Evening Star Newspaper, August 26, 1923, Page 73

Part 5—8 Pages This is the third of six unusual cles recounting some of the re experiences of Capt. Monckton officer of the armed constabulary, dent magistrate, and In other posts he held under the British government of New Guinea. The next article will ap- pear in an early lssue. BY CAPT. C. A. W. MONCKTON. At Cape Nelson I was now busy in the erection of my new station. A New Guinea government station con- sisted of the resldent magistrate's house, police barracks, storerooms, magazine, married quarters, native visitors' house, police cells and jail. At this time I had, under the super- vision of a private of constabulary, gangs of several hundred Kaili Kaili at work, clearing gardens and carry- ing timber for the jail and barracks; while another lot was searching for teakwood with me, and cutting it into piles for my house. Among my contingent was a short, squat, very powerful man of about forty years Wwho had at one time been badly Wwounded In the head, and at intervalc broke into a frenzy or rage with n apparent reason. This person was named Komburur He had engaged to work two month with me for an ax upon which b had set his heart, and which tool h was permitted to use at his work until it became his ow Komburua's particular job was to cut the hewn piles to an exact length, as I measured and marked them. On one occasion, as' I moved from one pile to another to measure it, Kom- Lurua seated himself upon the one I was stretching my. tape along. 1 shifted him with a hard spank with my open hand, and dgain leaned over my tape. Suddenly I caught sight on the ground of the shadow of an ax fly- ing up above the shadow of my hel- met. Like lightning, I jumped to one side, just as that ax came crash- ing down on the very spot over which my head had been. Before Komburua had time to raise his ax again I had him pinned by the throat, while two police, who were but a few feet away, rushing up. first knocked him senseless with the butts of their rifles, and then, loading them, stood at my back, as I blew my whistle for the detachment to fall in not. knowing how much further the trouble was going. * ok kK ROM all directions the men came tearing up, loading their rifles as they ran, and savagely striking out of their way any native in their path. The excited natives gathered in clusters and jabbered, and spears appeared from nowhere. Peruta soon found out that Kom- burua's attempt to split my skull was due to one of his sudden frenzies of rage, induced by my thwack, and in no way concerned the other natives.| He was given seven days in leg-irons, as a& gentle hint to yestrain his temper in the future, and we resumed our work Komburua afterward tried to get square with me by poisoning our well at night, and, byt for the accident of heavy rain falling at the time, thus washing away the greater portion of the poison, the whole lot of us would undoubtedly have been killed. As it was, we were all extremely ill; in fact, two men very nearly died, and 1, for the life of me, could not make out the cause. The police said sor- gery. 1 did not know what to thin I had no suspicion of the water, though I thought of polson. At the same time, 1 could not understand how it could have been administered to all.of us. One alarming sign was that not a single natiye came near us. 1 took counsel with the police. “There is something very wrong," I said, "but we have to find out what it is before we can cure it." Tt is sorcery,” said the police. “Well, we must find out the sor- cerer and deal with him; what sor- can do, sorcery can undo,” I said. sorcerer is to hit him on the head with a club,” sald Poruta, “for they are no good.” “All very fine” I remarked, first catch the sorcerer.” . “You have sald it.” said Keke (Keke and the other Kiwals had stronger stomachs, and were not so bad as the rest of us). “these people know what they have done to us and are await- ing sults. We can't see them, but they are certain to have some one watching us. Tonight, the strongest of us will sneak out and catch the atchers in the early dawn, and then we shall find but the trouble.” Keke's plan seemed the best. That night the strongest five men crept out, and,.in the morning. they snapped up & solitary. man, whom they discovered In a tree watching the éamp, and brought him in. It was a man named Seradl. who later served for many yvears with me ‘in the con- stabulary. In fact, he was still serv- ing when I left the countrsy. I showed Seradi our sick. As a matter of fact, with the exception of the five men by whom he had been caught, there was not one of us able to stand. I asked, “What is the mat- ter with these men?" b -1 don’t know.” was the reply. “Why are, all you .people staying away from the station?” “I don't know." he repeated, which was a palpable lle. “Reeve a rope, and hang him up.” 1 said. “What, will the governor say?” asked Keke: to' which I replied, “It does not much matter