to a perpendicular and faced with stone,



but has been left as nature made it, ex-
cept for a stone parapet placed on the
summit.

From this hill, not only can fine bird's-
eye views be had over the city, but also the
mountains can be seen to great advan-
tage. Yah Jo is situated at the beginning
of the great Thibetan highland, an-d might
be described as the "jumping-off place"
for parties headed into the interior of that
country.

The writer's visit was made near the
end of January, and some idea of the
mildness of the climate may be obtained
from the fact that trade was going on
briskly into the interior. A party of mis-
sionaries was leaving for Da Jen Lu, eight
days' journey to the west, a da} r 's journey
in the mountains averaging 20 English
miles. On the third day it would be nec-
essary to cross a pass 9,700 feet high, but
no deep snow was expected or probable.
During my stay of eight days at Yah Jo,
one day was cold, disagreeable and drizzly.
During the reminder of the time the days
were frequently brilliant with sunshine,
v.liich made walking uncomfortably warm
fo'- a person in ordinary winter clothing.

The navigation of the Yah River is al-
most entirely by bamboo rafts, and one of



500



OVERLAND MONTHLY.



the experiences to which the traveler vis-
iting this section looks forward is his de-
scent of the Yah river from Yah Jo to
Kiating, shooting the rapids and winding
through the picturesque gorge nearly a
thousand feet in depth and very narrow.



I said good-bye to the American mis-
sionaries, by whom I had been most hos-
pitably and courteously entertained, em-
barked on my raft, shot down the river,
and in the remarkably short time of two
days was in Kiating.



CAN CAMPHOR BE PRODUCED IN
CALIFORNIA?



BY ARTHTJB INKERSL.EY



CAMPHOR is a gum produced by
the, camphor tree, nearly the whole
supply of the well-known drug be-
ing obtained from the Island of
Formosa, which belongs to the Japanese.
Though the clever and industrious sub-
jects of the Mikado conduct nearly all
their enterprises according to the most
approved modern methods, their camphor
plantations are managed in a very unsci-
entific way. They simply let the cam-
phor trees grow until they are fifty years
old, then cut them down and extract the
camphor gum from the wood. This pro-
cess is both slow and extravagant. It is
believed by many Americans who are anx-
ious to deprive the Japanese of their
monopoly of the world's camphor, and
who have examined the question, that cam-
phor of as good a quality as the Formosan
can be grown in the United States. Cam-
phor trees will survive a temperature of
20 deg. or lower. In Florida, Southern
California and a wide strip of territory
contiguous to the Gulf of Mexico the tem-
perature never goes down low enough for
a sufficiently long time to kill camphor
trees, of which many are already flourish-
ing in the southern counties of California.
Experiments are being made by Profes-
sor Duncan, head of the Department of



Agricultural Chemistry of the University
of Kansas for the purpose of ascertaining
whether camphor-trees grown on Ameri-
can soil will yield enough camphor, and
of a high enough quality, to render their
cultivation profitable. Recently some cam-
phor produced on a plantation) in the
island of Jamaica was sent to England,
but did not find favor there on account of
its inferiority to the Formosan gum. The
Kansas professor is endeavoring to ascer-
tain what difference there is between the
Formosan and Jamaican gum, and to dis-
cover a means of refining the latter so as
to make its quality equal to that of For-
mosan camphor. If it is found that cam-
phor of good merchantable quality can be
produced in the United States in sufficient
quantity, a new American industry will
arise. It has already been determinied
that the leaves of camphor trees grown in
this country contain a large amount of the
gum, and if the trees will stand cutting
back at intervals of five years or so, cam-
phor can be produced at a profit. Like al-
most everything else, camphor brings a
much higher price now than it did some
years ago, and it is likely that it will be-
come even more expensive, as the Japan-
ese methods of production are crude and
wasteful.



HERE AND THERE IN SHARKDOM



BY LEWIS R. FREEMAN



DE GUSTIBTJS non est disputan-
chim" is a truth of wide applica-
tion, holding good no less gener-
ally in the animal kingdom than
in that of man, and in neither more force-
fully than in sharkdom. What is one
shark's meat is quite likely to be another
shark's poison, and because a certain thing
is sauce to the voracious "man-eater," it
does not necessarily follow that it will be
sauce for his epicurean cousin, the ham-
mer-head."

