Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1893 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

ACCIDENTS AM) INCIDENTS OF [EVERY DAY LIFE. Queer Facts and Thrilling Adventures Which Show That Truth Is Stranger Thau Fiction. A FRRvrtr statistician, who has b'en studyingthe military and other recofds with a view of determining the height of men at different periods, has reached some wonderful results. He has not ouly solved some perplexing problems iu regard to the past of the human race, but is also enabled to calculate its future aud to determine the exact period when man will disappear front the earth. The recorded facts extend over nearly three centuries. It is found that in IGIO the average height of man in Europe was 1.75 meters, or say five feet nine inches. In 1790 it was five feet six inches. In 1820 it was five feet five inches and a fraction. At the present it is five feet three and three-fourth! inches. It is easy to deduce from these figures a rate of regular and gradual decline in human stature, and then apply this, working backward and forward to the past and to the future. By this calculation it is determined that the stature of the first men attained the surprising average of sixteeu feet, nine inches. Truly, there were giants on the earth in those days. The race had already deteriorated in the days of Og, aud Goliath was a quite degenerate offspring of the giants. Coming down to later time we find that at tjte begiuuing of our era the average height of man was nine feet, and iu the time of Charlemagne it was eight feet eight inches. But the most astonishing result of this scientific study comes from the application of the same inexorable law of diminution to the future. The calculation shows that by the year 4000 A. D. the stature of the average man will be reduced to fifteeu inches. At that epoch there will be only Lilliputians on the earth. And the conclusion of the learned statistician is irresistible; that “the end of the world will certainly arrive, for the inhabitants will have become so small that they will finally disappear”—“finish by disappearing,” as the French idiom expresses it—“from the terrestrial globe.” Mr. Walter B. Harris, who has just returned to England front Tangier, writes a letter to the London Times which scents to prove beyond dispute the existence of the so-called “dwarfs” of Mount Atlas, about whom so much has been written of late. Mr. Harris encountered a number of these small folk and collected a good deal of material about them front their neighbors, who say that they inhabit the most inaccessible parts of the mountains to avoid the payment of tribute. But he does not believe in the pygmy or troglodyte theories. He says: “I think that it is now conclusively proved that the small people of Mount Atlas are not ‘pygmies’—that they are, in a fact, merely a certain collection of Shielt tribes, who, through the high altitudes at which they live, aud the extremes of climate they are subject to, from their poverty and inability to grow crops, from the scarcity aud bad quality of such food as they are able to collect, have, in the lapse of centuries, become of almost extraordinarily stunted growth. Why then have they not been seen by former travelers? The answer is simple. Both Sir Joseph Hooker and Mr. Joseph Thomson, almost the only Europeans who have ever visited the Atlas, were during their travels entirely in lands governed by Kaids representing the Sultan, and the very proximity of these Kaids would drive the ‘small people’ to a distance, who would never on any account visit their castles. It is for this reason alone that the existence of a stunted race of Shieh people must have failed to have attracted their notice. Francis W. J.\MESof Port Townsend, Wash., who, with J. B. Webster of Oakland, was of the pioneer population of that Territory thirty odd years ago, stated in a letter to Mr. Webster recently that the Makah tribe of Indians at Cape Flattery, just south of Vancouver island, are increasing in numbers, which is unusual, and that they are as wealthy a community of Indians as exists in the United States, made so by their industry, also unusual and the increased value of sealskins. These Indians now have their own schooners, and cruise, with a white captain of course, as far north as Alaska, aud are very successful. They also are noted whalemen, and engage extensively in the cod, halibut and salmon fisheries, there being rery extensive halibut banks a few miles seaward from Cape Flattery, which are cow annually visited by a numerous fishing fleet. These banks were discovered by Mr. Webster and two other white nen in 18)9 and quantities of the fish cuight and cured for market during the next few years by his company. Port Angeles is sixty miles from Cape Flattery and was thirty years ago without inhabitants, but is now a flourishing city of 3,003 inhabitants, with a grand future teforc it. On Christmas Day, when the fourmasted American ship Cyrus Wakefield was in a gale, First Mate William Mitchell was knocked overboard and swept far astern. He had climbed to the poop deck aud had taken a firm hold of a life line to steady iim9elf, when the spanker boom got adrift, and swinging around struck him and hurled him over the starboard quarter. One of the crew tied the deep-sea lead ine to a life preserver and cast it overboard. Suddenly the leadline tightened as though a monster fish had seized it. “I have him! He’s caught the line!” yelled the seaman. As the line threatened to part, a heavier one attached to a life preserver was allowed to drift down to Mitchell. The lead line indicated his distance astern to a yard. The last of itg 160 fathoms had been payed out when Mitchell grabbed it. The second line he also caught, and the crew started to haul him aboard. This was finally accompiished, but the first mate was more dead than alive when taken out of the water.