what he says, for' #f we don't find out what this trouble is he'll only have dead men to talk to.” “but * K %ok HE police rove a rope over a beam in the ceiling. I may say.that, during our sickness, we were all liv- ing together in one big barrack room. ‘What are you going to do with me?” asked Beradi:as a noose.was passed round Bis neck. “Hang you by the neck until you are dead. thef, sut you open and look at your inside to find out why we are sick. us while you are alive, and the rope |ing had done. all dead, when they will come and take all your wealth.” “Do the people want to fight us?" I asked. “Oh, no." he said, but if you all dle, they would like your things.” Do you know where Komburua I next asked. Yes, alone in a bush house about half a mile away,” said Seradi. “Very good: if you take my police to him and help them catch him, I will pay you two tomahawks anG make you village constable of the tribe. Seradi apparently thought that this was much better than being hanged, 80 went off with my five fairly sound men, and shortly afterwards returned is? with Komburua. In due time Seradi got his uniform as village constable. which position he filled ,with ability. Komburua got six months' hard labor, a sentence he received with ex- treme disfavor. His first job was to clean the spring and dig a channel in the rock, in which to lead the water to the jail. “Komburua is to drink a pint of water from the well before breakfast every morning,” I told the police. “Then, if there is any more foolery with our water, he will be the first man poisoned. He afterward, however, became a very good worker indeed, and accom- panled me as a carrier on many an island expedition. He alko became very friendly with me, in conse- quence of my curing a periodic head- ache he suffered from. One day. as he toiled with a crowbar at the rock of & precipice, up which we were cut- ting a new road, I noticed that his forehead was all scratched and cut, and asked him what was the matter “There is a devil trying to break out of my head,” said Komburua I sent him to sit in'the shade of the jai' Kitchen, and gave him some pills that eased his head a great deal more quickly than his cutting and scratch-' After he had served half his time I made him prisoners’ cook to the jail, a position of which he was very proud (though the prisoners at first regarded his ap- pointment with eyes askance) and, at his earnest request, I let him off the pint of cold water before break- fast. I remember Komburua, on one oc- casion, frightening fits out of the chief engineer of the Merrie England. 1 was going up the coast in that ves- sel to cut a road from Buna Bay to the Yodda goldfield. I had with me about a score of police and some cou- ple of hundred Kaili Kaill. the Kafli Kaili had an ax, both as a weapon of defense and as a tool for work. My men, in addition to her own complement, crowded the vessel uncomfortably. * ¥k ok X HE night came, and with it a heavy rain. My unfortunate Kajli Kaili crawled Into alleyways, galley, cabins, in fact anywhere they could get, to be out of the wet. Officers and crew were perpetually falling over naked bodles in most unlikely places, and cursing Kalll Kaill and me alike—not that the Kalll Kaill cared. The Cape Nelson police and myself were the only persons they would listen to.or obey; every one else was merely an objectionable foreigner. Komburua, in search of a dry spot, discovered the chief engineer's cabin, that worthy being on watch. He then stretched his greasy form upon the englneer's bunk and went to sleep. Presently the owner of the bunk came off watch, went to his cabin, and there discovered a huddled mass of wet natives on-the floor and Kom- burua n his bunk. With curses and blows he shifted the men from the floor, hauled Komburua from the bunk, You know, but won't tell |and hoofed him out of the cabin. A few minutes later a steward, falling round your throat will prevent the|over the tangled heap of police and knowledge escaping when you are |Kaill Kaili sleeping on the floor of my dead.” cabin, woke up, walling, “For God" The rope tightened. Seradi choked |sake, sir, go to the chief engineer's d held up his hand. lack 1 asked him. “Yes,” was his reply, “I don’t want to put you to all this trouble. Kom- burus polsoned your well. The peo- ple are staying away until you are I said. “You want to talk?” {ing him.” cabin: those savages of yours are kill- jonsense!” I sald; but that wretchea steward would mot let me have any peace; so accoringly, cursing deeply all people who disturbed the sleep of the godly with vain alarms, T paddied along Each of | WASHINGTON, D. New Guinea Is Land Infested by Malignant Practitioners in Poison and Fear—Escape From MAGAZINE SECTION The Sunday Star. SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 26, 1923. : Death Under the Swing of an Axe—Komburua and His Peculiar Method of Showing Resent- ment—Expericncc of the ‘Constable Who Handcuffed Himself to a Captured Criminal. the wet deck to the engineer's cabin.