DEXTEROUS THIEVES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1177, 22 November 1883, Page 3

DEXTEROUS THIEVES.

A Chinaman has been known to seize a man’s finger and cut it clean off in the midst of a crowd, to obtain possession of wring, and escape detection. This immunity is due, perhaps, to the great resemblance which the faces of a Chinese mob bear to one another in European eyes, rendering individuals absolutely indistinguishable at first ; as well as to an ingenious artifice for disguising a broadbladed knife in the semblance of a closed fan, such as all Chinese carry, Hindus will float or swim cautiously along a river at dusk with an old basket or gourd on their head, whirling and twirling lazily with every eddy, and braving the crocodiles, to gain an entree, to the bungalow they decide to plunder the very nose of its proprietor. The writer once saw a coolie immigrant in Guiana, a field hand on one of the sugar plantations, towing a log of wood along one of the muddy canals or trenches which intersect the cane pieces. He passed the manager on the path, salaamed composedly, and was plodding quietly on towards the village, when the rope hitched in a stake in the bank, causing the log to tilt up, and disclosing the fact that it was ballasted underneath. ‘Something’ proved to be a coffee-pot and various other silver utensils, which had been purloined from the breakfast table laid in the verandah of the house to await our arrival. In a few hours doubtless the whole would have been converted into bangles, anklets, and earrings ; for the poor Indian’s untutored mind is just as keenly alive to the advantages which attend the development of specie unlawfully acquired, as that of Mr Fagin or any other metropolitan * fence.’—Chambers’ Journal.