A most extraordinary story comes from Boise City, Idaho, which is said to be well authenticated. It is said that three travelers were at the upper end of Lake Chelan recently and one of them went in bathing, when he was seized by the foot by a marine monster and was being pulled into deep water when his screams attracted the attention of his companions, who came to his rescue. They pulled him ashore, the monster hanging to his foot. It had legs and a body like an alligator and the head and eyes of a serpent. Between its fore and hind legs were large ribbed wings. The men tried hard to tear the monster from the foot of their companion and finally tried fire, which had the effect of causing the animal to rise suddenly into the air, taking the victim aong and finally landing in the lake, whee both disappeared from sight. Johss Hopinvs University still gossips of Professor Sylvester, the marvellous mathematiciai who came over from England to t< ach be science in which all his interests cented. His mind was ever occupied witi mathematical problems,

and all sorts of odd things happened to him on the streets of Baltimore. The most amusing episode of his life on this side, however, grew out of a voyage to Europe. While abroad he made some highly important calculations, - but on reaching Baltimore he found that the paper on which he had figured was missing. Ho important were the calculations that he took a steamer back to England in order to look up the papers. He did not find them, and started back to the United States deeply disappointed; but duriug the voyage over he accidentally discovered in a pocket of the overcoat he had worn on the previous voyage the very thing he was in search of. The plague of wolves in Shensi, a mountainous province of North China, is described as becoming more and more alarming. A correspondent in that part writes that in the village in which he is sojourning they had heard of eleven persons being carried off by these animals Ift seven days. Most of the victims were children; the rest young persons of sixteen, nineteen and twenty years of age. “They come,” says the writer, “to our village here overy night just now. Men are bestirring themselves, going out in large numbers to hunt them, us yet, however, unsuccessfully. To-night we have put poisoned mutton in two places not far off, hoping to find at least one dead wolf to-morrow. They roam in open daylight, besides entering villages and carrying off helpless little ones. Three went in company a few days ago into a native village; one of the number entered a hut and snatched a little child from his father’s arms. Pursuit in every case has been futile. It seems this is their breeding time, hence their abnormal boldness.”

The usefulness of carrying a sharp jack-knife was shown the other day in a Lewiston (Me.) mill, when one of the young women’s hair came tumbling down as she passed a piece of heavy machinery and the ends of it caught in some slowly revolving cogwheels. The girl screamed, but did not have the presence of mind to break away at once before more strands of hair were caught and dragged in. She stood there holding out her arms and screaming while her head was drawn nearer and nearer to the fatal wheels. Then up came a man with a sharp jackknife, lie compassed the hair of the girl within his left hand and held it firmly as he might a rope and with the other hand severed the hair close to the wheels. A itATHEK ghastly story is told regarding a French Countess, a friend of Camille Flammarion, the astronomer. On one occasion, observing her in evening dress, he frankly expressed admiration of her beautiful shoulders. When she died, in accordance with her directions, enough skin to bind a book was removed from this part of her person, and sent to Flammarion, with a note gracefully asking him to use it as a cover for a volume of the next work he should publish. It is said that after a skilful tanner had been employed to prepare this strange memento, it was actually devoted to the use prescribed; and upon the cover was inscribed, in gilt letters, “Souvenir d’une ruorte.”

The picturesque little village of Payerne in Switzerland, not far from Lake Neubourg, possesses a unique curiosity in the shape of a saddle which belonged to Queen Bertha, the founder of the Benedictine Abbey, which has since been transformed into one of the best educational institutes of Europe. This saddle, which is more than 900 years old, is of peculiar antique shape, having an aperture for the knee in the pommel. Queen Bertha was noted for her zeal and industry, and in order to set a good example to her subjects she always rodo from one place to another to gaiu time. A queer rabbit story, which beast “Uncle Remus” at liis best, comes from Davidson, N. C. John Hedrick killed a very large rabbit during the snow. It had a large raised place on the inside of the left hind leg which he cut into and found between the flesh and hide two leather-winged bats, which were full grown. The bats were fastened to the flesh of the rabbit by a leader or something similar. There wa9 not a broken place in the hide until Mr. Hedrick cut it. An extraordinary ease of suicide is reported in the Berlin papers. A sixteen-year-old boy, feeling himself humiliated by a severe reprimand that had been administered by his parents, seated himself in a chair, and. after loading a revolver handed it to his brother, a lad of six years, and compelled him to do the shooting, The little fellow fired but one shot, killing his brother instantly. The monomaniac who, in 1839, stopped Queen Victoria while she was riding on horseback in Hyde Park and nosed marriage to her has recently in Bedlam, the celebrated insane asylum of London. He seemed to be perfectly sound on every other subject, was well educated, and wrote very sensible letters relating to insane asylums and the reforms which could be made in them. He was eighty-four years old. Men cutting ice at Buxton, Me., found a half-blown water iilly imbedded in one of the cakes. It was thawed out, put in a* sunny window, and soon bloomed out as handsomely as any lily of July.