|a dreadful There 1 found the chief lying in his bunk, gazing absolutely horror-stricken at the blood-shot eyes of Komburua peering through the tangled mat of hair surmounting his hideous visage, while he thoughtfully felt the razor-like edge of his ax. for help. “What the devil are you up to, Kom- burua?’ 1 asked, as my naked foot took him fairly. “Get out! “He would not let me kleep in the dry, so T just gave him a fright.” sald that worthy, as he retired, careful sheltering his injured anatomy with his axe. “I thought the murderous brute was going to split my skull every second. and dared not move,” said the chlef engineer; “it's disgraceful that the gov- ernment should allow you to bring such savages on board. “They are all right, and quite nice people if you are gentle with them; but if you use coarse sailor language ana blows, vou offend them.” I told him reproachfully. About a week after I was first es- tablished at Cape Nelson old Giwi, a friendly chief, came in, followed by a strange native who gamboled like a kitten when he caught sight of the police and myself, and exhibited extravagant joy in various ways. He proved to be the sole survivor of ten Doubu carriers who had bolted from the Mambare at the time qf the massacre of Green and his men. The nine others had been caught and eaten at intervals along the coast by the Notu and Okein people. This man, weary and frightened, had reached Giwi's village, and there Giwi had protected him and employed him as an unpaid laborer in his garden— practically a slave. The man told me that he had haa At intervals the chief yelped time chasing the Merrie England from fiord to flord, when last she came, but could never quite catch her. Then one morning he had caught sight of the flag flying over my camp, and had. persuaded Giwi to bring him to me for a reward. 1 bought him from Giwl for a tomahawk, and as he swore that he never meant to leave the shelter of the police camp again I made him cook to the constabular: I then found out that numbers of runaway carriers from the diggers of the Mambare were continually being caught and eaten by the tribes along. the coast. The local natives had their own grievance against the runaways, for the latter used to steal their canoes and also sneak into their gardens and help themselves to food. North and south I then sent notices offering a reward of a tomahawk each for all live runaway carriers brought to me, and threatening dire vengeance against any people killing them. I ¥ a month we received some thirty odd runaway carriers in lots of two, three and up to a dozen. Seradi then told me of a little village in- habited entirely by - sorcerers, male and female, some seven miles away, where they had another runaway tied up for some diabolical purpose. I sent Seradi and half a dozen police to bring me the captive and arrest the sorcerers. These gentry were not at all popular with the Kali Kali. though, like most natives, they stood in awe of them. The police returned, carrying-in a net a man so emaciated that his bones were literally sticking through his skin, and his whole body showing the marks of dreadful ill- usage. He was 80 weak as to be beyond speech, and, though we dosed him with tincture of opium and * ok k¥ brandy, and filled him up with broth, he dled within a few hours. The scorcerers had seen the police coming and escaped. My men told me that their village was unspeak- ably flithy, so I sent them back, in the middle of the night, to surprise and catch the scorcers and burn down the village. They caught only two, whom I sent to jail for six months, their first job being to bury the body of their victim. Where their filthy village had stood the police left a clean, smoking heap of ashes. The prestige of sorcerers among the Kali Kall slumped from that day, and though sorcerers in other parts ot the division continued to give trouble, those among the Kali Kali people “A VILLAGE INHABITED ENTIRELY BY SORCERERS, MALE AN FEMALE." spent most of their time either hiding in the bush, in jail or in explaining to.a village constable and his posse that they were living virtuous and meritorious 1lves. ™ About ‘this time a tribe named the Mokoru, lying to the north of Cape Nelson, captured and ate a number of runaway Mambare carriers. They calmly told me that they wouid do the same to the police, if I interfered with them, but added that T myself was so repulsively colored that they would not dream of eating me. but would feed me to the pigs Instead. xt, the Arifamu, to the south, ate some carriers and snapped up one of my constabulary. He, however, es- caped from them and was rescued by us. Then the Winiapi tribe, also in the south, plundered a trader's vessel and defled me. “The police are but women, and go clothed like women.” was the re- ply to my demand that they sur- render the offenders. 