ROUGEMONT'S TALES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 223, 21 September 1898, Page 5

ROUGEMONT'S TALES.

SENSATIONAL ADVENTURES IN

AUSTRALIA

SYDNEY, September 20.

There is but little doubt that Rougemont is identical with Henri Grien, late resident in Sydney, who some years ago spent some time in the South Sens and Torres Straits fisheries. He used to recount thrilling- tales of his adventures to his children, one of whom bears the name of Cecil cle Hougemont Grien. His wife recently received a letter from her brother-in-law in Switzerland, stating that her husband was then spending' a holiday in that country. His wife has identified a portrait in the Wide World Magazine as that of her husband.

The 'St. James' Gnzette' recently published the following- .with regard to M. Louis de Eougemont: The 'Wide World Magazine' has secured one of the most extraordinary sensations of recent, times in the person of a wonderful Frenchman, M. Louis de Rougemont by name —who has onty just returned io civilisation after having1 been east away for 30 years among" the cannibal tribes of unexplored Australia! Away back in the sixties young1 De Koug-emont went pearling1 with a Dutchman in the South Seas, was wrecked, and was thrown upon a desert island in the Sea of Timor. He afterwards spent a quarter of a century of residence on the Australian main among the cannibal blacks. There are weird incidents which will, cause a thrill of horror and pity throughout the civilised world, such as the finding- of two English girls as the wives of a cannibal chief, and the discovery (in a condition of idiocy) of the lost Australian explorer, Gibson. M. de Eougemont made his pots and pans out of virgin gold, and maintained his prestige among his strange subjects by all sorts of astonishing devices—not the least among which was his drawing a colossal portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, pictured on the rocks with charcoal and queer pigments such as the blacks were wont to decorate themselves with on the occasion of a corroboree or festival dance. M. de Eougemont has appeared before eminent geographical authorities, who have heard and cheeked his story by means of maps and charts and explorers' latest reports. Indeed, so interesting is M. de Rougemont's narrative to scientific bodies, apart from its popular interest, that arrangements are being made for him to read a paper before the llritish Association at their Bristol Congress in September. -M. de Eougemont will also approach the Western Australian Government on the interesting subject of, some new goldfields of vast richness which he found during his amazing wanderings.