The Tattooed American.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7297, 4 June 1895, Page 3

The Tattooed American.

Ak unusually attractive exhibition is now on view mxt to How Chow's dining rooms known to fame as Capt. Fisher, the Tattooed American Ivab been attracting many aightjseers since he opened here. A contemporary Bays ; — From the captain's neck to the soles there is not a square inch on hia body which is not tattooed. The whole of the work is most artistically done. In fact Capt. Fisher is a walking picture gallery, it would be too large a task altogether to attempt to discribe the thousand and one beautiful designs on the Captain's back, chest, neck, arms, legs' and feet, and the opportunity now offered of witnessing this really remarkable personage is one that should not be missed. The captain and a friend was taken captive by Indians in the White Pine Reservation on their journey to Salt Lake city. He was ordered by the chief of the tribe to be tattooed from head to foot, the work being performed by aSpanish interpreter who was with the natives. The captain was bound down hand and feet, and for six or seven hours a day for six months suffered most exquisite agony whilst no less than 570 designs were tattooed on his body. The whole of the work was pricked into the flesh with eight to thirty needles at one time. The designs were copied from a scrap book in the possession of the artist. The history of bis escape from captivity is equally stirring and romantic. After undergoing terrible privations he was sent to the hospital at Denver, Colorado, where he was treated for blood poisoning and erysipelas, the result of the tattooing. Since his recovery he has exhibited himself in almost every country on the face of the earth. The captain has letters from the following : Earl Kintore, Chief Justice Way, Sir Henry Parkes, and .Lady Manning. Another attraction is the de°xterity with which he manipulates three Indian clubs at one time, and the conjuring tricks are something marvellous to witness, the whole formiog a firßt-clasß entertainment.

According to Garden and Forest, red cedar (Juniperus Virginiana) is the wood of lead pencils, and practically the wood in all these indispensable articles, at least in pencils of good quality, is the wood of this tree from Florida, where there are great factories belonging to German manufacturers, devoted to cutting up cedar wood into pencil stock. Every artist in all the civilised world, every man of letters, every schoolteacher, all the bankers, lawyers, and other men of affairs, the men and women who control the world, and all the schoolchildren who are going to control it, hold every day in their hand a piece of this wood. It would be- interesting to know what proportion of these men and women, the m<.st intelligent and best-educated of the human race, knows anything of the origin of these little cylinders of wood, of the character and appearance, and of the name even of the tree that builds them up in its long life of slow accretions.

A man named Samuel Kennedy waß killed while burning off timber near Orange, his head being smashed in by a falling tree, and j>U right leg and arm being burnt off.