1 fell upon the Mokoru. and with good results. One dark night Seradi piloted the whaler up a creek lead- ing to the house of the principal chief, and we collared him and his son at dawn. The Mokoru, who lived in hamlets scattered over the grassy ridges, attempted to attack and am- bush my force; but in half an hour they had learned so much about the effect of rifle fire in the open as to compel them to decide that eating carriers did not pay. and also that they had better join the Kali Kali by throwing in their lot with the govern- ment. The Mokoru chief we caught was Tablet at French Station Is Rail Centenary Marker PARIS, August 16, 1923. FEW days ago the hundredth year from the inauguration of the first rallway line in France was celebrated. The line was not bullt for travel, but for freight traffic, in a back part of the country. Even so, it required a royal decree to build it, and King Louls XVIII, who had come back after the great revo- lution, signed the decree. - Fourtéen years were to.pass be- fore there was a railroad .for Paris, twelve ‘miles long, ‘and meanwhile there had been another revolutfon. the new -king's minister, Thiers, was to live through two more revolutions and bécome president of the republic that has lasted, but at that time he summed up his ideas about railway: *“They may be all right for the Eng- lish, but I don't belleve they will ever take with the French.” ‘Well, French railroads haye taken, and the through lines alone carry more than 500,000,000 travelers a year.. This first- little railway, of which Parisians never heard, took with the back-country people from the start. It ran from the Asses’ bridge across. the river from St. Etienne back to the village of Andre- zieux, where a tablet has just beén set up to say that this was the first raflway station in France. At that time St. Etlenne did not have 20,000 inhabitants, and Andreszleux had just enough to come out and look at the little wheezy engine which. pulled up to them the few open trucks that car- ried away coal and cattle, timber and men—and women when they had got 1 over their first fright—all dumped together on the floor. Now the working agglomeration of St. Etienne passes, 200,000 souls who are occupled In making ribbons in factorles largely . for the United States; and arms for individuals and nations all over the world; bicycle and automobile parts, because this is a place for metal work; velvets again and dynamos and §0,000 tons of steel a year. = All" this prosperous growth has come to the city because it is in the midst of 55,000 acres of rich coal lands that supply It With 4,000,000 tons of coal a year. That is why it ran this first primitive rallway over to An- drezleux,. which has shared modestly in the prosperity and is now an in- dustrial town instead of the back- woods village that jt was. The whole length 6f this first rail- way line 'was little more than a dozen miles—but it led to the great city of Lyons in the end. Such colliery rail- roads had been running in England for only a few years and even‘in Eng- land anything like a railway for long passenger trains did not appear un- til two years later. Then Stephenson himself was at the engine to drive and a man on horseback rode ahead to cry out “Danger!” Today the president of the French republic celebrates the part taken by Mare Seguin, who did for steam loco- motion as much as Stephenson did for rallways. He was a nephew of Mont- goMier, the first balloonist, and it was Marc Seguin who invented the tubular boiler, which multiplfed the power of the steam. And he was the man who was running this little first railway of France and to that, and to a line of steamboats which he ran on the Rhone river, he applied his inven- tion.” By the way, Ne infroduced the use of iron cables for suspensiofi bridges instead of the chains which had been used before. One of his bridges, the first one over which loaded wagons passed, is still in use over the Rhone, ‘between Tain and Tournon. This was invention: enough for one man and it was all done before he was fifty years old. Until his death in his ninetieth year, in 1875, Marc Seguin ap- plled himself to pure science, and he worked out some of the problems of energy which have helped to the prog- réss of physical sclence. Men have now found qut the “go” of many things as was desired by Clerk Maxwell, who laid the foundations of wireless teleg- raphy, so that there seems to be no end to thé progress. But Marc Se- guin, who was criticized in his time for fooling about such things as rallways, is still worth celebrating. What new revolutions are coming in land travel in France? Necessity is the mother of invention, and France needs coal and has no petro- leum of her own and, while she may be able to produce the liquid for al- cohol motors, it can never take the place of steam. France is a ‘cdm- paratively small country, but she has mountains. and abundant watertalls named Paitoto. He later turned out to be an excellent man, and I made him_government chief