in the far end of the barn was less decomposed than the others, and it is believed it was the last placed there. The par- ty dug up all the ground in the barn but found no bodies. They also searched outhouse, but found nothing. ONE BODY PARTLY IDENTIFIED. more the This party was the second to visit its work being done the next day after those were found under the floor. The latter was found by a few who on making the discovery left them and reported to Oak City. They did not remove the bodies but decided to inform the public and wait for more concerted action. The circumstance down there don’t raise the excite ment that it would else- where, but it was extraordinary for that country and created more excite- ment than incident. Only one bo d and that 9 yard and dig up the } ?°* : | AT A RATTLER'’S MERCY. | Remarkable Escape of a Child from Being _ | Bitten by a Snake. | As it might be of some interest to j your many readers, I will relate an | exciting adventure with a rattlesnake. j and August of each year the swamp is of whortleberries, Last season there has been a large cropof them, and about the last of July my wife and little boy two years old went with me to the swamp to gather some berries for can- ning and to make pies) When we ar- rived atthe skirt of the lowland my wife placed our little boy at the root of a very large beach tree, as we did not intend to be but afew steps dis- tant from him while engaged in pick- ing berries. In a short time my wife's attention was attracted to the child by a slight noise, which none but an ever watchful mother would have noticed. She returned rapidly to the tree where she had left the little fellow. As soon as_ she saw the position of the child she did not scream, although it required a powerful effort not to do so. She quietly beckoned to me to approach, which I did rapidly. WhenI arrived I was horror-stricken. My nerves for a moment were so agitated that it was with difficulty I could keep on my feet. I soon rallied, however, and took in the situation at a glance. It seems that near where the child was sitting a large root of the tree was de- eayed and had an cpen place on the top of the root, very near and at the right of the child. This decayed place on top opened into the large hol- low of the root below, and this hollow root was aden of rattlesnakes. One had crawled out of the root and just in front of the child and around it. Its tail was just out of the aperture in the root and its head was against the tree to the left of the child, and had him in a semi-circle formed by the reptile with the tree at his back. The little fellow looked as playful and uncon- cerned a3 he does in his crib. It was with great difficulty that I could restrain my wife from running up to the tail of the snake and snatching the child away. She thought she could do this before the snake could strike, but I was afraid to risk this plan. If I had waited and could have induced my wife to do so no doubt in a short time the snake would have moved off, but the proximity of my boy to this terrible and deadly reptile precluded the idea. We were on the border of a small clearing just out of the swamp, and I had noticed a brier hook with a long handle as we were coming along a short time before, which some one had left there. It was about fifty steps to the hook. 1 requested my wife to get the hook for me. When she brought it I remarked to her when I got the snake's head secure for her to get the child. I brought the hook down very near the snake’s head, and, with a quick movement, I secured its head against the tree right at the ground. At almost the same instant my wifo grasped the child and clasped it to her bosom. — St. Louis Globe- Democrat, Uses of fron Furnace Slag. Iron furnace slag, which used to be a waste product, is now being turned to various uses. In Germany, the slag is specially prepared for mending the roads, a material being produced called ‘slagstone.’’ The method adopted is to run the liquid slag direct from the furnace into cast-iron molds, which slightly taper towards the top. The mold has no bottom, but stands on an iron trolley, so that, when the slag is sufficiently set, it can be re- leased, and the mold is ready to re- ceive a fresh charge. ‘The freshly- molded. block is piereed. and its in- terior contents, stillliquid, are allowed torun out. The block is then covered with cinders and allowed to cool graduall This method insures a hard crystalline stone, which is found useful for purposes of paving. —M ¥. Past, wee A Friendship Broken Up. “Jackson has struck it rich,’’ said one traveling man to ancther. “Increase of salary?” “No. He went into a restaurant the other day and ordered an oyster stew. And what do you suppose he found in it?” ‘An oyster?" “Yes, and what else?” “Humph! I con't suppose he wanted the earth.” ound a pearl of extraordinary How’s that for luc I tell n as that ought llive near a large swamp of the Cal- | pioja | casicu river in Louisiana, and in July | generally dry and has alarge growth | —————— A FREAK OF NATURE. LIFE IN HONDURAS. from the «Fountain of Blood.” lages of the Caribs. Near the town of Virtud. in Hone The approaches from the interior of America, there exists | Honduras to Truxillo are mere trails as the “Fountain of} through the mountains. The only It received this name on ac-} means of transportation is by pack count of the curious red liquid which | mules Most of the houses in Truxillo is perpetually oozing and dropping | arelong, low-roofed, one-story dwell- from the roof of a cavern, and which, | ings, built of stone and mortar, cool on falling, coagulates and exactly re-| and well adapted to theclimate. Very sembles human blood. Like blood, | substantial, I am told they are; indeed, also, it speedily corrupts and emits an| some of tnem have been standing odor of animal decay. Insects deposit | hundreds of years. They are any thing their larvw in it, and dogs and carrion | but picturesquo looking, being totally birds flock to feast upon it, We are] unornamented on the outside. It informed by one who has witnessed it | seems tome that all the houses look that the grotto is the nightly haunt of | alike; in fact, an air of sameness per multitudes of large bats, which, like | vades the place. the dogs and birds. feast upon this The surrounding scenery, on the strange liquid, which has not only the] other hand, compensates for the dull- smell but the taste of blood. A fear-}] ness and makes a beautiful frame for a ful odor is perceptible at a consider- | plain picture. duras, South The Strange Liquid erpetually te Strange Customs That Prevail in the Vil- what is known | ! ! abledistance from the cavern, and Behind the town is a high range of when it is reached masses