Events That Have Happened.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 110, 13 May 1904, Page 4

Events That Have Happened.

A NATAL CANTEEN STORMED. PIETERMARITZBURG, March 22. The reports of a military riot at Howick appear to have been a good deal exaggerated. There were 600 details stationed at Howick awaiting shipment to India. They had not received their pay, and forty of them rushed the cant)) canteen, and rolled out the barrels of beer. They resisted an attempt to recover the jbeer, which they proceeded to drink amid general merriment. ■ There I were no arms in the camp. In response to a telegram sent to Pietermaritzburg, 140 of the West Yorkshire Regiment, with two Maxim guns, were despatched to Howick, but on their arrival it was found that the beer had heen drunk, and the men were orderly, and quietly entrained. No one was injured. SOLDIERS' CANNIBAL FEAST. HRUSSELS, March 23. Mail advices relate another ghastly and circumstantial story of cannibalism practised by soldiers of the Free State on the Upper Congo. A number of British missionaries journeying in the Aruwimi region arrived at a military station at a moment when, under the eyes of the Italian officer in charge and his Belgian subaltern, the soldiers of the garrison were engaged in a wild cannibal feast of the most sickening description. A huge fire blazed in the centre of the ground, round which the participators in the orgy squatted as they devoured the revolting meal of human flesh. Some little distance away four blacks sat with their legs and arms bound, while round them the women in the station danced, yelling and taunting them that they, too, would soon be slain, roasted, and eaten, as their comrades had been.

The Italian officer explained that he had only just returned from an expedition on which some prisoners had been taken. As soon as his men were inside their compound they had broken out into a cannibalistic frenzy, which neither he nor his subaltern could suppress. The soldiers were, therefore, carrying out their own methods of dealing with prisoners.

The missionaries sent an immediate report of the matter to the British Consul at Boraa.