Regarding the tastes of the sharks of
any one locality it is usually possible to
speak more definitely, but still with no
degree of certainty, and even the likes and
dislikes of a single known individual can-
not be pinned down and charted as with
square and compass. This latter fact was
well borne out by the action of a grizzly
old fourteen-footer identified by the
rusted stump of a harpoon planted just
aft- his dorsal which I chanced to observe
one day down at Tongatabu, in the 'South
Pacific. The natives pointed him out to
me as he nosed his way about among the
other sharks that were nibbling gingerly
at the outside corners of tempting hunks
of salt beef lowered for their especial de-
lectation, and said that this was the
seventh year they had fished for him, with
everything from "charmed" cocoanuts and
shiny tomato cans to plucked live pelicans
and suckling pigs, without even coming
near to landing him.

"None has ever seen him so much as
smell the bait," said a white-haired old
fellow, "and from that we know he must
be tabu. Now we no longer give him no-
tice, for we understand that he must be
fed and protected by the Evil One."

Hardly were these words spoken before
the great harpooned tail of the wily mon-
ster in question gave a vigorous swish, a
smooth, mouse-colored body shot up
through the water, and two triple rows



of gleaming ivories opened and closed up-
onnothing more or less than a bare
hook that its owner was pulling up for re-
baiting after it had been dexterously
striped by the "sleight-of-mouth" per-
formance of some member of the ruck
down among the trees of the pink coral
forest.

Yet the general trend of the gastro-
nomic preferences of the sharks of any
single bay or island, or .even group of
islands, is usually understood sufficiently
well for practical purposes, and if the
natives or old residents advise against
bathing in certain localities, it is best not
to take the chance. In few parts of the
world are sharks more plentiful than
among the atolls of the Tuamotu or Low
Archipelago, the most southeasterly of the
South Sea groups, but in spite of the fact
that the natives, whether engaged in fish-
ing, pearling or swimming for pleasure,
expose^ them selves constantly in the waters
infested by these monsters, loss of life
from" that source is rarely heard of.

It was on the long, low island of Faka-
riva of the Tuamotu group that I was sit-
ting one afternoon in the shade of the
galvanized-iron veranda of the principal
trading store of the village, watching with
no little enjoyment the amusing antics
of a big band of supremely happy young-
sters who were disporting themselves in
the limpid waters of the lagoon. Presently
a number of men came down to the beach,
straightened out the coils of some heavy
lines, baited up a lot of big chain-lead-
ered hooks, and began throwing them out
among the swimmers.

"Wake up !" I shouted to my host, the
trader, giving his hammock a vigorous
shake. "Isn't it rather a risky proceed-
ing throwing fish-hooks in where a lot of
naked boys are swimming? What if they
should happen to snag one of the young-
sters?"



502



OVERLAND MONTHLY.



"Boys V all right," came in a muffled
yawn from under the trader's koui fibre
'hat. "Them coves ain't fishin' fer boys;
only fishin' fer sharks.'"

"Sharks!' 3 I scoffed "sharks in there
where those boys are swimming ! Wake
up, man;- you're talking in your sleep."
And thus admonished, the trader sat up,
yawned, stretched himself, drank a glass
of absinthe, and, finally, explained that,
as a rule, sharks in the Tuamotus did not
care for boys, particularly in those locali-
ties where it was the custom to fish for
them daily with succulent lumps of salt
pork.

Three hundred miles to the north of
the low-lying Tuamotus, where the rocky
cliffs of the volcanic Marquesas stand as
the most easterly outposts of the South
Sea Islands, conditions are quite the re-
verse. There, salt pork, as far as its use
for shark bait is concerned, is a drug on
the market, and boy or anything else
that will squeal, squawk or squirm,- bleat,
bleed or bluster has the call.

The Marquesas, however, together with
the Solomons and New Hebrides, both of
which groups lie a few degrees north and
west of Australia, are the only islands of
the South Pacific where cannibalism is
still practiced; so that "boy," if he is sac-
rificed at all in that neck of the Pacific, is
rather too recherche a morsel for use even
a? shark bait. The favorite substitute is
a chicken that has been picked alive and
vigorously scoured with a sheaf of tatoo-
ing needles to bring its color up to the
ruddy hue that is supposed to be the most
popular with the sharks of that latitude.
Pigs and kids are also used, and, as a der-
nier resort when no live bait is obtainable,
a hunk of beef from the unbled carcass^of
one of the wild cattle which abound in
several of the larger islands.

