Evening Star Newspaper, July 31, 1927, Page 78

-:> triangular pieces of silver, which pro- si~aplanted both sticks in the ground a Three white men in the jungles of Brazil, at the mercy of local “kings” and bloodthirsty savages, that were recounted last week in an article by Mr. MacCreagh. Further experiences in the wilds of Brazil are related in the follow- four. BY GORDON MACCREAGH. N retrospect it is easy to reflect that it is incredible what simple can be. Yet at the time no one of us saw anything to suspect. This is what happened. Camping places always seemed to shore, while we were traveling up on the right. One of the bovine Indian paddle men even made the flat state- ment that on that shore there were no less strong and that it was better in every way. “Why, what are you talking about? You don't know the river,” I charged He pointed with his chin. “I know that shore,” he said dog- gedly. That shore was the side we wWere River and the hostile Indians against whom we had been warned. “I know the Tiquie,” the man in- sisted again. “We avoid them, too; sitio of the crocodile.” All that seemed to be reasonable enough. So one evening, when a particularly inviting site lured us and side, we went across, and we found what the man had said about current and mosquitoes to be delightfully true. We did ask him from time to time to the right shore again. “Plenty of time,” said he. “I kpow the Tiqule. Four or five days yet.” One evening the camping place that We tumbled out, and I had all the gear dumped out, too. All unsuspicious, we found a &pot some 40 yards away where we could to prowl about down by the boat. Suddenly there was a wild yelp from the Indians and a chorus of terrified chattering. And with one rush they off and bent to the paddles. That was the last we ever saw of those Indians or of that boat. And that sudden desertion left us in the known. What those hml!serubl‘e run- aways had yelped in their panic was: -~ “Here are footprints! This must be the place of the Tucanal” on a little strip of land, hemmed in by the jungle on each side of us and by the river behind. Somewhere in the gloom farther up the slope people of the Tiquie River whom we . had been warned against at every " stage of the way ever since we had Jeft Manaos. encountered hardships and perils ing article, the third of a series of fools three grown-up white men occur most alluringly on the far left mosquitos and that the current was him. “avolding on account of the Tiquie for those men are the enemies of the when nothing else was in sight on our about the advisability of crossing back the fool expected to find was not there. put up the tent. We left the Indians piled into the boat, shoved frantically ‘most unpleasant situation I have ever Consider us, then. There we were ‘was the moloca of those implacable * K * ¥ 'ORNING came after what seemed - a hundred hours, and nothing ’had happened. Daylight showed that there had been no miraculous mis- take about habitation. A well trod- den path led from the water's edge through & thin fringe of scrub. It was noon before a naked boy appeared, coming down the path, halt .. frightened, half sullen. Obviously he .. had been sent to scout; to draw our fire, as it were. He had been sent to report upon our attitude. Whether we appeared to_be on the aggressive _ or otherwise. We, by all the gods, aldn’t wish to start anything. On the spur of the moment I called $he boy and told him: 1.+ - “Hey, take my stick up to your " chief and tell him that visitors wait?” He didn't understand the Geral, -apparently; but he understood the meaning of a carved stick. - With -.some hesitancy he edged near and -<-took the stick; and then he ran like a scared monkey, up the path. We - ~had played our calling-card; apd upon its reception now everything depended. ‘We were left for another couple Delts and ask ourselves conundrums. It was afternoon before at last the - -head and shoulders of a man appeared = mbove the scrub. A strongly bullt fellow of middle age, naked except for a gee-string and a necklace of jaguar-teeth and claimed him a subchief. He carried my carved stick and another. Solemnly he strode forward and =~ foot apart and squatted behind them. - I knew what to do. I had carefully Jearned all the ceremony of calling. 1 squatted opposite to him with the sticks between us. They formed a == meutral barrier of immunity. Through the space he spoke and gave the prescribed greeting. “Hath thea pure, Kariwa (The chiet “Hath thea bime Ipangu (Thank you for the greeting, Warrior).” That was all. The warrior rose and departed. But that all was as though the plenipotentiaries of the nations had spoken ,at Geneva. The chiefs and the ipages, the witch-doctors, had decided for some reason or other that they would not open hostilities against vs.” We were to be recelved—at all events for the present. The rest would depend upon our conduct. We knew how people feel when the governor's reprieve arrives. It was up to us, now, to return the chief's stick in person and to make the ceremonial visit. Wo took the atick and went up the path. About