Part 4

They were never satisfied--they always craved more. They starved, struggled, and suffered in their mad scramble, but in the end were no richer than before. Only one in five ever left Peru alive. Pizarro’s share of the Atahuallpa ransom was 57,222 pesos of gold, but he was murdered before he returned to Spain.

A cavalryman named Leguizano was awarded as his share of the booty the Inca image of the sun, a huge plate of burnished gold. This rich prize was lost in gambling before morning; whence it came to be a famous Spanish proverb:

“Juega el Sol antes que amanezca.” (He plays away the sun before sunrise.)

THE RANSOM OF THE INCA

Let me tell you about the ransom of the Inca Atahuallpa. It is as famous as it is fabulous.

From the hour that Pizarro landed on Peruvian soil and began climbing the Andes, the hand of friendship had been extended him by the natives, who regarded the Spaniards as superhuman. Pizarro repaid the Inca’s kindness by inviting him to dine and then making him prisoner.

drawn in CUZCO--PERU “The City of the Sun”

THE FISHERMEN OF THE EL GRAN CHACO USE A PICK AND SHOVEL. The Ophio-cephalous species of fish bury themselves in the mud and the natives dig them out ... Brazil.]

Atahuallpa was not long in discovering that gold was the object of Pizarro’s visit to his land and in hope of gaining his freedom offered to fill the room in which he was confined with gold, as high as he could reach; and standing on tiptoe, he stretched out his hand against the wall. Pizarro drew a line along the wall at the height which the Inca had indicated and called upon him to make good his word.

The room was 17 feet wide, by 22 feet long, and the line was 9 feet from the floor. In one month this vast space was filled! The temples and palaces of Cuzco had been stripped of their glittering golden decorations. The wealth of this ransom has been estimated at twenty millions of dollars!

And then, instead of freeing Atahuallpa as he had promised, Pizarro ordered him burned alive in the public square of Caxamalca!

COMMODUS FOUGHT AND WON 1031 BATTLES

Commodus Lucius Aelius Aurelius, Emperor of Rome (161-192), was so proud of his records in the gladiatorial arena that he commanded the world to worship him as Hercules. He eventually met his death at the hands of a wrestler by the name of Narcissus who strangled him.

“LINDBERGH ... _Was the 67th Man to Make A Non-Stop Flight Over the Atlantic Ocean_”

When I printed this statement in one of my “Believe It or Not” pictures in the newspapers not long ago, I was surprised at the reaction: almost immediately I was besieged with telegrams, phone calls, and letters--about 3,000 of them. Practically all of the doubting ones thought that “Lindy” was the first to make a non-stop flight over the Atlantic Ocean; and the few who did remember (strange, how few they were) that Alcock and Brown flew over, could not imagine who the other 64 could be.

They forgot two dirigibles!

Sir John Alcock and Sir A. Whitton Brown made the first non-stop flight over the Atlantic in 1919. (Newfoundland to Ireland.)

Later, the same year, the English dirigible, R 34, with thirty-one men aboard, crossed from Scotland to America, and returned.

In 1924, the German ZR 3 (now the “Los Angeles”) flew from Friedrichshafen, Germany, to Lakehurst, New Jersey, with a crew of thirty-three men.

Lindbergh was the sixty-seventh.

PRESENT--BUT NOT VOTING

Though dead for nearly 100 years, the dressed-up skeleton of Jeremy Bentham, with his head between his feet, sits in uncanny silence at the head of the hospital board around which the trustees of the University College Hospital in London gather. Jeremy Bentham founded this hospital in 1827 and presided at the first meetings of the Board of Trustees--and he still does to this day, although he died in 1832. Each meeting of the board has found his weird figure at the table. His gaunt form is erect, his sightless eyes stare outright, and his broad-brimmed beaver hat is never removed from the long locks that dangle down on his shoulders, nor is his gloved hand ever taken from the cane that it has rested upon for over 100 years. And as the various important bits of business come before the board, old Jeremy is consulted--and when no answer comes from his grinning teeth--he is recorded as:

“PRESENT--BUT NOT VOTING”

This dressed-up bag of bones and dust of what was Jeremy Bentham sits at this board because the living Jeremy Bentham willed it so.

