TRAVEL IN PANAMA

Otago Witness, Issue 3619, 24 July 1923, Page 41

TRAVEL IN PANAMA

SOCIALISTIC SAVAGES. There arrived at Southampton early in April Mr F. A. Mitchell Hedges, who has epent two years on a scientific and exploring expedition in Central America, wtik a largo collection of specimens that he has got together. Hauled up on deck was a motor boat, named the Kara, which was used for researches into fish life made in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific, and partly for journeys up rivers. Her crew consisted of three only. In travel, said Mr Mitchell Hedges to' a Daily Telegraph representative, nothing was more interesting than the penetration he was able to make into the Chucunaque River country, in the Panama hinterland. It lay beyond the San Bias Indian territory, about 300 miles from Colon. White men had never been seen there. Nature and climate made access difficult, and as the natives had the idea that their gods were offended if any stranger entered the land, some previous attempts had ended in tragedy. The native Indian there was a diminutive, unprepossessing person, broad-shouldered with a large head, and, being bow-legged, the average height was only some 4ft 3in. They had a dialect of very few words, which was found to be allied to the tongue spoken by the San Bias Indians, with whom some exchange and barter was carried on byboat down the river. Their territory was entirely isolated, and they had no knowledge of Panama. Inland the Indians built grave houses, thatched structures, which might be as largo as 20Gft by 150 ft, to which they consigned their dead. The corpses were laid in the grour/d in hammocks, and a vine stem was inserted, with the idea that as the vine grew the deadman’a spirit would ascend with it. Hardwood stools and the eating utensils they had used in life were placed near, and they believed that all the spirits assembled in the grave house and conversed in tho night hours. Different tribes had their own separate gods. One o-f the beliefs among the river tribes was that when an Indian died a canoe appeared upon the river, in which the man’s spirit embarked, and was floated upstream to where the river divided into many streams. A water spirit there pointed to the branch up which the dead man's spirit should go, and after long joumeyings the soul arrived at a land of plenty, where food and every other desire was found. COMMUNAL LIVING. The women seemed to be the superior sex. though not in attractions; they were distinguished by a nose-ring, which was worn from infancy. Life .among the tribes was very simple. As many as 30 families with all their children lived together in one reed house. There was a crude marriage rite. There was no four-legged animal in the country that was domesticated, and scarce'y any- flesh was eaten, the chief foods being plantain, which was picked unripe and cooked, and “mamee,” a species of corn ot distinctive characteristics, and fish from the river. Pineapples and arcado pea is were abundant. It was usual to see food being boiled in one common pot for use of the common household. The weapons of the | Indians were blow-pipes and bows with

arrows, which had triplicated barbs, these being steeped in an alkaline poison. The country must number some few hundred square miles. Mr Mitchell Hedges said that a pretty 7 thorough exploration was made of the San Bias Indian territory, every village accessible being visited. The Indians, avoiding all inter-marriage, kept their breed pure. Their country unfortunately reeked with smallpox and Dobie’s hitch, and the people suffered from the ravages of a horrible tick, which got into the eyes and ate them out. The tribes live on a socialistic basis, the Indians all giving a hand to build the houses, a task in which even a chief worked as any other, and supplying food to the common stock. They had no money and no metal weapons. Their religion was worship ot wooden gods, which existed in great variety; he had a collection of a hundred of them. Life was so exceedingly 7 primitive that there appeared to be no immorality among them, and no deceit. Among the ethnograhic specimens that he has brought back Mr Mitchell Hedges attributed importance to some 80 pieces of picture-writing on cloth, many being ablaze with colour. The influence of the ancient Aztec civilisation of Central America was marked in these, but some pieces very curiously gave reminder of symbols more generally associated with Egypt and Babylonia. He had secured 30 necklaces, which comprised the complete outfit cf a witch doctor, and were reputed to be very old. The collections made also included many funeral pots from t.-he San Bias and the Chucanaque territory, bows and arrows, and war clubs. The collections are to be shown in London. SEA EXPLORATION. Much of the time during his two years’ absence, said Mr Mitchell Hedges, had been spent in research into the life cf the larger sea fish and their diseases. On land the larger reptiles and amphibian monsters of remote geological ages had disappeared, and they were found only as fossils in ihe old strata, but in the sea many great fish — sharks, rays, sawfish, and the like—remained which were closely 7 allied to the fossil fish, and seemed not to have greatly changed. The sea still yielded the more primitive forma of life; and as one great object of medical science to-day was to search for the origins of disease and of malignant growths, itseemed a field of great promise to make tho search in the simplified organisms of primitive life rather than in so complex an organism as that of human beings. It seemed that disease had itself evolved as life had evolved. For a time, said Mr Mitchell Hedges, he was joined by Dr H. L. Casey, a recognised authority from Texas, who came to establish the presence of certain diseases in fish, and the Santo Tomas Hospital in Panama also lent valuable assistance. They were able to determine that of the sand-shark of tho Pacific waters, about 60 per cent, suffered from tuberculosis. The worm trechine, common in pigs, also occurs in several forms of fish, as do malignant tumours. Pathological examination in the Santo Tomas Hospital showed definite effects ot a calcinareous spinal growth in the shark, and he had brought home vertebrae with the growth seen attached. This produced a rigidity in the spinal column causing partial paralysis, and it might be not unreasonable to theorise that by destruction of nerve centres a species of insanity might overtake the shark. * Cancerous growths were also found in fish. Mr Mitchell Hedges mentioned as an entirely- unexpected find that of a shark taken in the Carribean Sea, which, instead of having the customary shark hide, was covered, starting about one foot from the tail, by a substance which might almost be called fur, of from Jin to lin in length. Was this, he asked, the missing link between the fish and the mammal?