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NEGROES OF THE WOODS.
A Story That Is Unique In the History ol
Human Migration.
On any good map of South America
may be found in Dutch Guiana the names
of a number of savage tribes inhabiting
the wooded and hilly uplands of the in¬
terior. Among them the Aukan, Sa
ramaeca, Bekoe and Bonis are full
blooded negroes, many of whose ances¬
tors were brought to America nearly two
ccnlaries ago in slave ships to labor on tho
coast plantations of their Dutch masters.
Terrii>ly maltreated in the early days of
the colony, many of them took refuge in
the almost inaccessible solitudes of the
forests. Now and then they found means
to tempt their friends still in bondage
to join them in the mountain val
leys. The bondsmen played a sor*y joke
noon their masters in 1712, when Ad
ii ma l ( assard attacked the Dutch settle
meats, and hundreds of slaves were
hurried into the interior for concealment,
Pence soon came, but there were few
n groes to return to the coast, for they
prelenvd wild life with their friends near
the headwaters of the rivers of Guiana, to
drudging (heir lives away on coffee and
tobacco plantations. Bo the numbers of
self released Africans gradually increased,
and there their descendants have lived
ever since, as distinct from the Indians
around them as from the whites of the
coast. They have, apparently, not
grown in numbers for many years, but
there are now about 8.000 of them, and
they are known as the Negroes of the
Woods.
Their story is perhaps unique in the
history of human migration. It is a
story oi wild savages transported across
a wide sea to a new world, where they
regained control of their persons arid ac
tivities and reproduced amid new sur*
roundings the habitations and customs of
their native country. Dim tradition
alone lias faintly preserved the memory
of their fatherland, but none the les*
have they turned a bit of tropical Amer¬
ica into a semblance of the negro's na¬
tive home. Jet black in color, progna¬
thous and thick lipped, they have pre¬
served the pure negro type, have shown
little aptitude for improvement, and are
very low in their social scale. Like
many an African missionary, who has
fruitlessly toiled his life away, the Mora¬
vian brethren have labored for years
among the Negroes of the Woods with
little apparent result. In all essentials
they live today like those negroes of the
west coast of Africa, who have had con
siuerable contact with the white races.
Their rectangular huts of wood and
thatch, built along the water courses,
are almost exact counterparts of those
that are found on the lower Congo and
among some trilies of the Ogowe riv*-r.
Like the great Pahouin tribe of the
French Congo, they divide their huts by
thin partitions into two compartments,
one of which t hey use for sleeping and
the other for culinary purposes. Like
many African ... tribes they j , twist their .
\\ool into little braids, wear arm and leg
ornaments of copper, brass and iron,
and adorn their necks with strings of
beads or the teeth of wild animals. Like
, ...... , , .
whirl, fa not uncommon among tho In
dians, but is practiced m Africa by only
a few tribes, like the Tahouin. In their
villagea tliey are generally naked..and
they wear cotton coverings only when
Iheir rcilnt'^Uirc of orumneJIlNnd'i^it
saa&aatjy
ing on the ground for^ the Indian .Ji&m
mock, which thev weave out of fibers.
Wliite men rarely vLit these Africans
of the forest, chiefly, perhaps, because
their streams, which, Howin- °tlie to the sea,
are the only highways into interior
are dislike'to very difficult of ascent The whites* uegroea
they mingle with the and
neyer leave their savage homos ex
cept when the need of rum and ammuni- i
tion drives them to the settlements. Then
! the lazy men, who usually engage in no
toil except fishing and the chase, cut
down a few trees, skillfully fashion the
trunks into canoes, and float them down
the creeks and rivers to sell them at the
towns. Jitener still they make little
crafts of valuable varieties Of timber, and
invest the ... pioceeds m powder and ball,
bcadsand ad liquor, ionku beads also
these V four 111 tl::< e ,esourref of blacks, ’- like kin
groups
dred ti mes m Airica. are ruled by king
lets, and some ol them take their names
from chiefs wlio led them in the wars the
; Hutch long waged upon their escaped
slaves, only with the result of driving
them further into the woods. They live
chiefly upon vegetable food which the
women raise and prepare. They make
n( ? pottery, no rf being descended from
tribes in Africa that are skilled in this art«
! Calabashes made of gourds are the re-
1 ceptacles for their rice and cassava. The
j Cact is especially noteworthy that these
; Negroes of the \v oods are more muscular
;nu ^ vigorous, better formed and more
buoyant in spirit than their kindred, who
for generations have continued to toil on
^ ie c,, Mr s t plantations, dliev are all of
•
the same origin, and they afford another
P ro<) f el the fact that man can far better
Perpetuate his best physical and mental
qualities in a state of savagism than under
conditions where he is simply condemned
to a bop.-les.s life of unrequited drudgery.
Now York Bun.
—
Coffee Not injurious.
