FREAKS IN AFRICA. A Rare Field for the Curiosuity-Seeker.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 374, 5 June 1889, Page 6

FREAKS IN AFRICA. A Rare Field for the Curiosuity-Seeker.

Carl Steckelmaxk, who lived several years in West Africa, made a large collection of curiosities illustrating the arts, habits a-iti superstitions of the natives. His collection, which is now in Indiana, whore he lives, has attracted attention, and there were many visitors to the museum which he opened in Indianapolis last winter. There ara curiosities of other .-orts, however, in all partt. of Atrica, and it would not take a smart showman long to pick up freaks enough on the west coast to stock a dozen museums. Entirely outside the dwarf tribes, who are the strangest people in the world, explorers find here and thcie little folks of advanced yem& who are made much of and arc usually seen at the residence of tome chief. Onty one of these littlo follows has been honoured with much attention in records of travel, and his piccuro appears in Spoke's story of his discovery of tho Nile sources. On the west coast Doko dwarfs may sometimes be seen in the crowds along the shore when a vessel arrives. A. B. , Ellis was of the opinion that with one off these dwarfs, a boj' he saw with two ' stomach?, a few albinos, who are by no means uncommon, and two or three horned men he could set up a dime museum of no mean pretensions. The horned men, sad to relate, wear their horns not on their foreheads, but on their cheek bones. They belong to a small tribe that is found north of Ashanti, and a few of them sometimes get down to the coast, where they have ceased to be curiosities. Some surgeons who examined two of theso men a few years ago decided that the ex crescences on their cheeks were of an osseous nature. They form lumps rounded at the extremity and projecting about an inch from the face. Thoy are not particularly ornamental, but they would probably be worth a fair salary to the possessor if exhibited in a Bow eiy place of amusement. Two or three travellers have written of a Roman Catholic priest in Fernando Po who i? willing to make affidavit that he has seen three men in Gaboon with short tails. These curiosities seem to have made good their escape. Many tiavellers in tho early days recorded inarvellousstorie^of Africians who wove tails, but none of the chroniclers had salt enough to catch them. Years ago a female slave, who was said to have come from Central Africa, was examined in Constantinople by a physician in the hospital there, and he declared she had an unmistakable tail about two inches long, smooth and hairless. She said she belonged to the threat Niam-Niam tribe. The fame of this tribe as wearers of tails was spread far and wide in Africa long before a white man ever visited them, and Mr Ellis says the story still circulates on the coast. But Schweinfurth spoiled the sensation, though he pronounced the jSfiam-Niam the finest specimens of physical beauty he ever saw. Other curious people in Africa are persons who seem to be naturally spotted, not like the leopard boy known to our museums, but with patches of yellow or brown which diversify their otherwise black skins. Another interesting peculiarity has also been recently observed. That is, that different members of the same family are sometimes of different colours. Black children and brown children are found to be brothers and sisters, just as we have brunette^ and blondes in the same family. This peculiarity has also been recently observed by Dr. Fin sen among the natives of Kew Guinea. — "Kew York Sun."