HOLIDAYING IN SPAIN. JEWELS GUARDED BY WILD BEASTS.-IN PLACES THIEVES CAN NEVER PENETRATE. TASMANIA AND ITS PAST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2358, 4 May 1899, Page 55

HOLIDAYING IN SPAIN.

JEWELS GUARDED BY WILD BEASTS. -IN PLACES THIEVES CAN NEVER PENETRATE.

TASMANIA AND ITS PAST.

THE CARNIVAL AT MALAGA.. It was quite by accident that I dropped upon the carnival at Malaga. One would no more do it by design than arrive in London in the midst of a bank holiday. Yet it would be difficult to name two events having less in common than these holiday manifestations of the north and south. The Malaguenos give themselves up to three days and nights of dancing and festivity by way of preparation for the austerities of Lent, and they carry out the programme with a thoroughness which, in bpain, is shown in nothing else. It is a festival in which all classes join, and out of which the poor get just as much proportionately as the well-to-do. The poor have the fun of the streets ; the well-to-do their masked balls, which are religiously held from midnight till six in the morning. No Cinderella nonsense here. The first thing the Cockney bank holi-day-maker thinks of is to get away from the hateful monotony of the London streets. The Malaguenos take their pleasure in situ. All day long the streets are promenaded by people disguised in every &tj r le and manner, all tending more or" loss to the grotesque, and in the encounter between friends a Punch and Judy sort of cackle is adopted, so that the voice may be unrecognisable too. Up and down the fanciful streets walk these masked figures with a fringe of spectators unmasked looking on with delight.

Meanwhile ladies' from the upper windows shower down confetti upon the crowd and aim theic serpentinas, immense tapes of coloured paper, at particular, objects of their fancy. By the afternoon you will find whole streets festooned with these serpentinas, which produce the prettiest effect in the world, although sold at rather less than a halfpenny a dozen. For it is a peculiarity of Spanish festivities that they are conducted at practically no cost at ali. The Spaniard of the lower order has no money to spend, but that does not stint him in his enjoyment. He has a mask which would not in the first instance cost more- than a couple of shillings, and he saves it from year to year as long as it will hang together. In point of fact, nobody looks to the price of the masks ; the spirit of the occasion is everything. Another praiseworthy feature of these open-air tomfooleries is that, contrary to what one sees in the Riviera and elsewhere, there is no squirting of disagreeable fluids or throwing about of unpleasant 00 - jects. There are the confetti to be sure, which I, for one, would rather be without, but not too much of those. In short, a lady might drive about all day through the carnival festivities without fear of having her dress spoilt. At night we should expect in England, in such circumstances, an orgy of drunken* ness. Here there is nothing of the kind. The Malagueno, when he can afford it, drinks coffee (which, by the way, is as badly made as ours), or a thin local wine costing about a penny a glass. But it is chiefly the small employee that one finds drinking in cafes ; the workman goes home and gels to bed early.

Naturally, it is good form to promenade the streets m masks. That is the privilege and the delight of the lower orders. The well-to-do classes reserve themselves for their masked balls.

The Spanish masked ball of the better class is merely a somewhat crowded reception where the men wear plain evening dress mostly, and where the ladies lay themselves out to appear in all that is ele-, gant and graceful in the way of masks and disguises, and to tease such of their friends as are unable to deceive their identity. And what excellent taste they'display ! Tills sort of thing the Spaniard does natural]". No vulgarity, no rowdyism. Wo imitate the masked ball clumsily, and seem unable, even in the best cases, to relieve it of a certain tawdry theatricality. Of this one feels nothing at a Spanish "function." — J. F. NISBET, in St. Paul's.

Paradoxically speaking, precious stones are never really safe in safes, for the jewel thief is a prince among robbers, and boasts that he can find a way into the strongest iron box ever made. Nevertheless, he must be able' to get at the safe before he can despoil it, and sometimes living obstacles are thrown in his path which, with all his ingenuity and cunning, he finds it impossible to overcome.

An Italian nobleman keepjs fifty thousand pounds' worth of beautiful stones in a small and fragile casket, but the man who wants to reach them must first pass through the den of a fine panther, then through the abode of a magnificent lion, and finally through a veritable hot-bed of poisonous snakes. In fact, the innocentlooking casket is hedged round on all sides with wild animals of the fiercest type, none of which would hesitate to attack an intruder. An experienced keeper is also in constant attendance, and he alone can safely traverse the perilous road which leads to the jewels.

The nobleman had originally no intention of guarding the family treasure in this way, but after three almost successful attempts to steal the jewels had been made, he bethought himself of the private menagerie, and had the cages so arranged that the casket lay just in the middle. The plan succeeded,- admirably, and for years the jewels have remained undisturbed in their airtight receptacle. "

A tiger which made itself notorious by killing its keeper is now living in a cage worth thousands. Built into the thick wall behind it is something which looks like an ordinary clipboard, but which is really a hiding place for a collection of jewels belonging to a rajah. These precious stones were actually stolen and recovered thrice in nne year, and it was only as a last resource ihat the Englishman responsible for them handed them over to the tender mercies of the tiger. Now he feels himself secure, for the animal has such a bad reputation that the thief who beards it in its den will require more than ordinary courage. Last summer the tiger's keeper, who sleeps on the premises, heard tortured screams issuing from the room below, and hurried down in time to see a man clambering through the window. Dim as the light was, he noticed also that there were deep scratches on the fugitive's face, and that the angry tiger's claws were tinged with red.