In Samoa, in the American island of
Tutuila, and the German island of Upo-
lou, one may bathe with impunity inside
the reefs, but in the large German island
of Savaii, if a stranger ventures beyond
his knees into the water at any point, he
is pretty sure to be bodily pulled back by
the ever-vigilant natives to prevent his
being pulled off in the opposite direction
by the no less vigilant sharks. In these
islands they have a legend of a man and
a maid who eloped from Savaii, fled to



Tutuila, and were there turned, respect-
ively, into a shark and a turtle, by a god or
devil, or something of the kind, into whose
hands they chanced to fall. As a proof
of this story, the natives claim that if
}'ou go out and sing on a moonlight night
at the end of a certain point near the vil-
lage of Leone, the shark and the turtle will
appear to you.

When they told this story to a friend
and myself during a recent cruise through
these islands, the former said that he was
quite ready ito believe the transformation
part of it because our outrigger canoe had
"turned turtle" that very morning, while
a native dealer who had sold us curios
was nothing if not a shark. But in the
matter of the power of music to call up
the loving couple we were both agreed
that we would like a demonstration. So
that very night a party of a score or more
of the villagers escorted us out to the
point in question and started up a good
lively Samoan "himinee." They had fin-
ished a swinging Kanaka rowing song and
were just getting under way with a local
version of an old English ballad which
begins "Oh, me nevah will forget you,"
and goes on with a half-dozen lines of
"La, la, la, las," to the end of each verse,
when the unmistakable fin of a "tiger"
began to cut back and forth across the
rippling moon path. Almost simultane-
ously a black lump began showing above
the water immediately in front of us, and
presently the natives called attention to
the fact that it was slowly rising from the
water, adding that the turtle was getting
ready to swim away after the shark. It
was at this juncture that my observant
companion noted that the tide was rapid-
ly falling, and after ricochetting a round
of bullets from our Colts off the back of
the quondam maiden without stirring her
into activity, we went back to the village
fully convinced that the story was a fab-
rication, the shark a coincidence and the
turtle a biack rock.

The Hawaiian Islands, like the Mar-
quesas, are another "live bait" group, and
the favorite method of "fishing" employed
by some of the white "sportsmen" of
Honolulu a practice givten scant pub-
licity for obvious reasons is for barbar-
ity, worthy to rank with anything con-
ceived bv the Kanakas in their worst days



HERE AND THERE IN SHARKDOM.



503



of cannibalism. On the reef near the
narrow passage to the harbor one can see
it to the right of the inbound steamer if
the tide is low has been built a circular
wall of coral blocks, appropriately dubbed
the "shark pen." At high water the top
of the encircling wall is submerged to a
depth of three or four feet, while at low
water it stands about the same distance
above the surface.

The night before a morning of sport is
scheduled, the body of a condemned horse
or mule is secured from the city pound,
taken out in a scow and anchored in the
middle of the "pen" at high water, its
presence there never failing to attract a
goodly number of sharks to the spot. These
latter, becoming engrossed in their ban-
quet, fail to notice that the lowering water
is cutting off all chance of escape, and, as
a result, are ready to hand for the early
morning's sport of the patrons of the en-
terprise. The healthful and invigorating
pastime of the "members" consists in vari-
ations of walking jauntily around the top
of the wall and harpooning or shooting
the gamey leviathans.

The barbarity I have alluded to, how-
ever, is not charged on the ground of kill-
ing the sharks in the fashion described
the destruction of those monsters, in what-
ever manner accomplished, being gener-
ally considered quite as proper and legiti-
mate as the killing of noxious snakes and
other reptiles but rather because of the
fact that the animal used as a lure, while
popularly supposed to be dead when an-
chored, is, on the contrary, very much
alive. I am not speaking from hearsay
in this matter, but from personal observa-
tion!, it chancing that a party of us on a
small yacht, on the last slant home of a
tedious beat up to Honolulu from Pearl
Harbor, ran full onto the "anchoring com-
mittee" just as it was completing its
preparations preliminary to the club's
Sunday morning outing. The "bait," a
broken-down mule from one of the sugar
plantations, had still enough life in it
to protest vigorously against the treat-
ment it was receiving, and its tendency to
"drag anchor" was giving the committee
a good deal of worry. Two of the mem-
bers of the organization whom we put
ashore unblushingly confessed that they
had never used anything else but live bait.



