The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 18, 1901, Page 10

'HE SUNDAY CALL FIRIACE BWCHANA SIBANARA - & DAYS OLD, FIRST FILIPING CHILD BORN ON AMERICAN SOIL - NAMED FIER GENL, BUCHANAN N the w f childhood all posterity Pan-American E: f the globe member. Some are and women in tu in 1 fact and old in es from the re bronze of spices and isle aninnies m our ne right little Mexi- canos v ic Japs. In fact. th dimir »eople might be said to hands a In a matter ¢ dainty little ta takes is the sma 2 dainty pocket piece of humanity, perfect in fig- ure and pe ng all the graces and ac- complishment belle of her years wh h she herself admits to the number of three languages with . a charming voice well d has the actress’ usual pench- wels. She is a wealthy woman ulges her taste for moder nd s particularly nd the automobile, partial to the £ pecimens ng often whirling through sition grounds with their fair And if Ch undc lita is the oldes in point of he youngest, not even excepting age of the -incubator children, is Firiaco Buchana Sibanara This is a Filipino baby, born on the Expo- sition grounds. and on the oceasion of his first portrait takin of Old Glory, on the just five days old, and the f . wrapped in the folds Fourth of July, t full-blood- was ed o child to see the light of day on American =oil Th young citiz named in’honor of the director gen W. J. Puchanan, has been the of much attention on the part of curiofi visitors at the Filipino village, and thrives well in his thatched bamboo cabin on the Midway. k other he Filivino of there are a number, run about in pictur- children, whom AILROADING in Maine has not without its incidents latel sort time ago the trains on the Canadian Pacific Railroad we and the story went out that accident had happened near ic, near thé western border of Maine. As the line of the Canadian Paci- fic runs for miles through the wilderness of Northern Maine, the report could not be verified at first. A press telegram was sent ¢ ting that the Colonist Limited bad gone through the bridge, and that e numbers had been killed, but at last the overdue train arrived at Jackman jon, and the story was told. Before any person én the train would be first made a rush to the general store near the Jackman station and bought a bottle of some emollient. As the passen- gers rubbed the soothing compound on the bulging blotches of mosquito bites and on the red rash that marked the punishment dealt by black flies and midges they re- lated their experiences. t seems that when the train, composed of heavily loaded colonist cars, struck the foot of a steep grade, the engineer noticed that (he drivers began to slip and grind in a somewhat unaccountable fashion. The engineer leaned out of the cab and saw that numerous green worms were crawling on the sleepers and the rails. He yankFed the sand lever and set the throttle “ say a word, up a notch or so. The great wheels came flogging down on the rails and the engine rocked and trembled, but the grade grew steeper the locomotive labored more ineffectively. At the top of the grade and continuing for a quarter of a mile is a trestle over Moxie Brook. As the engine puffed and snorted toward the end of this trestle, slipping, grinding, jerking ahead and then almost slowing to a standstill, the engi- neer noticed that the green worms were growing more numerous. Behind they had been in patches and thin processions, like the stragglers behind an army, but at the end of the tr and along the viaduct as far as the eye could distinguish them they were packing rails and sleepers like a carpet of moving, undulating green. It was evident that the worm army wanted to go somewhere and was using the trestle of the great Canadian Pacific over which to make an exodu: For every one squashed by the engine wheels two more took his place on the rails, and before the trestle was reached the wheels of the locomotive gave a last, despairing buzz on the slippery rails and then the train jerked to a standstill. The weight of the cars even pulled the locomotive back a bit ere the brakes would take hold. The conductor came forward along the side of the train, scuffling through the sand of the roadbed and stepping gingerly through the patches of crawling worms, and come ain 5 ion, playing native utwit the powers that be favorite sport of the far esque costumes, share of admi and scheming tc by planning t archipelagoes—a cock Several events hs been attempted in obscure nooks of the Filipino village, but the watehful eye of the manager in chief pre- any poultry bloodshed not strictly g to New York s. Many of pino children there are scions of stock, as family trees go in our new sion, and are distinctly proud of their nat ancestr iming to have sprung from neither Chinese nor African bears. The native Filipino is a very vain personage, and resents the imputa- any foreign strain in his makeup. The leap from the island of Guam to tion o the pampas of Mexico is a long one on the map but a short one on the Midway.’ “The Streets of Mexico” offer a thousand inducements, from bull-fighting to native musie, on the queerest and most plaintive of instruments, and among other features boy singers of remarkable merit, and still smaller boy acrobats. They are a partic- ularly picturesque little band, their taste running to gold braid and immense som- breros and their spirit of mischief keeps their managers guessing. They are likely to be somewhat spoiled children before the days of the turnstile city are over. From Mexico to Hawali is another leap of the imagination and a two minute walk og the asphalt. Here little people in their wildest environments are seen, far removed from anything of the Occi- .APACHE TND DURING INCUBATOR VERA BOSTOCK. BABY AND BER PET LJON CUBS YOUNG ACROBATS - dental soil. illed The Hawaiian children dancers and singers, serpentine gyrations barefoot on the to the doubtful harmonies of shrill reed pipes, the tomtom and the weird cherus of the Kanaka band. To cress a narrow street here Is to make a half-globe réturn journey to Georgia, where a score of rollicking pick- aninnies sing and dance, play craps and do the cake walk through the day with never a care. They are melodious little people, too, with a repertoire of quaint folk songs of the sunny South that ma aimed to be the only characteristic an music that we can boast thus far in our national musical évolution. The pickaninnies of the “Old Plantation” are by no means mere hoodlum recruits of are in writhin sod HMEXTCAN VILLAGE . REMONY OF PICKANINNIES 1N A CAKE-WALK — 'OLD PLANTATION ANYOUNG APACHE They are a real fea- set among “rahzor- Thompson street. ture of the hoecake scenes of the land or variety, cotton and backs” and lynching bees. There are other little people of the Pan, but two ¢ especially appeal to the visitor, one on account of, their very un- earthliness, the other for their very nearnéss to human sympathy. The for- mer are the Lilliputians of the craters of the moon: the latter the famous incu- bator babes. The moon midgets help materially carry out the illusion of a visit to tr extinct satellite, being attired in the glis tening spiked costumes which tradition somehow attributes to imps and elfins of this mystic variety—probably cence of the ancient moon hoax which convulsed the world half a century ago. These ludicrous dwarfs, with their giant king overseer, give the human note to things otherwise as remote from man's habitation as may be imagined. The incubator babies are a little peopla exclusively. While the diminutive repre- centation elsewhere is a more or less spe- cial feature, here it is “the whole thing." And a profoundly interesting study the little ones are, snatched from certain doom at the very hour of their premature to a reminis- NAMING THE FIRST-BORN , "QBATA ~ WEIGHT, 2T 1bs. 202 “CHIQUITA’ SMALLEST BUCK - IN%L_.L'WARP IN THE WORLD s oirtn, placed In a scientiffc machine for nd after a few months ored to their moth- o survive to good mally born babes right to work accomplishing the miracl of saving life against obstacles that seem insurmountable and odds incalculable. But to call them “incubator bables” is a mis- nomer. ghey are not incubated, like the chicken from the egg in one of the famil- lar kerosene poultry farm machines. They are taken at birth when the con- ditions of food and air make their survival quite -impossible, and safe behind plate ss developed into normal babyhood. ere is no incubation about this seien- tific apparatus, yet the misnomer still clings. Be that as it may, all honor is due to the clever Frenchman who conceived the idea of carrying om artificially the work which naturs left off with prema- ture abruptness, for the percentage of in~ fant mortality has been lowered to such an extent since the introduction of the so- called incubator as to warrant the ap- proach of science to the province of actual parental stock, science , ga at the forbidding that wa over his running gear, and even dripped llow streams from the rims of The conductor and engineer stood there a moment passing florid com- ments on the situation and as they talked they kicked out first one leg and then the other in order to shake off the deter- mined crawlers .who insisted on a tour of investigation. A few passengers, seeing these queer an- i arted to come forward, but there were too many worms in sight. The engineer thought that he could run back a mife or 5o and get enough momen- tum to run over and through the mess. He told the conductor that he hadn’t been looking for any Coxey's army on the rails, and therefore had not taken the grade at very determined speed. So the train was backed two miles. Then the enginee: took the engine broom, and, with the assist- ance of the fireman, cleaned off as much of the worm lubricant as he could. Then with the thréttle wide open, using every pound of steam and with sand valve pulled to the limit, he slammed to the foot of the grade. But half way up he saw that his charge was going to be without avail. His first onslaught on the hosts had left the rails smeared and slimy. Since then-new batches of worms had crawled recklessly over the bodies of tne AT HEL slain. These later arrivals were crushed into the mess left by the first vietims. Even the sand could not cut the coating so that the driyers could rub the rails. The locomotive came to a halt witn its pilot just poked over the first sleepers of the trestle. There was a second council of