When Bentham died he left his whole fortune to the University College Hospital, but on the condition that his skeleton be preserved and placed in the President’s chair at every board meeting. This unusual testament has been faithfully obeyed by the generations of trustees that have followed; and Jeremy still sits in the President’s chair, and probably will never leave it until stones and bones have turned to dust.

Jeremy Bentham was a child prodigy. He could speak Latin, Greek, French and English at the age of five. Matriculating at Queens College, Oxford, when only thirteen, he won his B.A. two years later, and set out upon an eventful career that was to bring him fame and fortune as a writer, scientist, and philosopher.

His first work was entitled “Fragments on Government,” which was acclaimed as a masterly attack upon Blackstone’s eulogies of the British Government system.

Fame followed fast and the young scholar was soon taken up by the _intelligentsia_ of his day and his works commanded attention not only in England, but on the Continent, and in America.

Although he traveled widely and led an eventful life, it seems that melancholy overtook him in the twilight of his life--he was alone and without a family--and it was then, evidently, that the idea of self-perpetuation came upon him, and the idea of always being present at the meetings of the College that he founded took definite course in his will.

It was in accordance with this last weird flare of his genius that his testament demanded that his head be severed from his body in the presence of his friends and placed in a separate glass case which now rests between his ankles, while a mask, a life-like replica of his living face, be placed upon his shoulders instead.

And so he has sat for nearly a hundred years--always present--but not voting.

* * *

PAIN? You don’t know what pain is!

If you think that you have suffered some, just read about Mr. Henry B. Smythe, of Maplewood, Mo., who has undergone 148 major operations! The game Mr. Smythe has suffered constant and painful invalidship for 37 of his 47 years. He has spent more than 200 hours on the operating table and is still smiling.

Moreover, he is a successful broker and manufacturer’s agent, and lives happily with his wife. He walks briskly, works hard, and eats normally. Horseback riding and dancing are his hobbies.

Although there is a likelihood of many more operations, Mr. Smythe is undaunted. He will no doubt be glad to answer personally anything that you may wish to ask him.

* * *

I was traveling in Mexico a few years ago when I received the following letter. I print it just as it came to me.

Dear Gentleman:

You make wonderful pictures. I am wonderful. I like to meet you please. I am

GUYAL VACA SEGUAL The World’s renown Insensible FIRE EATER

I bathes, eats, and plays in fire. I eat fire, play with lead in my mouth. I take bath in gasoline and set myself in fire. I step in red hot oven and roast pound of meat in same to convince you and imerge as cool as ice.

I am King of Fire, the whip of fire.

I have been recognized by some doctors having not found any Chemical Substances in my body for I do not use them.

I am the only man that drinks hot lead.

I drink gasoline and light it in my mouth so that you can see the flames of fire shooting from within me, and I feel though I had only partaken of some cool refreshing drink.

I present myself as the only one can control fire. The man possessed of equal control of heat is yet to come.

I can also roll myself in red-hot coal fire. I will come to the hotel tomorrow.

MEXICAN GUYAL VACA SEGUAL.

I am the only fire eater Guyal Vaca Segual so don’t confuse me with many performers doing the same work I do.

* * *

A MURDER AT MIDNIGHT--IF EVERYONE WHO WAS TOLD ABOUT IT TOLD 2 OTHER PEOPLE WITHIN 12 MINUTES, EVERYBODY ON EARTH WOULD KNOW IT BEFORE MORNING]

THE MURDER AT MIDNIGHT

* * *

THE HORNED KAFFIR

Horned men have raised the devil everywhere. The satanical and animal-like appearance of men with horns growing out of their foreheads have excited the emotions of the curious for generations.

François Trovillow, the Horned Man of Mezières, is famous to this day, although he died in 1698.

In Lhassa, Tibet, there is a man with a horn growing from his forehead to the extent of thirteen inches. The reflected glory of the golden sun bounces off K2 and Mount Everest on this curious promontory each morning as its bearer makes his obeisance to Gatama while turning a prayer-wheel.

The Horned Kaffir of Africa, like the Horned One of the Himalayas, is still alive. I saw him in London several years ago. He seemed self-centered and satisfied, although black and a Christian.

