CURIOS WHICH COST LIVES.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 18, Issue 90, 8 November 1907, Page 7

CURIOS WHICH COST LIVES.

•WEIRD STORIES OF FINDS THAT

BROUGHT DEATH*

In the First Egyptian Room at the British Museum you will find an object catalogued as No. 22,542. It is a mould in some ancient form of papier-mache of an Egyptian woman, presumably a priestess who lived in Thebes somewhere about thirty-live centuries ago. The moulded face is of unusual beauty, but has a curious expression of cold malignancy.

Now one hears tales of amulets and suchlike which possess fatal properties, and no doubt most of us regard such stories as interesting fictions. But hero are the cold facts concerning this Egyptian mask. It was discovered about forty years ago by a party of five explorers, who went up the Nile to the Second Cataract to explore the ruins of Thebes. An Arab brought to them this mummy cose, and one pf the party bought, it. A few days later one of the gentleman’s servants shot himself accidentally and lost an arm, and soon after another who had handled the case was accidentally killed. The third died within a year. The finds were apportioned by lot, and the priestess’ mask fell to another of the party, On his arrival at Cairo, he found a letter tolling him that ho had lost most of his money. THE FATAL MUMMY-MOULD. - The case was handed to a lady, sister of the owner. From the time she received it, everything went wrong in her house and family. There is no space here to specify all the misfortunes which the priestess’ ownership caused. Suffice to say that the celebrated theosophist Madame Blavatsky once saw it, and begged the owner to get rid of it at once, but the latter refused. , Some years later it was sent to a photographer in Baker Street to be photographed. Within a few weeks the photographer died suddenly., The owner now agreed to send tho priestess’ image to the British Museum. Tho carrier died within a week, and tho man who assisted in moving the curio to its place shortly afterwards met with a serious accident. Of course, tho whole of these various incidents may have been coincidences. But tho writer has considerable doubts whether one reader in a thousand would be willing to keep No, 22,542 if it were offered to him or her.

This mummy case is not the only curiosity which appears to bring illluck upon its owners. Madame Sadi Carnot, widow of the assassinated President of France, left a request in her will that her executors would destroy a certain Hindoo idol which was to bo found among her possessions. The image was quite small, cut out of some hard stone, and was of enormous antiquity.

PROPHECY FULFILLED.

It had belonged for centuries to the 1 Rajahs of Khudjurao, and a legend dung to it that its owner would in every case attain to supremo power ami thou die by the knife. This story was told to M. Carnot by a friend who had given it to him years before ho became President of France. The prophecy came literally true, Among the curiosities preserved by the family of the famous French defective Giouard is a gold ring made in the shape of a snake with an opal ,ln the top of its head and two (emeralds for eyes. The design is so .peculiar, that the ring could not fall Ito bo recognised by anyone who had ever seen it. This ring came to the Paris Morgue five times within fifty years, each time upon the finger of a corpse. Inquiries have shown that this piece of jewellery had a curse put upon it by a mother whose only son was killed in a duel by the wearer of the ring. The present owner of the ring would not wear it for any money.

A few years ago an American soldier, a sergeant in the Sixty-Sixth .Coast Artillery, which was at the ►time stationed at Honolulu, went inland to the base of the great volcano and under the shadow of the Beetling Diamond Head Cliff, buried deeply an old violin. Then ho returned to barracks, and a few days later committed suicide. To this violin his miserable end is attributed. The full history of this musical instrument is unknown. All that is certain is that it seemed to have a fatal effect upon anyone who owned it. Previous to the sergeant’s suicide, three other persons who had had the violin in their possession had killed themselves. Apart from curios possessing mysteriously malignant effects there arc and have been many lives lost in the pursuit of rarities of ail kinds, bigghunting, flower-finding, the search for the buried curiosities of long past ages—all these constantly claim their victims. Only last year a young German named Thinaivd, while climbing in the Alps in search of that rare and beautiful (lower, the edelweist, fell from tin? top of one of the Coraettes do Disc. He dropped a sheer distance of over half a mile, and was smashed out of all human form. There stand's in a museum at Athens an ancient and discoloured marble statue of the Creek goddess Aphrodite, which cost the life of one of its finders. It is part of the cargo of a Roman trireme which was found by sponge divers between the island of Congo and the Spartan coast, and no doubt was booty which the Romans were carrying buck from Greece to their own capital. The sponge fishers, greatly excited by their find, sent one of their number down to explore.

lie was the best diver of tho crow, but lie never rose again. Ho became enlamrled among the woods and the timbers of (ho old wreck, and there his dead body was afterwards found close to the statue, which he seems to have tried to raise from its sandy bed. A LIFE FOR AN ORCHID, Porstermann, the German, who holds the record of having discovered newly forty orchids which were previously unknown to science, tells the story of how one of his finds cost a human life. He was far up in the ,willds of the Siamese Forest when, just before sunset, he noticed with Ids field-glasses an orchid which he did not know growing high on a tree overhead. Tho question was whether to falop and climb for it. . it waa

Tale, and the ground was unsuitable for camping. His guide volunteered to go on ahead and search for a camping-place while the others procured the orchid.

This was agreed to, and the party were busy securing the plant when a terrible scream was heard in the bush in front. Forstermann ran as hard as he could in the direction of the sound, and was just in time to see a huge tiger carrying oil his friend, He Mlowed, but darkness fell, and it was not until next morning that they managed to track and kill the maneater, and bury the remains of its victim, The orchid was named after the man of whose death it had been indirectly, the cause.— “Answers.”