war. The engineer suggested that he take the coil of hose in the cab, hitch it to one of the cocks and sweep the ralls with water. This recourse was tried. But as soon as the water began to run each worm halted and clung with all its legs to rail or sleeper. He was able to flatten himself in such fashion that the water sluiced over him ineffectually. As soon as the stream stopped the worm placidly re- sumed his course. The water in the ten- der couldn’t be wasted in this fashion, for steam must be kept up. It was then suggested that the train wait patiently until the worm army had crossed over, but after watching the pro- gress of a sample worm for a few mo- ments the conductor decided that this would not do. The worm did not hike right along, nor did .any of his fellows. Each hitched and undulated for an inch or so and then used up valuable time in reconnoitering. The worm lifted his head, Jjabbed his stubby snout first to right and then to left and took a long and contem- plative survey. Then ne hitched along a few more inches and repeated the leisure- ly survey. The‘ situation was worse than that of a trolley car behind a watering cart in a narrow street. One of the passengers on the train, a Western farmer going back to his old home in Germany for a summer visit, said that he believed the only way was to make brooms out of birch withes and sweep the tracks. He declared that he was willing to assist, and on this many of the passengers volunteered. Getting the train out of its predicament was a matter in which all were interested. So the train crew and the others set to work cutting withes down in the ravine, and several in the party tied the withes into brooms for the use of the others. In ten minutes fifty men were out on the trestle sweep= ing away for dear life. The air below the framework was filled with flying worms. They pattered like green rain on the leaves of the trees below. To be sure, there was a quarter of a mile of trestle 1o clean, but it seemed like a fairly easy proposition. Here, however, ensued a complication. The complication first tackled the men who went into the bushes after the withes. Up from their retreats came the black flies, the midges and the mosquitoes. They chased the choppers out of the woods and then fell upon the men who were sweeping the track. A person who has not been in the Maine woods cannot understand the tortures that these little terrors inflict. They are at their worst in July. Pérsons who do not understand those things may think it sounds puerile and cowardly for a man to admit that black flies have “driven him.” But even hardened woodsmen and guides will not venturs into the woods in June and July until they have smeared their leather hides with grease and tar and other compounds. The passengers and the train crew were wholly unused to the pests of the Maine forest, Many of them were from cities, and if black flies ever laugh these terrors of the Moxie must have chortled when they espied the fair white skins of these strangers who had suddenly dropped among them like manna from heaven. By the wireless telegraphy in use in in- sect land the news was sent abroad, and clouds of pests came winging in valley and hill. Mosquitoes arrived and went away “in content. Black flies splotched the faces of the tollers. These flies do not fear any movement of man, and settle on the face and hands in patches. Their bite is acute agony. They must use saws where mosquitoes drills, to judge from the sensation. Each worm sweeper was followed by clouds of these flies, streaming out be- hind in the air like banmerets. The midges, such tiny specks as to be hardly visible, came too, and burrowed in the over use \ skin In all the claims that had not been ! staked out by their bigger brothers. The' sting of a midge is not a whit less agons 1zing than the bite of the black fly. As the warkers perspired the pPlagus grew worse. At st fully half the men threw down the rooms and ran for the shelter of the fairly screaming with the torture the ins: 'ts were inflicting upon them. Only a sportsman who has been in the Maine woods during the sum- mer can understand how infernal the in- sect persecution {s. Other passengers worked on, wielding the broom with one hand and swatting flies with the other. It was nec ary to keep one or both hands whirling constantly around the head in order to escape being eaten alive. But fighting the pests was about like kicking out against a breeze. The natural relief from such ineffectual warfare is to swear. So the passengers swore and swatted and swept, and swept and swatted and swore, their perspiring faces puffing redly with the poison that the insects were pumping into them. At last even the bravest gave up the job and they retired to the cars and left the worms and the insects masters of the trestle. - The lilliputians were the econ- querors of the day. When night came on and the. insects went away the fight on the worms was resumed, and at last the train got over the grade and awav. But when the passengers got off at Jackman their faces were so swollen that they could barely open their eyes suffi. ciently to see the way to the store wh an enterprising Yankee keeps face h:-‘ tions.—New York Tribune,