and village constable for his tribe. Paitoto only did about a fortnight's jall term, and was then released to take up his duties as village con- stable. Afterward he did a very plucky thing, when securing a sor- cerer whom I wanted badly. Having made the arrest, he locked one ring of the handcuffs on the sorcerer and the other on his own wrist; and for fear that the sorcerer, on the journey, hight overawe him, he threw the key | FEATURES | Dread Sorcerers Pay Penalty for Crimes Among Natives in Bush such socleties hold their sway. The natural inference, therefore, is that there is some connection between them. The usual New Guinea sorcerers, in my experience, kill their subjccts by two methods: First, by material means, that is by administration of actual polson; secondly, by esoteric meane, that is, by working on' the fear of the intended victim. The method of utilizing fear was worked in this way: The sorcerer sent a mes- sage to the intended victim, telling him that he had bewitched or poi- soned him, thus 8o preying upon the mind of the unfortunate receiver of the threat as to cause him either to fret himself into a fever or commit suicide—usually the latter. In New Guinea the law warranted a magistrate’s sending any native convicted of sorcery to jail for a term of six months. This was all very fine, but the sorcerer always over- awed the witnesses by saying, “I of the handcuff over a precipice. Un- fortunately, he then told the sor- cerer such dreadful tales of what I should do to him, that the man hurled himself over a small cliff, carrying Paitoto with him. The result was that Paltoté’s handcuffed arm was badly smashed and I had a dread- ful job repairing it. * k *x % connection with the evil and mysterious doings of sorcerers, T heard of the existence of a secret so- clety called the Kaiva Kuku, the members of which assembled fully disguised in strange masks and cloaks, and went through secret ceremonies and ritual. Branches and agents of it existed in every coastal village. I did not stay long enough in the Mekeo district to have any dealings with the Kaiva Kuku, but, from what I heard of the society while T was there. I believe that they were a set of bloodthirsty, terroriz- ing and blackmailing scoundrels, who badly needed stamping out. In later years, when Capt. Barton was R. M. of the division, T gave him my views about native secret societies, and the Kaiva Kuku in particular; but he held they might be a benevolent organiza- tion, created for the suppression of immorality and vice. My own opin- fon was that they were bad, and ex- isted merely for the purpose of car- rying out unnamable rites and beast- liness, this being borne out by the history of all native races among which secret socleties were estab- lished. Secret societies—to the extent of my expericnce—exist only in British New Guinea west of Yule island; and bestiality, human sacrifice and other abominable crimes have never been heard of outside the regions in which all ready to yield electric power. In that the future seems to be and the successors of Marc Seguin have been working at it—with promising re- sults so far. Short electric -railway lines have long been running, like .that from Paris to Versailles. Now, since the war, the long . through lines are be- ginning to “electrify” their traffic. The falling water is called: white coal, and it is steadily taking the Dlace of black coal. Great American compunies like the General Electric, the Western Electric and the West- inghouse and others are going into partnership with the French com- panies which have the state charters and privileges. And so inventors are trying all sorts of electric auto- mobiles, even motor trucks. Marc Seguin brought up the speed of railway trains from five miles to twenty-five miles an hour. - Those of us who live to his age may see as many surprises as he did on land, hot to speak of the air, in which he did not live to see travel and traffic. A German of sclence has just been trying to frighten Frenchmen with his new invention which, he says, can wipe out London and Parls in no time. Perhaps he will be persuaded to chain his explosiveness to some kind of locomotion that will tzke us around the world in forty minutes. The year Marc Seguin died Jules Verne made people wonder at going around In eighty days. STERLING HEILIG there were any others requiring his treatment; an - Inquiry which re- sulted in the immediate and hasty de- may get six months, but then T shall be free again and you will pay.” Among the Binandere people on the Opi river were two distinct tribes speaking different dlalects. Tabe, the village constable of the lower tribe, who was quite one of the most intelligent of the natives, once gave. mé an instance of the manner fn which the emotions will overcome the habits of order and control instilled into the Papuan. T sent him to arrest a noted eorcerer. After a struggle, in which many men took part, he effected his