fifty yards up, it de- bouched into a great clearing, at the far end of which, fronting the river, stood the chief or council moloca, a long barrack of split palm-trunks and a high palm-thatch roof with a full eighty-foot front. Not a sign of life. Yes, just one. The only tnings that moved were the white eveballs of two naked warriors who stood stiffly behind their spears, one on each side of the single door- way. There was nothing very Iinviting about all these indications of an armed neutrality; and I, for one, would rather have turned tail and run from that inhospitable door. But without a word, we walked past the guards, through the door. Within was the immediate gloom of a lofty windowless structure. Away at the rear, a good hundred feet off, was a square of light, a back door, which served to render more obscure objects in the foreground; and they were ominous enough fn all conscience. To the left, just ipside the door, were low stools, hewn out of a single piece of wood. These were the guest stools, We sat ourselves down upon them and planted the chief's stick before us. Menacing sllence still. In the semi- darkness facing us was a circle of naked warrlors, perhaps 50 of them, hemming us in from wall te wall, stifily statuesque behind their weap- ons, like the guards out in front, and monstrous with the dim high lights glinting from their muscles. Still no word. There is something creepily ominous about a prolonged sllence when many people are pres- ent; a sense of something portentous impending. * K ok % T last came a sound from the far rear. Soft padding footsteps. The men in the center of the semi-circle made space, and two women came through, one carrying a basket tray of great slabs of a coarse bread made of mandloca meal, and the other a shallow pot containing a sauce made of red-hot chill peppers and a spinach- like leaf called manisawa. ‘Without word or sign the women set down the viands in the center of the space within the half-circle of warriors and withdrew. The men who had opened up closed together again and the silence was as before. Without a word we: three well Instructed white men roge from our stools, squatted before the offering, and—listen to this extraordinary coin- cidence of convention—we broke bread and dipped it Into the chill stew (it might almost have been wine) and we ate thereof. ‘We were almost strangled by the excoriating mess. I nearly coughed my head from my shoulders. But not till each one of us had broken bread and eaten at least one mouthful in that house and then returned to our stools was the silence broken. Then, like a crash of drums: “Hath thea pure, Kariwa,” boomed from 50 throats at once. I choked desperately over my “Hath thea bime" return. The warriors all squatted down, and then for the next half hour I was kept busy answering a string of questions that were fired at me from all quar- ters, in a manner so ludicrous that if I hadn't been afraid, I should have giggled out loud. ““Who are you? What is your name? ‘Where do you come from? Where a you going? What is your business?” The questions were strictly formal. But every man In the circle had the right to ask as many of them as he wished, for his own satisfaction, no matter whether that question had been asked and answered or no. .It was as though each individual felt it to be his privilege to injéct himself into the conversation. And to each one I had to answer what it might be and to add, “Thea bimige,” equivalent to, “And thank you kindly for asking.” Whereupon the man would acknowledge my reply SN RN AN FACING US WAS A CIRCLE OF NAKED WARRIORS, HEMMI! . Explorers Are Marks for Poiso D. ¢, JULY 31, 1927—PART 5. \ dians were adepts at this—among us— lost art of splitting wood and shaping planks by hand. Similarly with ribs. After that the ark grew apacr [ had five pounds of resin which that splendid factor of Jotte Ja~ had in- cluded for trade with Inlians, who US IN FROM WALL TO WALL, STIFFLY STATUESQUE BEHIND THEIR WEAPONS. gloom in behind him, and a woman brought fhe cigar. Then «( last I felt easy. The break- ing of Licad meant that hospitality had been accorded to us. But the ceremony might have gone no farther if the answers to the formal questions had not proved satisfactory. In that case we should have been at liberty to withdraw and to camp in their territory without molestation until we should be ready to depart. But the cigar signified the distinct hand of friendship. It was a porten- tous thing, two feet long and as many inches thick, rolled in a spiral of a thick leathery leat containing certain other aromatic leaves, some chips of a soft white wood, gum from the ca- Junut tree, and a little tobacco. It was held between the prongs of an elaborately carved holder shaped exactly like a huge tuning-fork, the lower end of which was sharpened so that it might be thrust into the ground. L DOUBLE-8IZED stool of the shape as the gueststools w: brought for the chief. He seated him- self on the one half and indicated the space at the left. Nothing appealed to me as being ridiculous as 1 went and sat beside this burly