WALK ACROSS AFRICA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 21 September 1927, Page 11

WALK ACROSS AFRICA

A “SCRAP” WITH CANNIBALS DINNER INVITATION REFUSED. LONDON, 'Sept. 1. Professor Seubring, F.R.G.S., who has been exploring the Eastern half of the African continent on foot since 1923, has had many exciting, not to say disturbing, experiences en route. He relates, according to the African World, that when he arrived among the Upper Congo he found preparations being made for the execution of a man who was thought to have been responsible for a young maiden’s death by witchcraft. The professor saw the victim killed and cut into fragments. Knowing enough of the tribal habits of the Niam-Niam to guess the ingredients of the main dish, he declined an invitation to supper. The refusal was mis-c-onstructed as an insult, and at dusk the cannibals surrounded the professor’s hut and shot at him with poisoned arrows, one of which penetrated his leg. He retaliated with his rifle -which had the effect of frightening the invaders a Wav.

•Other “souvenirs” of the professor’s travels included as assegai wound received in the. Sudan, and a bite from a black mamba, one of the most dangerous snakes of the African jungle.