"We tried meat as a starter/' they said,
"but it was no go. The sharks hereabouts
must have blood, and the only way we
can serve it up to them attractively is in
the manner you have seen. Sheep and
pigs won't do, because, as a rule, they
don't last long enough to keep the sharks
till the tide goes down. The exigencies of
the sport demand mules or horses."

"Exigencies of the sport!" I am not
able to say whether or not the S. P. C. A.
has a branch in Honolulu.

In the western islands of the South
Pacific the sharks seem to take almost any
kind of bait, and it is rarely that one sees
a schooner or steamer at anchor without
two or three heavy lines dangling over its
stern. Watching a shark line is tedious
business, but it is strictly necessary to
know when a monster is hooked, as his
frantic rushes, if allowed to go unchecked,
are pretty sure to cause some part of the
line, leader or even his own anatomy, to
give way and result in his escape. The
old scheme of tying the line to the big toe
and going asleep would probably answer
all right as far as arousing the fisherman
was concerned, but would hardly leave him
in a condition to give the shark the imme-
diate and imperative attention demanded.
To this end, the officers on the inter-island
boats have hit on an ingenious plan. In-
stead of taking in their lines when the
hour for the long noonday siesta arrives,
they run a stout piece of marline twine
from the line up to the steam whistle,
leaving it for the shark to announce the
circumstance of his being hooked by
sounding a toot.

One regrets to learn that the inventor
of this clever expedient, a purser of the
Australian steamer Waorangi, lost his
position as the result of his first experi-
ment. This came about through his
faulty judgment in running the main line
instead of the comparatively light
twine now used to establish that connec-
tion-r up to the whistle. The latter gave
forth a brave toot in response to the first
tentative pull of the big "tiger" at the
other end of the line, but the blast was
in the nature of a swan song. An instant
later, with a parting shriek of agony, the
whistle was wrenched from the funnel,
and, carrying the binnacle stand and a
trail of hammocks along with it, vanished



504



OVERLAND MONTHLY.



over the side, spinning like a taffrail log
in the wake of the flying shark. On the
Waorangi was forced the ignominy of an-
nouncing her goings and comings at the
rest of the ports on her homeward run by
means of a fog horn.

The fact that popular observations of
the ways of sharks is largely limited to
their dilly-dallyings with baited hooks is
responsible for the very general belief
that it is necessary for them to turn on
their backs before taking food in their
mouths. This impression is erroneous.
jEating from pieces of meat suspended on
a line does not represent the normal con-
dition under which the shark feeds, and to
regard as characteristic the attitudes he
assumes under such circumstances is as
unreasonable as to similarly class the an-
tics of a boy trying to take a bite from
an apple on a string at a Holloween party.

Even when a piece of meat is free from
the hook and the shark is satiated or sus-
picious, he will often roll over and allow
it to settle gently into his mouth; but this
is not because he is .physically unable to
handle it otherwise. Throw a piece of red
beef between three or four hungry "tigers"
of non-vivisection ist propensities, and you
will, see the quickest of them snap it out
of sight with only the slightest listing of
his body to one side or the other. Sharks
turn slightly in feeding for exactly the
same reason that people tip their heads
slightly in kissing because their noses
would get in the way if they didn't
"but to claim that the one must turn on
liis back to eat is as absurd as to assert
"that the other must stand on his head to



S&ark skin, shark teeth, shark oil, shark
~meat and several other products of the
'dead shark are articles of greater or lesser
Tutility, but I have never heard of but one
instance where the living shark was put
to a practical use. This was when they
used him as a prison guard in the old
days when British convicts were trans-
ported to Australia, the monster serving
this purpose for many years at the Port
Arthur settlement, ten miles south of
Hobart, the present capital of Tasmania.
'The prisons at this point, some of which
may still be seen, were situated on a pe-
ninsula, whose only connection with the
mainland was by a long, narrow strip of



sand called, from its peculiar configura-
tion, the "Eaglehawk's Neck."

