THE IMPOSTERS—III Cannibal chief from Switzerland

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32679, 7 August 1971, Page 11

THE IMPOSTERS—III Cannibal chief from Switzerland

(By

RONALD TRENT)

The editors of a new magazine of real-life travel and adventure, published for the first time in London in 1898, were delighted at their “scoop.” They were printing “verbatim from M. de Rougemont’s lips the most amazing story a man ever lived to tell.

“After his 30 years experience as a cannibal chief m the wilds of unexplored Australia, his contribution to science will be simply above all price,” said the editor. Moreover, not only were they “absolutely satisfied with his accuracy in every minute particular, they had double-checked with geosra-. been fascinated by the story told by the sinewy, bearded explorer and pioneer who was born in Paris and who spent his earlier life in Switzerland. Louis de Rougemont s adventures began when h « was pearl-fishing off the New Guinea coast, his boat being chased by a sea-serpent with “fierce, fantastic moustaches.” Later, according to his account, he was shipwrecked, but s a ' , ed ; himself bv gripping with his teeth SaSffl« stop’s.dog who towed him safely to an islet where he lived for two years in a hut made fro ® age and where one of tos favourite diversions was to catch fish while riding turtles in the sea. Life with tribe After four naked Australian Aborigines landed on his islet, he “went native . learned their language and embarked with them for Australia in a boat he had made. He settled down among a cannibal tribe—whose diet also included rata, snakes and tree-worms. Soon no was offered a wife, Yamba, “the bare mention , of her name stirs every fibre of my being with love and wonder. By the time the third instalment was in print, de Rougemont was being modelled for Madame Tussauds, was busy on a lecture tour and wag hard work on “hia

scientific material for the learned societies." But one or two naturalists began to doubt him when he told how he went in search of wombats whose skins he used for making sandals. "I had seen them rising in clouds every evening at sunset,” he wrote. Unfortunately, wombats cannot fly. However, his story went on ever more dramatically. There was a tomahawk-and-flst fight with an alligator, with Yamba finally killing the reptile by thrusting a paddle down its throat. Ee added: "After this encounter with the alligator, the tribesmen looked upon me as a very great and powerful personage indeed.” I White king What more natural than that he should become the white king of the tribe? He organised an army for tribal warfare, with his hair drawn up into a top-knot crowned with black and white cockatoo feathers and his face decorated in yellow, white, black and red. , , "I led my people into battie, filled with the same enthusiasm that ■"•““ted them.” he related. He had only to charge Into the battlefield on stilts, firing firing rapidly with his bow, to put the tribe’s enemies to After one fight he reported a carve-up, the cannibals using spears for the largest “joints.” “I saw mothers with a leg or an arm surrounded by plaintive children who were crying for their portion of the toothsome dainty," he recalled. After some years de Rougemont, according to his storv, grew tired of primitive life and decided to make the long, nightmare trek through burning bush and desert south to civilisation. He toiled on through sandstorms in the suffocating heat of the Northern Territory, suffering agonies of thirst and delirium, attacks by buffaloes, hair’s-breadth escapes from crocodiles. When he killed one buffalo with his arrows and tomahawk blows he was suffering from fever, so he tried a native cure. He ripped the buffalo open and crawled inside—to sleep for nearly 24 hours. He related: ’ljfext morning,

to my amazement, I found I was a prisoner, the carcase having got cold and rigid, so that I had literally to be dug out. As I emerged, I presented a most ghastly and horrifying spectacle,” but he was miraculously cured. But even de Rougemont, with his capacity for wonder,was rather snaken when Yamba told him that during one of his fever bouts she had given birth to a child, “which she had killed and eaten.” She explained that it was either him or the baby, adding: “I did what I considered best.” As each instalment of the de Rougemont story became more incredible— they ware translated into most of the European languages—and as he dramatically embroidered the details in his lectures, scepticism grew. Scientists kept nagging about those wombats—and he was asked at lectures: "Why did Yamba eat the baby? Wouldn’t burial have dona as well?” _ , , He replied that cannibals’ wives gave birth in their midteens, the first baby was usually sickly and so was eaten. | Final exposure A London dally newspaper led an attack on da Rougemont. In December, 1898, the magazine admitted: **. . . it now turns out that it is not possible for him to have been 30 years among the savages as stated." But they still raised a cheer for “a master of graphic fiction." The story went on for several months more, with tales of fish falling from clouds, of de Rougemont chased by armies of giant rata, of Yamba’s lingering death and the ragged adventurer finally reaching Coolgardie, Western Australia early in 1897. The real de Rougemont now stood up—a manservant named Louis Grin who had worked in Australia. His adventures were based on a study of Australian travel books and records in the Library of the British Museum in London—and some hearsay recollections of outback life. After his exposure he vanished to the Continent He returned to London in old age afterthe First World War and died in 1921 under the name of Louis Redman.