Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1913 — HAD FIRST WIRELESS [ARTICLE]

HAD FIRST WIRELESS

African Tribes Used Drums, Etc., to Convey Messages. News of Important Events In Heart of Sudan Sent to Trading Posts on the Coast—Had Their Own Telegraph Code. Paris. —The principle of telegraphy would appear to have been anticipated by the savage tribes in the heart of Afriea. This barbaric system of communication, at once practical and effective* survives to this day, and its value has been tested many times. French explorers seem to have been the first to bring this system to the knowledge of civilized people. By means of it news of important events in the interior of the Sudan reaches all the trading ports on the coast in a short time. The communication is made by means of various- Instruments, the most common ones being horn, tomtoms and whißtles. The horns are made of solid ivory, hollowed out of elephants’ tusks. The mouthpiece is at the side. These trumpetß are of various sizes, but the favorite ones are very long and give seven distinct notes, produced by plugging the mouthpiece with corkß of different sizes. The ordinary tomtom is a hollow bit of wood, with a goatskin over one end. The following Instance illustrates the manner in which the native telegraph is employed. The post commander at Stanley Falls was once informed by a native of a neighboring village that a provision train had been attacked two days before at a point 180 miles further down the Kongo. A week later the party arrived and confirmed the story in part. They had reached the scene of the alleged attack at the time reported, but the shots that the natives had taken as indications of c conflict with robbers had been fired at a herd of antelope. At a later period, when an officer of the French Kongo came to grief in the rapids, the accident was reported the next morning at a village 188 miles distant Among the Bengali tribe a sort of xylophone is used with four notes, by means of which the natives communicate over great distances in a kind of telegraphic language. An American missionary working among the Basutos discovered that the villages bad means of conveying messages from'one chief to another or of transmitting the intelligence of defeat or victory. The Basutos hollow out a large gourd and thoroughly dry it Then kidskln as hard and as thin as parchment is stretched across the hollow of the gourd. When beaten with a padded drumstick this gives forth a sound that may he. distinctly heard at a distance of from five to eight miles.

In every village here is a class of men who are utilized as scoutß. Among these there are always some trained to the use of the gourd drum. The code is what might be called «n African Morse alphabet and is beaten on the drum in the open air. The sound is carried across -he valleys and glens to the next village, where it is interpreted by another scout If thp message is for a distant village he repeats it on his drum, and a this way it is carried from village to village, with very little loss of time until it reaches the person for whom it 1b intended.