Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1894 — A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION. [ARTICLE]

A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION.

How a Doctor Was Tempted To Be come a Cannibal. A real fine old English gentlemat was Dr. Thomas Gunton, who while confabbing with a number of friends in a prominent resort recently, related a number of interesting experiences in his career. His later years have been passed looking out for sick people in the Canadian wilds, but his younger days were marked with activity and no little adventure. “ What do you regard as about the most perilous position you were ever in, doctor?” asked one of his friends. ‘‘Well,” musingly replied the doctor, “ I am sure that a circumstance that happened when, as a young man, I had the double office of supercargo and surgeon of an English trading vessel on the African coast, left a deeper and more painful impression on my mind than any other event in mj’ life.” His listeners gathered somewhat closer, and the doctor went on : “Our captain and the ship's company generally were pretty well acquainted with the natives, and various kings and priests and other men in authority would frequently come aboard to get a bite of salt pork, and once in a while a glass of rum, etc., so it was not considered dangerous to go ashore and make little excursions into the interior. The natives were cannibals, but they knew who to eat, and interest for their personal welfare prevented their mouths watering for the blood of an Englishman. I went ashore one day with the mate, who got the notion into his head that he wanted to kill two or three gorgeously plumaged birds, cure and dress their wing feathers, and take them home to his sweetheart. We got separated in the jungle, and I became lost. I had left my pocket compass aboard the ship, and to save my life I couldn’t locate myself. Well, I was in that forest two days without a thing to eat before I was lucky enough to 1 strike the coast, from which I had at no time been three miles distant. I was starving. I think for the first time in my life I realized what hunger was.” Here the doctor made a grimace. “Boys,” he said, “-as I got near the coast my nostrils met a most savory odor. It increased my torment of hunger ten-fold, while my heart rejoiced at the prospect of food; but to my horror and fright, I walked right into a group boiling a man. The remembrance of the temptation offered me clings to me yet. Weak as I was, however, I ran from the place lest I, too, should become a cannibal. If I remained, in my starved condition I should have partaken of their broth. But I was safe, for a party of the ship soon found me, and when I saw them I fainted dead away.

“That terrible temptation,” the doctor continued, ‘ ‘ was the one event of all my career that makes me gloomy whenever I think of it —and I almost always think of it.” — [Washington Post.