specimen of a naked savage. Nor to him, of course. Gravely he plucked the great cigar-holder from the ground, puffed a cloud or two, and passed it to me. Gravely I puffed and planted it in the ground again. Others of the men came and squatted in front of me from time to time, took a puff at the cigar, and handed it to me. I puffed, and a few words passed. Our nerve-racking crisis of the night and forenoon was over. The chiet gave us to understand that on account of the good reports about us, by stick and drum, which said we were a different breed of white men from those who traded the rivers, we were welcome to stay in their country till we might be ready to go, and that there would be no enmity between us. and my thanks by repeating, “Bimige” (thanks for telling me).” In this extraordinary manner an hour was spent replying to half a dozen simple questions. Then the mends his stick). " 'hat _meant, “Greeting, White ‘The proper answer wa: Spirited BY THE RAMBLER. ENATOR JOHN CONOVER TEN EYCK, Republican, of New Jersey, spoke against the Dis- trict emancipation bill on the last day of debate on that bill in the Senate, April 3, 1862. He was charged with having a money in- terest in slavery and explained thut “Several family servants had been bequeathed to two persons between one of whom and myself there exists a very dear and near relation.” I assume the person was his wife and that she was a Washington woman. I have made the following brief of Senator Ten Eyck’s speech: “I shall vote for the bill reported by the committee on the District of Columbla as it has been amended. 1 should have preferred, and I say it ! grankly, something like the one offered as a substitute by the Senator from Indiana (Wright, whose bill pro- vided for gradual emancipation, com- pulsory colonization of freedmen and full compensation to slave owners). I approve fits general features. favor the idea of gradual emancipa- tion upon @ vote of the people of the District of Columbia, accompanied by proper remuneration to the loyal owners of the persons proposed to be set free. “In 1868 a worthy, honest and dis- tinguished gentleman of Illinois (Lin- coln), in many speeches and espe- clally in a speech delivered by him at Freeport, Ill., in August of that year, in answer to certain questions pro- pounded to him by another distin- guished citizen of that State who is unhappily no more (Stephen A. Douglas), declared his views on this subject. This question was put to him: ‘I want to know whether he “#tands today pledged to the abolition of slavery ia the District of Co- lumbia?' “The answer was: ‘In relation to that, I have my mind very distinctly ‘'made up. I should be exceedingly . .glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia. I believe that Congress has the constitutional power to abolish it. Yet, as a member of Congress, I should not, with my .present views, be in favor of endeav- oring to abolish slavery in the Dis- trict of Columbia unless it would be upon these conditions: First, that the abolition be gradual; second, that it Z be by a vote of the majority of the ‘.qualified voters in the District; and, third, that compensation be made to the unwilling ow ‘With these ‘onditions, I confess I would be ex- ‘ceedingly g194 to mee Congress aholish chief, who squatted in the center of the semicircle, made a sign into the SENATOR JOHN C. TEN EYCK OF NEW _JERSEY. slavery in the District of Columbia and, in the language of Henry Clay, “sweep from our Capital that foul blot upon our Nation.”" “Sir, 1 fully accord and agree with the sentiments contaimed in that an- swer. Such is the general character of the bill proposed by the Senator from Indiana. Nay, it I am correctly informed, the bill is almost an exact opy of a bill introduced in the Hause of Itepresentatives by the gentleman to whom 1 have already made allu- sion. In June, 1860—but two years fol- lowing these discussions (Lincoln- Douglas debate)—ene of the largest, most respectable and intelligent con- ventions of a political character, and perhaps of any other character, ever dssembled in this country, met at Chl- cago, and among other things they de- clared that the ohject of the Republi- can party was not to interfere with the institution of slavery in the several States where it existed, and declaring that slavery should not be extended or carried into the Territories. They put in nomination the eminent gentle- man to whom I have already made al- lusion, with hif® declarations on the fuhject of slavery uttered only two Debate Ended ‘Though the fear of battle and mur- der and sudden death had passed from our immediate horizon, our sky was by no means clear of the dark clouds of calamity, Thers we were, in that village of all others which we had beén particu- years before, and with respect to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, fresh in their minds. ko ¢TN the canvass which followed in the Fall of 1860 in the Middle where ~ parties were more % balanced and where the people hdve perhaps rather more of a con- servative tendency than they have in the Northern and Eastern