THE ART OF BECOMING INVISIBLE. (New Penny Magazine.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2467, 26 June 1901, Page 71

THE ART OF BECOMING INVISIBLE. (New Penny Magazine.)

A very interesting and valuable report was issued, several years ago, by the Inspector of Prisons of the Indian Empire, in vhich almost incredible accounts are given of the practice of this extraordinary art by the thieves of lower Bombay. The thieves themselves, with better reason, feel doubly secure ; foi if, in spite of his invisibility, by some unlooked for and unlucky chance, one is seized, his oily body slips away like an eel's ; and in the still more unlikely contingency of his being held with an unbreakable grip, he has, slung by a slender cord about his neck, a little knife with an edge as sharp as that of the keenest razor, with which he cuts the tordons of tho intruding wrist. This, however, he considers a last resort, for he prides himself upon doing his work without inflicting bodily harm upon his victims. To enter a zenana, or the women's apartment in a native house, where all the family treasures are kept, is the innbition of every native thief. This, however, is no easy matter ; for the zenaua is in the centre of the house, surrounded by other apartments occupied by ever-wakeful sentinels. In order to reach it, the thief burrows under the house until his tunnel reaches a point beneath the floor 'of the room to which access is sought. But the cautious native does not at once enter. Full well he knows that the inmates of the house sometimes' detect the miner at work and stand over the hole with deadly weapons, silently awaiting his appearance. He has with him a piece of bamboo, at one end of which a bunch of grass represents a human head, and this he thrusts up through the completed breach. If th; vicarious head does not come to grief, the real one takes its place, and the thief, entering the zenana, secretes himself ; or, finding everything already favourable for his purpose* proceeds to attempt what seems an impossible undertaking. This, indeed, is no less a task than to remove from the ears, and arms, and nose, the earrings, biacelets, armlets, bangles, and nose-rings of the sleepers without awakening them, and to get saiely away with his plunder. Who but a dacoit would be equal to so delicate, dangerous, and difficult a piece of work? But the dacoit seldom fails. "These adroit burglars," says my authority, "commit the most daring robberies in the midst of the English army. Knowing the position of the tents, they mark out one which is occupied by an officer of high rank, and creep silently towards it. Arrived at the tent, their sharp knife makes them a door in the canvas, and they glide undiscovered into the interior. Indeed, so wonderfully adroit are they that even the very watchdogs c!f not discover them, and a thief uas been known to actually step over a dog withou* disturbing the animal." . . . But the most marvellously clever device practiced by the thieves of lower Bombay is that used by the Mooches in Ilr owing pursuers off their track. The Mooches come down in gangs from the back ccuntry, and raid the settlements ; their specialty is poisoning cattle. They smear plantain leaves with their own particular brand of cattle exterminator and scatter them about among the herds ut nijht Tn the morning, as many of the cattle as have partaken are dead, and are abandoned by their owners. The Mooches flay the dead animals and sell their hules. Vvrsued, these honest creatures make at full speed for the jungle. If they reaoh it, all hope of capturing them is 'at an end, but even when they discovei that they must be overtaken before they reach it, they by no means lose heart, and are immeasurably sure of escaping, especially if, as is often the case in India, the surface is burned over and the trees and bushes that have not been consumed are charred and blackened and bereft of their foliage, and many, perhaps, reduced to little more than blackened stumps by the fire by which the fields are annually burnt over. If hard pressed :n such a country as this, they eeas* to fly. and immediately disappear.' For c long time the English troops which policed the districts where they made their raid* wire completely nonplussed ; agaiu and agiir, on the very point of being captured, the Mooches escaped by miraculously vanishing and officers as well as soldiers became superstitious. With the power of maintaining fixed, immovable postures, in wLjch their race seems to excel, these Indians grasping in their hands such bl::ci:eu?d branches as they pick up in their flight, can instantly assume, and retaia for a. long time, an almost perfect nvmiery cf the groups of b'ackeued stumps und haifburned stunted tree? with which the country abounds. In Abyssinia the Bareas tribe have the same trick of booming invi&ible, added to which they place their rounded shields, that disposed in the grass look exactly like boulders, before them for screens, while they lie flat, watching, unseen, for travellers to rob or enemies to kill.

Ethel R. Penjamin, Barrister and Solicitor, Albert Buildings, Princes street, Duned>n (oijpc3ita C.P.0.), has trust moneys to lea 4 O-J ftj?j?ioved *eeurity.— A4ys