Medical science is lacking in positive knowledge as to the exciting causes of horns on humans. It is a rarity that may be classed as a dermatological oddity. It is a skin disease called Cornu Cutaneum, a true horny cutaneous outgrowth varying in size and shape.

Although resembling animal horns closely, their anatomic structure differs in not containing bone and in having a cutaneous attachment. The Cornu Cutaneum shows preference for the hairy scalp and for the face, occurring occasionally elsewhere--as on the trunk, cheeks, glands, extremities, and even the eyelids! No part of the body is exempt.

I refer you to Rodriguez’s extraordinary case, quoted by Croker, in which horns grew on the side of the head to the extent of twelve inches, and were fourteen inches around the base.

(_Diseases of the Skin, by Stelwagon._)

* * *

THE SQUARE PALINDROME

R O T A S O P E R A T E N E T A R E P O S A T O R

This is the most famous of all palindromes--the famous Square Palindrome of the fourth power that has mystified scholars for hundreds of years. It is also an anagram of PATER NOSTER A O.

The famous Square Palindrome is found on the pavement of the sacristy of the Pieve Terzagni Church at Tremona, and is duplicated at St. Peter’s Church near Capestrano, the Church of the Mother in Magliano, the Church of the Augustins in Verona, and several ancient churches in England and in France.

Its meaning has never been exactly determined. The medieval scholar, Panza of Italy, suggested that it may have been intended to express what wind and wheel convey to the reader of the Holy Scriptures, namely, eternity and infinity.

The latest of a long line of interpreters of this curiosity is a certain Mr. Williams of England, who succeeded several years ago in arranging the letters in a symmetrical way with the theory that the solution is:

“ORO TE PATER ORO TE PATER SANAS.”

“We pray to Thee, Father; We pray to Thee, Father; Thou healest.”

_The literature on this subject reaches back 700 years._

* * *

DAMNED CLEVER, THESE CHINESE

How did I get this one? How do I know that all the Chinese in the world--marching four abreast past a given point--would never finish passing, although they marched for ever and ever?

“Such stuff as dreams are made on.”

Recently I dined in New York’s Chinatown with Paul Fung, the Chinese artist. Much food and much talk. A real Chinese dinner has from twenty to thirty courses and lasts five hours.

It was late when I arrived home. Robert Warwick, who lives next door, yawned dramatically. “Hi! Ho! I’ll be glad to turn in,” he said.

And so to bed.

“Hi! Ho!” The words remained. And like the sixty-fold echo of Simonetta, they sounded again and again, until I was dreaming of the marching Chinese of Tsingtao whom I had seen so often trotting with their bundles on the Bund and chanting their invariable sing-song:

Hi! Ho! Hi! Ho! Hi! Ho!

Hi! Ho! HI-I-I!

They marched on endlessly in my dreams. They would never stop, it seemed, and did not--until the crack of dawn sent them all scampering off.

So I took a pencil and paper and figured it out, and drew the picture that you see opposite, which has astounded a lot of people.

This is how:

Although there is no definite information on the population of China, as a census has not been taken since 1403, let us take the reasonable estimate of 600,000,000 as the number of Chinese on earth. (This includes Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Tibet, Malaysia, South Seas, North and South America, etc.)

Following the conduct of marches as ordered by the U. S. Army Field Service Regulations, the Chinese--marching four abreast, or platoon-squads formation, at the rate of three miles an hour for the average fifteen miles per day--will require 22 years, 302 days to pass a given point. A generation! There will be 26,280,000 passing each year.

Assuming that the birth-rate of the Chinese is ten per cent. (same as that of the Jews), and that half of these children die before they are able to walk, there will still be 30,000,000 new Chinese coming on each year to take the place of the 26,280,000 that have passed the given point.

And so they could march on forever.