of the | mountains thickly wooded, with little blood may be seen in aj streamlets trickling down to the sea state of jellified coagulation. | In the valleys on either side are Carib villages—one, the village on the Rro Crystallis, the other on the Rio Negro, We visited the Carib town on the Rio Crystallis and found it a much larger settlement than it appeared to be. These so-called Caribs are, properly speaking, not Caribs, but are the de- scendants of an African tribe. Yet they most decidedly object to being classed as negroes, and boast that they have never been slaves. They are quite like the ordinary negro, with this exception, that they are seru pulously clean about their persons. As is common among most peoples of rade civilization, the women are the drudges. They are the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, and it is not uncommon to see a mother paddling a dory load of bananas, with her infant squatting in the bottom of the boat. When s man among the Caribs wishes to take unto himself a wife he hews himself out a dory, and, with the assistance of his friends and a jug of rum, gathers together the wherewithal to build his hut. which consists of afew poles, a pile of clay to form the floor and to fill in the wickerwork sides of his house, and some leaves of the cohune palm to thatch the roof with He then clears off a patch of ground and plants a few ears of corn and some yams and cassava root. This hoe calls his plantation. He is then considered an eligible swain, and is in a position to choose » partner from among the dusky maidens. This plantation is entirely looked after by the woman. She gathers the corn to make tortillas, and digs the cassava root to make her bread. I visited a Carib house and watched Numerous attempts have been made to obtain a portion of this blood-like liquid for analytical purposes, but in every case without success, in conse- quence of rapid decomposition, which causes the bottles to burst. The late Don Rafael Osejo undertook to trans- mit some bottles of it to London, but his intention was frustrated by the bursting of the bottles, andtha in less than twenty-four hours after sealing them. Mr. E G. Squier did once sue ceeded in taking back with him to New York two bottles of the liquid, largely diluted with water, but it be- came very offensive, and no satis- factory explanation of the phenom- enon could be obtained. We give the following—perhaps the most satis- factory —explanation that has been re- ceived. It was written by one who undertook the journey in order to satisfy his curiosity: ‘The principal cave,’’ he says, ‘is a fissure about fif- teen or twenty feet high, and five or six wide at the entrance, butit rapidly nar- rows, sothata man can only follow it for thirty or forty feet. It abounds with huge bats, which cling in masses to the narrower part of the fissure. The stench is strongly ammoniacal, and so intense that I was obliged to retire thrice before I could procure from the innermost part that I could reach a sufficient quantity of the material to fill the bottles of alcohol which I had carried with me for the purpose. In the rainy season a small current of red matter, like blood, flows from the cave into the stream; but in the dry season the water ceases to percolate through the roof and back of the cave, and the flow ceases. At my visit it had already stopped, but the floor of the cave was covered | the operation of cassava bread- several inches deep with a jelly-like | making. They first wash the or pasty mass, which gave a blood-red | root, then grate it on board color when mixed with water. On the sides of the cave were clotted masses, looking like dried blood, which had run down from above; and in the nar- rowest parts that I could reach in the recess of the fissures I collected with my knife some fresh semi-fluid matter which the insects had not attacked. Examined with a micro- scope on the spot, it exhibited no living particles, nor, in fact, any thing but minute fragments of the digested debris of insects. From the tint of the red color I was at first inclined to believe that it might result from the generation of sulphocyanide of ammonium during the putrefaction of the animal excretions, and the reac- tion of that substance with a trace of iron in the water percolating through the sandstone. But Mr. W. T. Taylor. to whom I submitted some of the solid matter collected, as also the semi-fluid preserved in alcohol, writes me that he can not detect any iron in the red solution, and that it appears te be en- tirely an organic coloring matter. The insoluble substanes has been found by Dr. Leidy to consist chiefly of chitine, undigested fragments of insects, mingled with bats’ hair s and homogene- ous granular matter.” In a country like South America, where scientific knowledge can hardly be said to exist, studded with small, sharp particles of flint to form a rough surface; then strain it in order to extract the surplus juice, which is considered poisonous. Their mode of straining is extremely primitive. The article used as @ strainer is a long snake-like arrange ment, made from a species of palmetto grass plaited together, and looks ex- actly like a huge serpent, It is about eight foet long and about three inches in diameter, and open at ono end The strainer is suspended on a hook from the rafters, the grated cassaya is poured in, then a heavy weight is at- tached to the lower end, which causes the strainer to contract, and 60 ex- presses the juice. After it has been thoroughly strained it is baked into large, flat cakes, which form the daily bread of the Carib. These appliances for making the cas- sava bread, together with a couple of stools, a table, and the veritable hammoc rise the furnishings of the hous While walking through the town we happened in on the school. There were about fifty Carib boys, all order- ly and clean-locking, taught by # young Spaniard. The text books are all Spanish, the history and geogra- phy of Honduras being the principal ¥ e stud ul adelightful ride on a freak of nature of this nordinary | horseb gthe beach and upto description could not fail to become | the Ro s, where we surprised an object of rstitious wonder, velous stories are en the “Fountain of Blood.” Saturday vournal. gre b women who were the stream. There knee deep in the water, clothes and putting, them stones. While riding up z the river we gave the lowed them te and to the ut- e C arib wasker- ight over * clothes i rinsing the to dry on th hill and f oe Se Beatrice and Her Mother. There is no feun a report which has ap papers that a se; is to be provided fe and Princ Ti next year. side with h never | court. tai Stream finds y upin the mountains, i a charm to the furnishes the