object: then, securing all the sorcerer's tharms and drugs he placed them In a canoe, together with the sorcerer, now securely tled up with native ropes, and started for the government station at Tamata. On the way thither, among the chattels of the sorcerer, a small net was found into which were plaited twenty-seven small pleces of wood. Inquiry on the part of the village constable elicited the fact that it was the sorcerer's tally of lives, claimed to have been taken by him, or of deaths induced by his arts. The sor- cerer bragged to Tabe that among the number were certain relations of his, whom he named; and he also threatened that he would add some more, including Tabe's wife and chil- dren, when his six months were done. Whereupon Tabe, incited by this threat and also by the relatives of the dead people, decided to try his own methods of curlng a sorcerer, which he did by sinking him in twelve feet of water for an hour. He then made inquires as to whether parture of several ,prominent sor- cerers from the community. Pro- ceeding to Samata, he surrendered himself on a charge of murder lald by himself, and in which the prin- <cipal evidence was his own statement, * ok k¥ TNROM the point of view of a native constable, thoroughly believing in the malignant pawer of the sorcerer, and infurlated by the logs, or threat- ened loss, of those dear to him, it is an Injustice that a sorcerer claiming occult .powers of awful description should be lightly punished, and then released to seek vengeance by the exercise of dreadful esoteric means. Should he not rather, he argues, be sought out and killed in a public, violent and showy manner, that would deter others from following in his footsteps? Absurd though sorcerers’ claims to such powers be, as the foregoing in- stance portrays, yet sorcery or witch- craft on the northeast coast is no child’s play, and the shadow of the fear of it is over the whole tribal life. Much of it, I am convinced, is due to the administration of poison, but a great deal more is effected by suggestion; and, to my mind, there is little difference in the measure of guilt of one who hits his enemy on the head with a club, and of him who secretly gives a poisonous drug and causes death by physical means, or of him again, who, by acting on a man's fears, administers a moral poison to the mind and frightens his victim to death. Some sorcerers claim to possess the power of sending forth their spirits to work evil during the dark watches of the night or while they slept. The Binandere people hold that the spirit of a sorcerer is the only really dangerous one, for though two other kinds of spirits exist, namely, “devils” and ghosts of the dead. such ghosts and devils are innocuous—in fact. Ofa, a son of Bushimai's, once told me that he considered they served a useful pur- pose in frightening the women and children from straying out of the village rat night. Most_ New Guinea natives have a great dread of the dark. Not 8o however, the Binandere. A man of that tribe thinks nothing of travel- ing all night along lonely, unfre- quented paths by forest, jungle, mountain or swamp, devil-haunted though he believes them to be. whereas a Suau. Motuan or Kiwai would die of funk I remember once an epidemio of measles breaking out at Paiwa on Cape Vogel and the cheerful sorcer- ers persuading the people that it would continue until a live man was cut open by them, which was accord- ingly done. On another occasion, at the back of Collingwood bay, Oel- richs, who was then my assistant magistrate, heard of a c where they shoved lawyer vines, with thorns like fish hooks, down the throats of some of the people and then tore them up again I caught the natives responsible for the cutting open of the man really by a great streak of luck. The relatives of the murdered man had complained to me about the affair. but when I came with the police the whole of: the people had run away from their villages to some bush refuge. We searched and we hunted, but no sign of them could we find until at last we found a man, crip- pled by elephantiasis, struggling along a track. When we caught him he was without food and in a great fright, thinking that we should kill him. I questioned him as to the whereabouts of his people, but could get no satisfaction Then, telling the police to leave him a supply of cooked food, I gave him a stick of trade tobacco and aebaubau or native pipe and march- ed on. A few minutes after we left him weé heard yells and sending back I found he was willing to guide us to the reéfuge of his people. “They left me,” he sald, “to ‘be killed or to tobacco, and if your men will carry me I'l show you the hiding place.” Promptly he was picked up and car- ried, and in two hours we were marching' for the coast with the mur- derers on a chain. (Copyright, 1923.) Perhaps a Canoe Would Soothe Her Alice—TI'm yacht. Al—Er, how do you act on a motor boat? simply wild about Ilur\eynu have given me food and -