MODERN MARCO POLO.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 292, 10 December 1929, Page 16

MODERN MARCO POLO.

CYCLING ROUND THE WORLD. CANNIBALS AND BANDITS. JOURNEY OF 71,000 MILES. "To see much is to learn much," the adage has it, and M. Julius de Vilnits, a Latvian by birth, and a, cosmopolitan through infinite globe-trotting, who set out to ride the world round on a motor cycle, has proved its truth.

Fifty-seven months ago, in 1925, he set out from his native town, Riga, and since then has covered 71,000 miles by land and sea. He has visited every country except Russia and. South America, and the latter he intends to go to after he has left New Zealand.

Ho does not consider his experiences proper began until after he had left the Occident behind him and entered Asia Minor. "The ways, of the people enmesh you," he said, "and the age of the land's tradition Wraps you round like a cloak." .He was journeying to Damascus, and like another traveller in the Holy Land, he "fell among thieves."

Left for Dead

j It was at the time when there was trouble between the Druses—the Arabs —and the French. The Arab tribes retired to the mountains and left their retreats only to raid and kill. M. de Vilnits was cycling along the apology for a track near the railway line, when a party of picturesquely-robed natives stopped him, taking him by his speech and clothing to be of the race of their hated 'masters. "Their dress, my frien', I say to you that it was the one tiling picturesque about them. The next thing I know, I wake up with almost nothing on me. I lack shoes. They take all they can lift from my machine. My coat, it has disappear. I got to the city—it was not far away—and there I was taken care of." The authorities in the city told him that the band had encamped near the railwa u for a very specific reason. The "train which had como through a little time before him had been held up and all the ammunition intended for the French had fallen into the hands of the Arabs.

Such bandits, ho was informed; wei'e shot on sight. He produced a photograph showing a firing party which had just felled a line of some 50 bandits. They were lying in a courtyard, just as they fell, in all the grotesque positions of death. Companion Killed in Russia. The scene changes. M. Vilnits has travelled via Egypt into China. In Egypt he had stumbled across a CzeehdSlovakian wanderer, who, like himself, was travelling by nlotor cycle. They combined forces, and in China his friend was killed by Bolshevik Chinese.

"We\ were riding near tlie city of Nanking along an abominable little donkey track parallel with the railway about 11 o'clock at night. All that day we had listened to the whizz of desultory bullets, and had grown somewhat accustomed to them. What do you say 1 Familiarity breeds contempt? My frien' was pushing his cycle about seven paces ahead of me, when lie seemed to fall over. I pulled up. I thought the roughness of stlie path had thrown him. I; waited but he did not move, and I thought he had hurt himself.

"I stooped down and took "his hat off; and I tell you with it came the top of his head. My friend had beeli riddled with bullets, Blood spurted all Over me —the blood of my friend! "I was almost paralysed—you can understand; and to make matters worse, I heard voices coming near. I just lay down where I was, and I pulled my papers out of my pockets and pushed them under a bush. I was saturated with blood, and in the dark I suppose. they thought I too was killed. They, robbed me of my boots, my coat, almost all my clothes, kicked me and left me." Captured For a Spy. . M. Vilnits managed to get to Nanking, and eventually to Shanghai, where the French Consul supplied him with money. All things British were boycotted in China, continued M. Vilnits. It, was practically impossible to buy bread, only rice. He was once taken for a British spy, and arrested by a Chinese patrol. The country seemed to be domp nated by the Bolshevik element, and tlley Were particularly hostile to Britishers. He was taken and searched, and as he Could not understand them, and his captors could not understand him, the situation appeared ticklish. Someone whoi could read his papers appeared, however, and he was liberated. "You. can never imagine the smell of that, guardhouse," remarked M. do Vilnits. Island of Cannibals. Mi de Vilnits left China for Formosa, an island in the China Sea.- A- tribe of natives lived in the mountains on this island who were still cannibals This was only at one end, and round the foot of the mountains, Where the forest ended and the plains began, there was built a fence, through which was passed a powerful electric current. To touch that fence Was death; and that was the means used to keep the natives from civilised portions. It was a fashionable tradition among these natives, a custom which was followed to the letter wherever possible, that before a young man had reached a fit state for matrimony, he must produce nine white human heads. M. de Vilnits was not sure whether there were many marriages.

The Monkey Men,

I In the Malay Archipelago, near British North Borneo, there was a little island grotip called the Sulu Group. Living here, said M. de Vilnits, were a most amazing people. The men in their holiday garb were like nothing so much as those pet monkeys in brightly-coloured jacket and cap which are part of the equipment of a street organ. The adult population was on an average about five feet high, with the hairy bodies, short bodies and long arms and legs of monkeys* To complete the picture, M. de Vilnits said that for children to be born With tails six inches long was by no means uncommon. Other freak births were utterly revolting. He had with him a photograph of a child with two heads and four. legs. And so through many small islands M. do Vilnits has made a roundabout way through Australia to New Zealand. "My frien'," he said, as lie collected his multitude of photographs and documents and put them hack into his case With an air of finality, "as I tol' you, I have travelled 71,000 miles; I have been in forty-five countries, but I have been in no place I like better than your New Zealand. They are so friendly. "Ello, Bill!' "Ello, Jack!" they say—l feel at home."