THE MODERN METHUSELAH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 240, 7 December 1877, Page 15

THE MODERN METHUSELAH.

FELIX Eojas, of the city of Tulca, Chili, has undoubtedly reached the age of 136 years. At an early age he entered the army, in a Spanish line regiment. When Carlos 111. issued the historic mandate expelling the Jesuits, Eojas took in charge two members of the Order and carried them from Linares to Santiago. He served forty-eight years in the Chilian armies. Up to one year ago he was remarkably vigorous, although for ten years he has been carried about in a portable chair. For a year he has been failing rapidly, and now seldom leaves his house, his physician prescribing almost absolute quiet as the only means of prolonging his life. He smokes a pipe and has used tobacco steadily for the last 120 years. His eyes are weak now, but he has never used spectacles, and is generally able to read large print. He is not a large man, being scarcely five feet five inches in height, and never weighing over 1 50 pounds. He is remarkably well proportioned his head being unusually large and finely shaped. Rojas has lived to to this ripe old age in defiance of many vicissitudes and habits that are believed to abreviate a man's term of life. From the age of 20 till he was 70 he was an habitual drinker, and for a long part of that time was such a confirmed tippler that his health was seriously affected and it was believed that he could not live long. For sixtysix years he has not tasted intoxicating drinks except as a medicine. He is the son of a Spanish nobleman who fled his country for a political offence, and settled in Chili under an assumed name. The son lived almost half a century before he found out the true history of his father, and, upon the discovery, he made a trip to Spain, and obtained from Government the title and. possession of valuable property which had been confiscated. — St Louis Globe Democrat.