sections of the Union, the people and those who addressed them understood those views as uttered in 1858. I myself met the opposition of the Democratic party with them, who charged that the object of Republican party was to interfere with and overthrow the institution of slavery everywhere in the country, and I referred to the declaration of the standard bearer of our party. * ¢ ¢ “Sir, having declared that to my tellow clitizens, during the public can- vass, with approbation in the State where I live, I should feel that I had not performed my duty here today if I had not expressed my preference for the system of gradual emancipation in the District of*Columbia upon the terms and conditions specified in these declarations of the standard hearér of the Republican party, made but two short years before, and which he had not withdrawn or retracted. “A day or two ago I had the mis- fortune to differ from my associates on this floor in relation to a vote that was glvsn on the proposition to sub mit the bill to a vote of the people of the District of Columbia. I thought that was a proper provision. The bill proposes radical changes in the laws, systems and institutions of the people of this District, They are ancient. ted from time imme morial. They have existed from a long time anterior to the formation of the Constitution and the establish- ment of the seat of government in this spot. They existed under the laws of Maryland. * * © “I do not say that this institution ot slavery ought not to be done away with. I only question the mode pro- posed. 1 only expressed my prefer- ence for’another mode—its gradual abolition—but if the unanimous pre- vailing sense of this body is other- wise on a question of public policy liks this, why, I must defer to that prevailing sense. “I may be pardoned for repeating the off this District have no representation in Congress, They are taxed swithout representation—a subject uj ‘which our fathers went to war with Great larly warned to keep far away from, surrounded by Indians who, while for some providential reason or other they were not actively hostile toward us, were not overflowing with peace and good-will. We had leave to stay on the front lawn, so to speak, until we could make arrangements to,go away. ‘The days of anxious waiting passed Into a couple of weeks; and one thing at least became certain. Even though some floating miracle should come up-river to deliver us, we could no longer hope to work our way up the foothills and over the mountains be- fore the rainy season was upon us. That part of the expedition would have to be abandoned. Young America, the youngest of the party, had the only useful suggestion, which he voiced with his customary terse bluntness. “You poor pills give me a cramp!” he said. *“We came to make records of Indians, didn't we? Well, what more Interesting Indians could we find than this bunch? Nobody knows anything about ’em, except that they don't want to be known. They're an absolutely new fleld. What more could you fat-heads want? As for their bad rep. that's a lot of blah.” There was worth in Young America’s suggestion. And as time the conditions of our » that it was beginning to be possible to carry it out. These ferocious men had been aloof and suspicious In the beginning. They had accepted us as not very wel- come guests, dumped willy-nilly upon their private landing-piace, and while they didn't incontinently massacre us, they let us severely alone in our tent down on the water front. But presently, as they found that we didn't interfere with them or their women, and that we paid what we promised for small services, they were ready enough to be friends. Presently a few of the men came and acted llke disinterested statues, some distance from the front of our tent. Each time they did so I went out and talked to them and handed out a clgarette apiece. * ok kK THEN I played my master stroke of diplomacy. I sent the chief—who had maintained himself in dignified aloofness since the ceremony of the reception—a present of a machete and invited him to tea. Him alone, with no other to detract from the dignity of the occasion. I have a priceless photograph of that powerfully built naked savage sitting in a canvas camp-chair before a folding table, grinning with supreme delight over a tin cup of very sweet tea with two honest-to-goodness white explorers. The whole village gathered round to envy: and the chief right royally would nod to soma lesser dignitary, from time to time, and show him honor by letting him approach for a ip from the kingly cup. And guess what fascinated him most and what he kept telling his people about. The nice slick feeling of the greasy old well worn canvas chair against his naked skin! More waiting. And the problem still remained of how to go, of how to get away from that place before the rainy season began. So I con- celved the ambitious idea of building me an ark of refuge. Time was what we had nothing else but. Hardwood lumber cluttered up the jungles. And labor was plentiful. Tools, thanks to my obstinacy, I had. No boat-building tools, to be sure; but