HELPED BY CANNIBALS

Taranaki Daily News, 16 August 1933, Page 9

HELPED BY CANNIBALS

DRIVE OF 6000 MILES.

THRILLS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

A hundred-mile health trip which became a thrilling 6000 miles drive is the experience recently achieved in South Africa by a 75-year-old woman, Mrs. J. G. King. Mrs. King started out in her saloon car to drive down to the plains from her home 6000 ft. above sea level in the no-man’s-land between Basutoland and Pondoland. But when she got there she just carried on until she reached England. \

Accompanied by her daughter Celia, and a 15-year-old native boy, Mrs. King drove through Natal, the Transvaal, Rhodesia and Tanganyika. For over 4000 miles the journey was through jungle trails, and Mrs. King carried a loaded gun by her side. “We hid made no preparation whatever for the trip, because the doctor had just ordered mother to get down to the plains for a while for the benefit of her health,” Miss Celia King said to an interviewer in London. “But somehow or other, once we got going, we just carried on. And on the whole 6000 miles mother didn’t have on® headache,” she added.

“Once we were lost for three days near Mombasa; the car got stuck in swampy ground. We had been fighting with it for hours when some natives came up and helped to get it out. It was only when we got to a trading station that we discovered the natives were cannibals!” ,