Adventure Magazine Cover — page 185: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Camp-Fire short while the whole Kraal came out, men, women and children, and not only did they bring spears but battle-axes and arrows. ‘They had sensed some- thing alarming in my uncle’s message or else the boy had decorated the tale; anyway they came in their hundreds. Everybody was silent with fright and awe when they viewed the scene. The snake went on quite calmly with his milking operations, my uncle took the sanda-hammer, swung it in a mighty arc and hit the red cow in the center of its forehead. It moaned a little and fell down on its right side, the snake’s body still twined around it; that blue, dirty, rope-like body twisted and twirled about and uncurled itself around the dead cow. The Abafan closed in on it with their battle-axes and spears and in no time they had chopped its body into little bits of meat that re- sembled canned salmon. My uncle seemed very upset as he commanded that the horns of his favorite be preserved. The Abafan declared a banquet and mace a fire and roasted the meat right then and there. As to how the snake ever came to acquire the taste for milk and learn how to milk a cow I do not pretend to know. HE other little factors I have adjusted to the perspective of the civilized mind. The two minds are very much alike in their opposition. The heathen thinks one is a terrible prevaricator when informed that people live way up in the air (sky- scrapers), and, on the other hand, the civilized man gives a crooked, cynical smile when informed that certain natives are able to do without any kind of food whatsoever for five or six days, subsisting on the emergency food inside their bodies which hap- pens to be situated in the buttocks. The Koranas of southern Africa have this ability. Many people in these ‘“‘arid days” over here don’t care anything about a camel, but I think a few would not mind having the ability that the Koranas are blessed with. I read only to-day how the late king of Servia, Peter II, had gone to the front during the war, urging his soldiers to stick it out about the camps— deaf, partly blind and well over eighty.. Kos had all his faculties and was used to riding a baboon.— SANTIE SABALALA. A-NA-CHA-THE-AK has the floor and IT humbly stand corrected for something at a past Camp-Fire that, without inten- tion, placed him in a false light: Los Angeles, Cal. Dear Iwodake-Ape-Itancan: Kindly allow Ha-na- cha-the-ak to offer a slight correction. He has no objection to letting the Camp-Fire brothers (and sisters) know his Indian name nor its meaning. It means Buffalo Bull and was given him because he happens to be built that way, wide, thick, tall, being 6 feet 24 and weighing 232. The B. B. recognized the aptness of the name, when he took a slant at his reflection in a full-length mirror and considered the bones of him. No, he is not pawing up the earth over bearing the name. Only, Camp-Fire folks e¢ al., please do not ad- dress mail to me under that name or its translation, since the postman will ring the bell and make me come down two flights of stairs to explain. Having been known to a host of friends as Big 179 Jim for thirty-five years, I do not feel especiall overburdened with a new name. It certainly will not make my “hump” abnormal from carrying it.— HA-NA-CHA-THE-AK.—Bic Jim.—E. E. HARRIMAN. ETANG already published and re-pub- lished “Riley Grannan’s Last Adven- ture—And After,” the funeral sermon deliv- ered over the body of the “square gambler” by the Rev. Mr. Knickerbocker, we’re now _ being asked to print it a third time. That looks to me like carrying it pretty far, but if enough of you want it again and the rest of you don’t object, why, that’s all the rea- son in the world for its third appearance. Only I want to be very sure of the demand before printing it again. ! Now wait a minute before you start any- thing! Two comrades are going to talk about something connected with re- ligion. Therefore some one will undoubt- edly accuse them and me of deliberate and hostile propaganda. So in advance I want to state there’s no propaganda or intent of propaganda. It’s merely some interesting matters for speculation that concern Ameri- cans and Canadians and, being free-born citizens, we by heck have full right to specu- late and are by heck going so to do. First a letter to Talbot Mundy referring to his story, “Under the Dome of the Rock.” St. George’s Society of New York, N. Y. I read your last story and thought that the fol- lowing information might be of service to you: A8o0uUT a year or so before the war one of our members, Hon. John Parker, raised a fund. I think it was the World or the Journal at that time in their Sunday edition gave a big statement of what this fund was for, with pictures of various parts of Jerusalem. It seems that Mr. Parker got some in- formation, either through a very old manuscript or some other source, concerning the treasures of the Temple: the Ark of the Covenant, the tables of stone, etc. I understand that these have been sup- posed to have been destroyed with the burning of the Temple. It appears to-be tolerably certain that these never reached Rome with other spoil, and it has been a mystery as to what became of them if not burned up. An old chap who was much interested in old-time things told me some years ago that the Ark and the tables of stone in the Temple were not the originals —that they had been taken by the Prophet Jere- miah a great many years before and hidden in Ire- land. What authority he had for this I can not say. NYHOW, according to the Parker statement it appears that the priests had a chamber cut in the solid rock, leading with a passage to the Temple, where in case of fire or danger they might place the treasures. That they had done so, and that until COMMICLOoOokKs (C@