with an ax and some nails to hand, was my navy rating of first-class car- penter's mate to be nonplussed? About a mile up-river there was an old war canoe that had stove a hole in its bottom and sunk. Thirty feet long, it was, and of solid mahogany; so it was virtually imperishable de- spite 10 years' immersion in the mud. I bought it from the chief, in situ, for an iron spoon, and I contracted with him’ to supply me with three strong men for as long as I should need them for a lump sum of three pleces of cloth, 50 fish-hooks, and as many iron nails as I should have left over out of my store after finishing my boat. That old war-canoe was to be the base of all my building. To it I pro- posed to attach floating ribs and so bulld up my sides, thus obviating the laying down of a keel. I sent my three strong men into the jungles $o fell me trees of the same sort as that war-canoe was made of. No cheap boat was my ark to be. Mahogany of the finest, no less; and hand-hewn planks, at that. The In- HE PLANTED BOT1. STICKS IN THE GROUND A FOOT APART AND SQUATTED BEHIND THEM. 1_SQUATTED OPPOSITE HIM, WITH THE STICKS BETWEEN n Darts of Brazilian Stranded in the Jungle and Among Hostile Natives, They Gain Respite With Carved Stick of the Ceremonial Call—The Bread of Hospitality and the Cigar of Friendship—Winning an Armed Neutrality—Building the Ark of Refuge. used it for fastening their spear and arrow heads solidly into the shafts. So I unraveled rope and shredded it to make calking-material for the seams; and 1 commandeered all the canned Argentine butter and all the soap out of expedition stores and melted them down with the resin, and 80 contrived a splendid seam-pitch. It had to be lald warm and melted in with a hot macheteblade. But it served its purpose of making a tight seam. THE anxiety that ail shipbuilders know, the momentous day of launching, arrived. We held a solemn ceremony. We made a rich wine of the red juice of the fruit of the pupunha palm mixed with caxiri, that terrible cane alcohol out of the demi- john; and we wasted none of it on the prow of our ship. ‘We drank it up while half the tribe heaved.the ponderous craft into the water. It floated right side up, and it didn’t leak any more than was to be expected of a dry boat. So we shouted with a loud voice and named it Mizpah. I had the Indians roof over the after end with palm thatch, as was done with monterias, and over the forward half I added an invention of my own, evolved out of observation of one of the chief discomforts of monteria travel. This was a frame- work over which I lashed our big tarpaulin. It served a threefold purpose—the rowers would be sheltered from the sun; the overlap was sufficient to roll down the sides like awnings and keep out the rain when it came; and, most important of all, under it we could lash our hammocks and so be inde- pendent of camping places ashore. All that we should need to do would be to tie up to a tree at night, let down our shades, and be all cozy within. All that was left to do was to engage a crew of husky lads and train them to row in To or less unison, with oars made paddles lashed to polea. And then, just as it was all finished, the labor of four hard weeks, and my crew was shaping up like a Carlisle eight, of course the invariable least- expected thing happened. A balata boat came down river. And empty. It wouldn't listen to our signals; and away from the farther shore we could see its miserabls crew of three straining frantically at their oars to get out of that locality of evil xx k% " Savages repute. But what did that matter to_us? We dashed out in our low and rakish galley and intercepted the skulking trader. The man's surprise at seeing white men come from that man-eating village was a one-act play- let. He kept saying. “But senhores, itnat is Taraqua, the Tiqule outpost, is it not?” And we told him that surely that was Taraqua, the village that killed traders: but that he might pass unmolested if he gave us all the news of up-river. He was willing and anxious to take us as passengers to any place at all; to carry our freight, everything. But —saddest words of tongue and pen! —if only he had come a month earlier! Now we had our own beautiful ma- hogany yacht, and word had come but two days before that the chlefs of the Tiquie River would welcome us. Nothing would make me forego that unique opportunity to get into the very backwoods of these people’s country. (Copyright. 