HEAD HUNTERS IN LONDON.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 144, 3 June 1911, Page 3 (Supplement)

HEAD HUNTERS IN LONDON.

The setting down in London of savngvs fresh from their native wilds, ana then recording th?ir impressions ot highly civilised life, is a by no means unknown device of the satirist and the story writer. But truth is proverbially stranger thnn fiction, and it is questionaid' whether anv mere effort ot the imagination could hope to equal in interest the narrative recording the actual imprcs’oas produced on the minds of the head-hunters from the island of Formosa (now a Japanese pos‘.ossio:i\ who visited London during the run of th.- Anglo-Japanese Exhibition, and fcrni -d one of its most interesting ‘•sido-shows.’’ These savages were interviewed by the representative of a. Japincsc* paper on their return to Japan in rente for their island home, mid excellent “cony” was made out of their storv. The Formosans said tnt> iicoj le of London tried, to make them i:el:c‘.c fat the geat buildings there were the wor>< of men’s hands. It went, of lourse, without saying, that' the c huge structures of stone and or iron and steel, and also the cars which flew along steel rails were brought into h ing by some powerful god. The dusky vi-itors were dulv nresent-d to King Geirge at Bu-kin.dnm Palace, but were not inut-h impressed. Even a Mmi’l chief, in Fonr.o a, they said, nould have a retinue of at least fifty men. while King George bad only foui or five men about him—“anil they did n-t 1.-ok much like warriors, eith-ri’ The sne-ta le of men and women walking about th' stiects of Louden .arm-in-arm fill- d the men from Formosa with surprise and disgust T : -ey wo id<*rotl that the people of England were oot ashamed to be se-n on such occ.iitons. What kind of eivijisat : on was i: that permitted men and women to assume such familiarity in public? Tb<beauty of Hvde Park, with its w : de. grass-'-lad spares, failed to appeal to the vi-itors Why mi mndi fine land should be allowed to be idle and unpro.dnetive when it might he yielding )«>- tatoes in abundance, they, could not . understand. There was no such waste •n Formosa