_In 1402 and 1403, the Emperor of China--using the death penalty as a threat--gathered the only reliable statistics ever taken on the Chinese population. The census of 1402 showed a population of 56,301,026, and the 1403 census 66,598,337. This shows an increase of nineteen per cent. in one year._

_The Chinese death rate has been officially determined only for the city of Peking, and amounts to two and a half per cent._

_Ref.: “The Numerical Relation of the Population of China,” by Prof. T. Sacharoff._

* * *

METHUSELAH ... _Oldest Man in the Bible_ Died Before His Father

The explanation of this is simple; Methuselah was the son of Enoch, of whom it is written:

“By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God translated him.” Heb. 11.5.

* * *

COGHLAN’S COFFIN

RIPLEY’S DRAWING OF C. F. COGHLAN’S CASKET AS CARRIED FROM GALVESTON FLOOD TO PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND STIRS ACTOR’S DAUGHTER TO SEARCH

_By Charles Burney Ward_

A West Indian hurricane, as the world still remembers, swept Galveston, Tex., September 8, 1900. As an incident of its tragic havoc it swept out to sea the coffin of the late Charles Francis Coghlan, famous actor.

Ever since that fateful day Coghlan’s daughter, Mrs. Gertrude Coghlan Pitou, now of Bayside, L. I., has searched for her father’s coffin. She and her husband, Augustus Pitou, who was once the late Mr. Coghlan’s manager, have hired men by the year and spent thousands of dollars on the twenty-seven-year-long search. They received never a hint until--

Mrs. Pitou was reading the _Evening Post_ of September 15. She turned to the sports pages. There, Robert L. Ripley’s cartoon caught her eye.

“Believe It or not,” she read. “Charles Coghlan Comes Home! He died in 1899 and was buried in Galveston. When the tragic flood came his coffin was washed out to sea and the Gulf Stream carried him around Florida and up the coast to Prince Edward Island--2,000 miles distant--where he was born.”

This was news to Mrs. Pitou!

She showed the cartoon to her husband. Mr. Pitou, who is now booking manager of the A. L. Erlanger Theatrical Enterprises, read the cartoonist’s inscription. Could such a thing really be possible? Mr. Pitou could not be sure. Neither could Mrs. Pitou.

CONSULTS CARTOONIST

Yet this was the first definite hint in all these years that either had ever had which would indicate the possible final resting place of Mr. Coghlan’s coffin. “Hope springs eternal”--they would actively resume the search. They telephoned the _Evening Post_.

“What we would like to know,” said Mr. Pitou, “is where Mr. Ripley got that information. We have never once heard that suggestion. I believe it’s impossible that the Gulf Stream could carry the coffin all around Florida and up to Canada.”

“Find out where Mr. Ripley got that,” Mr. Pitou asked.

“Where did I get it?” Mr. Ripley replied to the reporter’s question. “Why, two of the late Mr. Coghlan’s closest associates have set down the incident in their published books. They are none other than Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Mrs. Lily Langtry. As for the possibility of the Gulf Stream’s carrying the coffin to Prince Edward Island, I checked up with a capable sea captain and several authorities on ocean currents, who say it’s quite possible.”

Ripley then cited Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s book, “A Player Under Three Reigns.” In telling how he took the late Mr. Coghlan from his home on Prince Edward Island to play Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” in London, Sir Johnston writes (pages 165-6):

“In about a year, I think, he died at Galveston. Shortly after his burial there was a great storm came up from the Gulf which swept his coffin, with others, into the sea. The Gulf Stream bore him around Florida, up the coast, about 1,500 miles to Prince Edward Island and he came ashore not far from his home.”

LONDON IS QUERIED

A like report of the curious incident is given in “The Days I Knew,” by Lily Langtry, who appeared in several plays with the late Mr. Coghlan.

These sources of the report’s origin were given to Mr. Pitou.

“It’s strange,” he said, admitting that both Sir Johnston and Mrs. Langtry had been good friends of his father-in-law. “But I’d like to know where they got it. Please,” he asked, “find out Forbes-Robertson’s source of information. This is not just a newspaper story to us. It’s a very serious matter. If we thought there could be any truth in it we would start a search of Prince Edward Island.”

The _Evening Post_ sent a cablegram to its London office, instructing the representative there to get the facts from Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson. The reply came by radiogram to the _Evening Post_:

“Forbes-Robertson writes, ‘I distinctly remember it was given me by one in whom I had confidence. Indeed, I think two people told me the story. I take it that his daughter has consulted George Tyler, who was Coghlan’s manager for some time.’”

