WOMAN AMONG CANNIBALS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15887, 27 July 1923, Page 3

WOMAN AMONG CANNIBALS.

SAVED BY HER WHITE SKIN, Mrs Charlotte Cameron, the -woman explorer, recently returned to London at the end of a lengthy tour in the little known regions of the Southern Seas (reports the London Daily Mail). Mrs Cameron claims to have travelled more than any other living woman. Since 1910 she has travelled 171,000 miles.

Her recent journey took her through the Dutch East Indies, Sarawak, and many of the savage islands to the north of Australia. For many weeks she was the only passenger in the coasting vessels.

Mrs Cameron is •an authority on South Sea head hunters and cannibals. “Lots of people tell you,” she said, “that cannibalism is almost nonexistent. In many of the islands which I visited the natives openly avowed that they were cannibals.” On one occasion she was captured by a hostile cannibal tribe. “I was hauled before the big chief,” she said, “and set in the middle of his lesser chieftains who sat in a circle in front of his mud hut. The whole tribe of courtiers looked at me, smacking their lips in anticipation of a feast.

“The cannibal chief marvelled at the whiteness of my skin. I -was the first white woman he had ever seen. He expressed a doubt as to whether I was white all over, and I was told to remove my boots and stockings that he might he convinced. The moment he realised that I was really white all over he changed IPs attitude completely, and become quite friendly.

“In New Guinea there are strange marriage customs. When a youngman contemplates matrimony he collects some three dozen bird of paradise feathers, which he fashions into a head dress; after that he anoints his body with cocoanut oil, and polishes it until it glistens. “Then, wearing his magnificent and many coloured head dress, which is sometimes as much as 3ft high, he saunters casually among the women working in the plantations (for women do all the work in New Guinea) 3 until he reaches the one he desires to marry. He does not speak to her, but looks into her eyes fixedly for some time. After that he cracks his fingers and approaches her. If she smiles he knows that he lias found favour.

“Half roasted pork is the chief dish of the wedding breakfast, and each of the wedding guests is expected to eat five pounds of pork.”