“It is nonsense, ” said a chemist, “to
S ay that coffee is injurious on account of
the cafeine in it. Cafeine is an alkaloid,
which, taken in larger doses, would pro
duee nervous troubles and other serious
consequences, but is present in coffee in
; such infinitesimal quantities that it is
perfectly harmless; on the contrary, it is
to cafeine that coffee owes its tonic ] rop
orties. If coffee .il injurious it works very
, slowly, for thousands of pedple who use
it to excess live, to a good old age. They
say Voltaire drank forty-eight glasses of
it a day.’’-—Philadelphia Times.
The Tomb of Byron.
The church of Hucknal Torkard, Notts,
England, in which is the tomb of Byron,
is being rebuilt, but it is said that not a
stone of Byron’s tomb will be disturbed,
and the block of marble sent for the pur¬
pose by the king of Greece, and embel¬
lished with a laurel wreath wrought in
brass by Mr. Richard Belt, which marked
the poet’s grave, as well as the tabled to
his memory, and the mural monument
in memory of his daughter, Lady Lqye
lace, will, after the restoration, occupy
the same positions relatively to the grave
as now.—New Y r ork Sun.
-Writing Upon Glass.
The new pencil introduced by Faber
for writing- upon glass, porcelain and
metals in red, white and blue are made
by melting together spermaceti, four
parts; tallow, three parts, and wax, two
parts, and coloring the mixture with
-white lead, red lead or Prussian blue as
desired, These pencils are convenient in
the laboratory, and save the trouble of
kibdmg— Boston Transcript,
„ a , ,„ r Hair Dlsease ,.
A . Lmdon T , association . ,. is endeavormg . . to
estobMh a hospital for the treatment of
kmr diseases, with a staff of tncholo^ste
Rlld such as the coming
“Arrow Throwing in i ngtand.
Assegai throwing is to be the popular
amusement in England, according to
The Court Journal. It is called - arrow
throwing,” for short, and is said to have
been introduced by persons returning
from tops to Zululaud and other pfaces
il is praeUced by the natives. -
New York Suu -
Three Book Fiends.
The tall copy man, the uncut copy
man and the wide margin man are about
the most cranky of the bibliomaniacs.
What they want nobody else would have.
They are a trio of cranks of about the
game class. Every time a book is pub
. lished, the publisher prints a few copies
which are longer than the regular edi
tion. These the tall copy fiends seek.
1 They like to stand a long book on a shelf
alongside the regular sized book and
gloat over the fact that they have a dif
ferent kind of book from the common
buyer. If a tall book of some rare edi
tion falls into their hands, they go into
ecstacies of joy and bend all efforts to
get a copy of the regular edition to stand
< alongside this book of bastard size,
His brother in hobby, the wide margin
man, is contemplated by the book pub
lisher, who prints a half dozen books of
an edition with abnormal margins to a
page, and sells them for five times the
, regular price of the book. If the books
j marketed by a publisher are already cut,
as the American publishers are accus
tomed to do, he saves a few copies with
the leaves uncut and sells them to the
uncut copy man. This one is the worst
crank of all. To him a book is only
valuable as long as the leaves remain un
cut in the folio. He does not buy a m&an bopk
* to read. The standard authors
nothing to him. If he can get a copy of
a first edition of Scott or Dickens, which
no one has ever read, because the leaves
have never been cut, he values it higher
than all the books these novelists ever
wrote. His idea dt a book is one in
which the pages shall be sealed from the
e y©»—Globe-Democrat,
New Ciironographic Watch,
The Parisian watchmaker, Schwob, has
brought out a new ciironographic watch
(montre observateur) which is a marked
improvement on the ordinary stop watch,
tChe face is furnished with a second small
dial, similar in size to the second’s dial,
By touching a knob the hands of this
dial, which is a complete • copy of the
large one, are at once replaced to 12
o’clock, and then continue their progress
from that point.
This method is very practical, as it not
only shows the time of commencing an
observation, but infallibly determines its
duration without the least trouble, all the
observer having to do for this latter pur
pose being simply to read the time indi
cated by the small dial, and to subtract
that time from the true hour of the large
dial- Tins can aU be done without exer
cismg any memory or making any note.
We think the invention mvaluable for
making astronomical or other o sorva
tions. The eye need not be even rttrned
to the watch in touching the knob, vTiich
can be done in perfect darkness. A .-deeper
is suddenly awakening from a nightmare,
or hearing a strange noise at night, and
wishing tp fix the time of the occurrence,
need only press the knob of his watch and
turn Ins head quietly round on his pillow,
knowing tliatm the mornrng he will have
the exact hour and minute correctlJr
registered.—Watchmaker and Jeweler.
Presidents’ Horses.
Zach Taylor rode at Washington the
iSTamewas its name was onu. uuun iUd- iui
lowed the funeral car of the dead presi
dent to hfa grave. Franklin Pierce used
to gallop prSdenc£ about °He the steeete tw^ of W^hing- S'
hfa rode
White House stables. This coachman
says Buchsuian liad ore set of harness
which cost $800. Its buckles were heav
ily plated with silyer, and it had fifty-six
solid silver “3s in different* places
upon it. Buchanan, however, never rode
on horseback, but his niece, Harriet Lane,
was accustomed to gallop -with tto other
society girls of that day over the hills
about Washington.—Chicago Times.
u -
188 S. T»
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