The convicts were allowed considerable
liberty on the peninsula, but to prevent
their escape to the mainland, half-starved
bloodhounds were chained in such a man-
ner that their orbits of swing overlapped
all the way across the narrowest portion
of the "Neck." Several prisoners having
avoided the "bloodhound zone" by swim-
ming, the authorities adopted the effective
but grewsome expedient of feeding the
sharks at this point several times a day.
In a few weeks the place became liter-
ally alive with the voracious "man-eaters,"
and from that time on the only convict
that ever escaped accomplished his pur-
pose by rolling up in kelp and working
himself along, inch by inch, timing his
movements to correspond with those of
the other heaps of seaweed that were be-
ing rolled by the surf.

There are still great numbers of sharks
to be found about the Eaglehawk's Neck,
and it was there a year or so ago that I
witnessed the phenomenon of a number of
these monsters, like so many warships go-
ing into dry dock, as it were, to have their
bottoms scraped. Like other leviathans
of the deep animate and inanimate the
shark occasionally suffers from barnacles
and other marine parasites that attach
themselves to his hide. On the upper side
of the Eaglehawk's Neck is a broad, flat
reef of coral, washed at low tide by only
a foot or two of water. To this place the
sharks with "foul bottoms" are wont to
resort, and, after picking out a spot where
their bodies are just awash, lie for hours
while the gently moving waves rock and
rub them back and forth against the rough
coral of the reef. This "nature treatment"
is said to be most efficacious, and the spec-
tacle of a dozen or more big "tigers" doz-
ing contentedly as the warm waters sway
them lazily to and fro, and every now and
then squirming in a pleased sort of way.
as a dog when his spine is rubbed, is
sometimes calculated to awaken), for the
moment at least, a feeling almost akin to
svrnpathy for these most universally
dreaded and detested of all God's crea-
tures.

New Zealand boasts the most, and, as
far as T know, the only popular shark-
in the world. This is the famous "Pelo-




1!



5-

I



506



OVERLAND MONTHLY.



rus Jack," who makes his home in one
of the ; great Southern sounds, and who
has niot been known to fail to come out to
meet a single steamer visiting that local-
ity in -.the last twenty j^ears. He invaria-
bly joins the boat at the same point in
the passage, follows in its wake during the
trip about the sound, to take leave of it
again at the identical spot where he picked
it up. His regular and gentlemanly hab-
its have' made him the subject of no small
amount of preferential treatment, not the
least unusual of which is the greeting and
taking leave of him with such hearty old
British choruses as "We all love Jack' 7 and
"When Jack comes home again."

Tourists always refer to him as "Good
old Pelorus," but his "goodness" is a
thing that none of them ever appears to
try to cultivate at closer quarters than
from behind the rail of the poop deck. Pe-
lorus always keeps near the surface of the
water while in attendance on the steamer,
which obliging habit is responsible for
the fact that he is credited with having
been the subject of more snapshots, good
and bad, than any other object in New
Zealand.

Speaking of snapshots, I was shown in
Sydney what is justly regarded as one
of the most remarkable photographs of
any description ever taken that of a
shark in the act of seizing a boy. This
photo is in the possession of a nephew of
Sir John Outram, the famous English ex-
plorer, by whom it was taken a number of
years ago in the harbor of Colombo. The
photographer was standing with his cam-
era ready to make an exposure on some
boys who were diving for coins, when the
grim tragedy which forms the subject of
the pr|nt in question was suddenly en-
acted-before him, and he pressed the bulb,
as he afterwards admitted, quite uncon-
sciously. The picture,- which is of a 4x5
size, shows the head and shoulders arid the
frantically-tossed arms of the victim above
the wMjer, and in good focus. On the face,
with its^siaring eyes and open mouth, was
caught an expression of the supremest sur-
prisej|ind terror. Of the shark, only the
uppdMWEjfc:v|jsible, and this is somewhat
blur^ %ff %count of the disturbance of
the surface and the refraction .of the
water. The details of the head, however,
with its great jaws closed upon a thigh



of the unfortunate youth, may be distinct-
ly traced. That the exposure was made
at the very instant of attack is conclusive-
ly proven by the fact that another of the
boys, who had apparently just risen to
the surface, is holding up a coin and grin-
ning his appreciation in the direction of
the passengers.

Sharks have a number of natural ene-
mies which they are called on to fight
from time to time, and the worst of these
is probably the swordh'sh. I have never
heard a well-authenticated account of a
battle between the two, however, but in
Northern Australia I picked up some re-
liable data on a finish h'ght between a six-
teen foot "man-eater" and an alligator