WILL ROAM NO MORE

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXI, Issue 16, 27 February 1940, Page 3

WILL ROAM NO MORE

CLERGYMAN'S ADVENTUROUS LIFE %

MORE THRILLS IN LONDON THAN IN JUNGLE

(From The Guardian's London Correspondent)

LONDON, January 20,

Born in the Australian bush, the son of a bullock driver, Allen Tob has lived an adventurous life in all parts of the world; but he claims to have found more thrills in London than anywhere else. As the Rev. AU-n Tob of Twickenham Congregational Church, London he has settled down and ho logger wishes to roam.

He has been rough rider, gold prospector, printer's devil and missionary. He has lived with the world's least civilised race and been appointed .a tribal chief, fought notorious white bullies on the Amazon, lodged in mountain holes, and existed, <m monkey flesh for weeks.

"I lived on a horse," he said this week, "can't remember ever learning to ride." His adventures began at the age of fourteen, when he crossed the Blue Mountains, seeking his fortune. He arrived at Sydney, got a job on a newspaper, became a sheep-farm labourer and prospected for gold.

"But I never found enough to pay for my tools," Mr Tob laughed. Then he became a missionary, and after going several times round the globe he reached the upper reaches of the Amazoii to live with the wildest of creatures. I found the Chuncha Indians charming people," he commented, "though ignorant of anything beyond their tropical forests. They had no settled homes, and seemed perfectly content to live in holes by the river banks or in the shelter of trees. They shot both their food and their enemies, with poisoned arrows, and their only covering (was a shirt beaten from the barks of trees. "Women and wives were their greatest treasures, usually stolen from neighbouring tribes. To them a knife and a box of matches were black magic. I showed what I could do with them and they marvelled. But they thought me a poor ignorant savage when they took me swimming in their perilous rivers, and found me no good at spearing fish."

During his stay with these queer people Mr Tob lived mostly on monkey flesh, wild boar and bananas. In one journey into the interior he joined the wild rubber gatherers. He was amazed at the atrocities practised on the natives by some of these cold-blooded American bullies in their anxiety to get rich. "They captured native women and held them to ransom for rubber." he said; "I have even seen these men cut the arms off women to force the natives to search for more rubber. It was largely due to the rubber gatherers that the natives of these jungles began to regard the white men as enemies.