OTHER REPORTS TRACED

George C. Tyler, theatrical producer, whose office, incidentally, is in the same building with that of Mr. Pitou, at 214 West Forty-second Street, said Mrs. Pitou had not consulted him, and added:

“I have heard that story of Charles Coghlan’s coffin not once but a number of times. I was once his manager, and close friends of his have told me since of his coffin having been found on Prince Edward Island. It was washed ashore, as I heard it, at Fortune Bridge. I remember once, years ago, when I spoke of its having been found on the beach at Galveston, somebody corrected me--I forget who it was--and told me it had been carried in the Gulf Stream to the Canadian island. It has been told to me by several persons in whom I have confidence.”

Charles Francis Coghlan was an Irish actor, born in 1841. He first appeared on the stage in London, in 1860, and came to America in 1876. He was leading man in a number of plays with his sister, Rose Coghlan, who was as famous in the profession as he. He also was leading man in companies with Mrs. Fiske and Lily Langtry. He died in Galveston, November 27, 1899, and his body was placed in a granite vault in a cemetery there.

GULF STREAM GOES NORTHWARD

How that coffin might have been carried by the Gulf Stream to Prince Edward Island is a question which probably could long be debated.

Prince Edward Island, a Province of the Dominion of Canada, lies in a semicircular bay of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Fossil plants, abundant there, and beds of peat, dune of drifted sand, alluvial clays and mussel mud, occurring in and near its creeks and bays, show evidence, many say, that they have been washed there from the Gulf shore of Texas.

The Gulf Stream, as oceanographers point out, flows northward from the Gulf of Mexico and follows the eastern coast of the United States to a point east of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. It is narrow and deep, with a current that travels approximately eighty miles a day. It is joined by a current which comes from the West Indies and follows the same course.

MIGHT HAVE CARRIED OFF COFFIN

In this connection, Cartoonist Ripley tentatively points out that, since the Galveston flood came from the West Indies, there might have been a backwash after the hurricane toward the West Indies. This possibly could have carried such a thing as a coffin out through the Gulf to the point where the West Indian current joins the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream, when it passes a point between the Bermudas and the coast of the Carolinas, divides into several small ocean streams. And one of these streams, whose definite courses have not been traced positively, might well have carried Charles Coghlan’s coffin to Prince Edward Island. Especially might this have been a destination for a derelict in the Gulf Stream, since, as is well known, derelicts in the stream rarely are carried to Europe.

THE HUMAN PIN CUSHION

This Hindoo ascetic, of Singapore, walked three miles in the blazing sun with fifty spears (each fitted with a very sharp point) embedded in his flesh. Imagine the excruciating agony that every footstep meant.

Why did he do it?

No difference. There is no sense in a Hindoo religious fanatic anyway. But the fact that he did it is interesting enough, and it all goes to prove how much torment the human body can stand under certain mental conditions.

* * *

THE LUCKIEST MAN ALIVE

Surely he is Captain J. H. Hedley, of Chicago, who fell out of a plane nearly three miles in the air and then fell back into it again! Here is the account from Hedley’s log-book and authenticated by Lieutenant R. C. Purvis, Recording Officer of Twentieth Squadron, R.F.C.

“_January 6, 1918. Mach. No. 7255. Height, 15,000 ft. Lieutenant Makepeace, M.C., reports Captain J. H. Hedley accidentally thrown into air, afterwards alighted on tail same machine and rescued._”

Lieut. Makepeace was a Canadian flying officer and Capt. Hedley was an observer in his plane when they were attacked over the German lines. In the running fight that ensued Hedley was dislodged from the plane when making a sudden vertical dive, and fell several hundred feet in a direct line with the machine--probably suction or a vacuum had something to do with it--alighted on the tail, and was brought safely to earth from a height of some 10,000 feet.

* * *

SILENT FOR 30 YEARS.

Reb Frommer did not speak a word or utter a sound for thirty years. This remarkable penance was self-imposed. It seems that Frommer, in an outburst of temper, cursed his newly-wedded wife who soon after met with a violent death which Frommer feared was brought about by his abuse.