1927.) = . The Tonnage Puzzle. TO many who are not experienced with the ways of ships and ship men the various uses of the term ton- nage In relation to the size of a ship are very confusing. There are four kinds of tonnage in use in shipping circles and they all mean something, contrary to the landlubber’s impres- sion, but they all mean something dit- ferent. Deadweight tonnage is what the vessel actually can carry in tons of heavy cargo, plus stores and bunker coal. Gross tonnage is based on the cubic contents of the hull, with cer- tain arbitrary spaces deducted; ac- cordingly it has little bearing on the cargo-carrying capacity. Net regis- tered tonnage Is gross tonnage with further deductions on account of crew space and machinery space, and again has little bearing upon the dead- weight figures. Finally the displacement is the total weight of the vessel when full of cargo, and accordingly represents the weight of her hull plus her dead- weight tonnage. These two items can at least be made to appear reasonable to the most hopelessly non-technical mind by thinking of the hull—the ship itself—as live tonnage; displace- ment is then "live tonnage plus the dead tonnage which can be piled onto a vessel. In round numbers, a ship of 9,000 tons deadwelght would bave a gross tonnage of 5,000 and a net registered tonnage of 3,000; she would displace 12,000 tons of water when fully load- ed, so that figure represents her dis- placement. N\ ~ i l‘, lt‘ %HV\\ AU PRI | ontest Over District Emancipation Britain. They, at the same time, it is true, have received large benevolences and large gratuities at the hands of the Government. They have no vote in Congress. They have not even so much as a voice on the floor of Con- gress as the Territories of the United States. I think upon a question of so grave and vital importance as a radi- cal change of the laws, systems and institutions of the people of this Dis- trict, now comprising some 70,000 white persons, it would be no more than reasonable to submit it to their consideration. I think it is in accord- ance with the spirit and nature of our institutions, which are based upon popular suffrage. Although I would not be willing to adopt that principle with respect to the Territories where everything is fresh and new as the SENATOR LYMAN TRUMBULL OF ILLINOIS. Photographs by Handy. morning and where new institutions are about to be planted * * * yet in this District, where the existing laws and institutions were formed at the time the Government settled down here and took possession of this tract ated fact that the people of | of 10 miles square, it seems to me | here. that there is a propriety in submit- ting such a question to the people. s ¢ o Such a course has heen already taken fn this Djst in two instonces: The act of Congress for the retroces- sion of that part of the District south of the Potomac to Virginia and the act revising the code for the District were both submitted ta a vote of the people for adoption or refection. “I could express my preference that Congress, in endeavoring to relleve this District from this vestige of rorvi- 'tudo, will not feel disposed to 1i.:pose a badge of vassalage upon the people of the District. I know they would not design any; I know there is no such disposition. Sir, the most com- plete vassalage that a conqueror even could®impose upon a vanquished peo- ple would be to change their laws and institutions without their consent. ¢ * * “I know that upon this subject the wisest, ablest and purest statesmen this Unlon has produced and sent to | these halls—at_ the head of whom stood the late John Quincy Adgms— questioned the propriety of interfering with the institution of slavery in this District, or at all events, without the consent and approbation of the people residing here.” H * * % S INATOR TRUMBULL of Illinois in- i terrupted at this point and sald: i “If the Senator from New Jersey « would allow me I should like to ask him a question. What propriety is . there in 5,000 voters, assuming that Is the number here in this District, de- ! termining for my constituents in Illi- { nois or his constituents in New Jer- «sey whether the capltal of this great ation shall be a slave-holding dis- trict? If it is submitted to the people at all, should it not he submitted to the people of this whole Union? Is there any justice in allowing the few inhabitants settled here to determine i for the people of the whole Union whether their Capital shall be a slave- { holding community? And in the next i place, why submit it to the voters here? Suppose that an individual re- siding out of this District owns slaves in the District of Columbia, ought he not be permitted to vote? There are many such cases, and my friend, know, will not take it unkindly when T say that I have heard it intimated that” perhaps he himself may have gome interest in this institution. .I do not mean’to say that it controls his vote at all, but if such were the case, ought not he to be consulted as much as the person who happen: It seems to me that there i no propriety in submitting such a question as this toithe voters of this locality. . Sennt Ten Wyek veplied: “The Capital has remained within a slave- holding district since its establishment bere, and although there has been, from time to time, great complaint made of this fact on the part of some, and that complaint is growing per- haps more strong trom day to day, yet 1 am not aware that the fact that the Congress has been compelled to meet in a district surrounded by such circumstances has impeded the prog- ress of this Government or the execu- tion of its functions here. There would be no more propriety in the people of the United States voting on this question than there