What the thief intended doing is not very clear, but it is certain that he ventured too near the bars, for big splashes of blood were found on the floor of the cage, and a lacerated finger bore testimony to the fact that the tiger had defended its charge well. While such an animal remains on guard, it seems unlikely that the rajah's jewels will ever change hands again.

Early in the sixties a gang of thieves learnt that an eccentric menagerie owner had jewels of_immense value secreted in the lion's cage. To gain possession of these precious stones, the gang surprised the show people one moonlight night, bound and gagged the two attendants, and opened the door of the cage. Then one of them, with reckless courage, jumped in and unfastened th i grating which fell down and shut the trio of lions in their sleeping place. After that it should have been easy to find the treasure, but the gang searched all over without avail, and could extract no information from the terrified attendants. At last, just as they were getting desperate, a deafening roar made them look at the grating, from behind which a beautiful lion was staring at them angrily.

" The jewel box ! " cried the ringleader. " They've hung it round the brute's neck ! " So indeed they had, and the gang, realising in & flash that all their well-laid plans had come to nothing, riddled the poor lion with bullets and bolted. Five minutes later they were all in the hands oE the police, while the jewel box was lying safe and sound beneath the dead body of its fourfooted guardian.

(Extract from "The Island Member of the

Australian Commonwealth," by. F. Dunbar, in the Englishwoman, illustrated.')

For year after year the dark folk remained undisturbed in their savage isolation, until early one morning the blacks encamped near Point Hibbs beheld an apparition which must have filled them with awe and wonder. Two enormous birds with dark bodies and huge white wings appeared above the line of the western horizon, where the glowing sky touched the deep blue sea, an.l floated landward with majestic motion and ever enlarging bulk. The terrified natives fled inland and kindled fires by way of warning and alarm. These skimmers of the ocean were the Heemskirk and the Zeehan. Thus does the picturesque writer chronicle the arrival of stout. old Abel Janz Tasman, the discoverer of the island. Tasnian had been sent by Van Dieman, Governor of Batavia, to the coast of the Great South Land, and he loyally named the country after his chief, and having rounded the southern point and hoisted the Dutch flag ashore, he straightway stood to> the south-west and lighted upon New Zealand. This is the first chapter, authentic or otherwise, in the colonial history, but to the natives the story must have become a very vague legend of the past by the time when, long afterwards, Van Dieman's Land was first settled by Englishmen. . . . The first settlement took place in 1812, and was soon followed by a terrible massacre of blacks. The colonists were starving, and iv this extremity the convicts were let loose to pick up a living as best they could, and so massacre and cannibalism followed, the whites perpetrating both. The soldiers took part in the killing, black women being lurud away, and even babies murdered wholesale. A succession of Governors — Collins, Davey, Sorrell, and Arthur — tried, according to their lights, to put a stop to these horrors, but the settlers, sailors, convicts, and sealers set them at defiance, and murders and abominable cruelties continued to be practised on the natives by the white people, who " shrank from no crime and re : coiled from no cruelty." In truths when we read that " the wounded were brained, the infant cast into the flames, the bayonet was" driven into .the flesh, and the social fire round which the natives gathered to slumber (having -a superstitious dread of darkness) became,, before morning their funeral pile," what wonder that the blacks retaliated with bloodshed, craft, and pillage. ■ • '■ At last, in 1828, martial law was proclaimed, and £5 offered for every male and £2 for every child captured without injury, and a cordon of troops was drawn across the island with a view £0 driving the blacks into Tasman Peninsula, but the only result was the accidental capture of a man and a boy. This failure cost £60,000. Then came the heroic enterprise of a bricklayer, George Robinson, who, accepting a salary of £100 from Government, went alone and unarmed among the maddened natives and, actually coaxed them into surrender. There were only some 250 left, and the survivors were transported to an island in the straiis, where, under Robinson's care, they were happy and well treated. On his dcaih, however, no fitting successor could be found, and brandy finished off the race, tlic last of the natives dying in 1876. Here is a grim episode — an epitome of their fate — in the story of Truganini, tho last of her people. Her mother was butchered by the settlers, her sister captured by sealers, her uncle shot by soldiers, and when she herself was carried off in a boat by some sawyers two of her countrymen were allowed to accompany her, one of these being her intended husband. In mid-channel these latter were both thrown overboard, and having overtaken the boat by swimming, their hands were chopped off, and they were drowned. Yet it was this brave girl — the Lalla Rookh of Tasmania, as she has been called — who guided the heroic Robinson op his perilous missipn. The convict system was, of course the crying evil, and for long the bane of the settlement. The poor wretches were treated like beasts and flogged unmercifully, and their fearful experiences on an outwardbound convict vessel, so vividly painted by William Clark Russell, were but foretastes of the horrors awaiting them in the penal colonies of Australia, where men fled from the lash to starve in the bush, especially »nder the Draconic rule of Governor Arthur. There is, in fact, an authentic instance of a party of eight escaping, and when the sole survivors surrendered, the flesh of one of his dead mates was found on him. Arthur hunted dow'J and hanged over 100 of the runaways in the space of about a year.