would be in a citizen of Illinols, who happens to own a house in the City of Washing- ton, being permitted to vote in the charter elections here or on other questions affecting 1roperty in this city, * * * Now, r., I will answer the last question of the Senator from Illinois. It is somewhat personal in Its character, but the question is not a new one to me. The matter has not only been brought to my attentlon in the way of questions, but I have been traduced and denounced in the pub- lic prints and privately, and my posi- tion and action upon this floor has been questioned and criticlzed in con- sequence of the charge repeatedly made that I have some interest in ery in this District. I have no interest in any such institution. It did happen that by the death of an| aged cltizen of this District a few years since two persons, between one of whom and myself there exists a very near and dear relation, became somewhat interested in a few family servants. The number, as God is my judge, I do not now recall, so little interest have I taken In it. 6 It was, not less than ten nor more than twenty —some of them aged, some de- crepit, some young—but all family servants who had lived in the fam ily of an aged lady in this city for many years. “It is well known to persons resid- ing in this city that from the hour of that occurrence I declared that 1 would have no connection with or part tn the matter, and would assume and have no control over it whatever. 1 have stated to my friends these facts, privately and everywhere, but as that seems not to have been sufi clent, I avail myself of this occasion to say in the face of the American Senate, in the face of the American people, that it I ever had any technl d release and abjure any interest that by might legally have been cast ¢ this hill should pas persons to receive compensation, neither myself nor the person to whom I have alluded would ever pre- fer a claim or touch the first dollar to be appropriated by the Treasury of the United States.” Never! Never! I do not believe that because a man happens to be a slaveholder he is therefore of necessity a rebel or a traitor.” * k k X ENATOR WRIGHT, to have his substitute for the District commit- tee’s bill acted on, offered it in amend- ment of the committee bill by moving to strike out all after the enacting clause of that bill and insert his bill. The chief provision of the Wright bill (similar to the Lincoln bill of 1848) was: “That all children born of slave mothers - within said District on or after the 1st day of —, 1862, shall be free, but shall be reasonably sup- ported and educated by the respective owners' of their mothers and shali serve reasonable service as appren- tices to 'such owners until they arrive at the age of 21 years, when they shall be. free.” The authorities of Washington and Georgetown ‘“are re- quired to use their efforts to deliver to their owners slaves escaping into the District.” It was also provided that the bill should be voted on by the citizens of the District. Senator Morrill said that Wright's proposal was not an effort to amend the committee’s bill, but a mode of assailing it. Senator Saulsbury of Delaware spoke on the proposed amendment. He said: “It there be any difference between two measures which are obnoxious I think the proposition submitted by the Senator from Indiana (Wright) is the preferable one; but as I never in- tend to vote for the principle of abo- lition_in this District, or anywhere else, I shall not vote upon his amend- ment. I intend to vote agalnst the bill to abolish slavery in this Dis- trict.” Senator Ten Eyck said: “If this proposition (the Wright amendment) were shaped that it did not give compensation to disloyal as well as for it, but as it is I must say ‘Nay.'” ¢ The Wright amendment was voted on—yeas, 10; nays, 27—and was lost. ‘The 10 Senators voting for it wi James A. Bayard, Delaware; J. 8. Car- lile, Virgini tucky; A. Kennedy, Maryland; M. Latham, California; J. W, Nesmith, Oregon; L. W. Powell, Kentuck John Sherman, Ohlo; W. T. Willey, Virginia, and J. A. Wright, Indiana. Senator O. H. Browning of Illinois | 5ot the floor and made an anti-negro He said: “We cannot do any colored people of this country without combining with whatever action we take upon this subject a system of colonization. It is not legal and political emancipas tion alone that can do much for the elevation of the character of these people. We may confer upon them all the legal and political rights we ourselves enjoy, but they wil] still be in our midst, & debased and degraded race, Incapable of making progress, because they want that best incenti to progress—social _equality—which they can never have here. There are { repugnances between the two races that forbid their admission to social equality.” Senator ' Browning voted for the mancipation bill a few minutes later. Senator’ L. W. Powell of Kentucky | poke ‘aguinst the bill, saying:’ “By i this bill you deprive the people of the District of Columbia of their property £ do it by legisiative nent. 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