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Dr. Boys, With Bow and Arrow, Thinks He’s Unafraid of Tigers

Sacha Siemel’s Companion on Zoo Ship Loses Some of His Optimism, However

Bearing gifts for South American 2008, Dr. William M. Mann, director of the National Zoological Park, is en route to point in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay to collect birds, reptiles and animals. Among those on board his ship is William H. Shippen, jr., feature writer of The Star staff, who here presents the tenth of a series of articles about Dr. Mann’s expedition.

By W. H. SHIPPEN, Jr.,
Star Staff Correspondent.

ABOARD THE STEAMSHIP URUGUAY. —“Well, doctor, we’ll be seeing you!”

It was the night before our ship arrived in Rio, and the doctor was leaving us there.

We hoped we would be seeing him again, but we couldn’t be too certain—he was bound for the Matto Grasso country to hunt “tigers” with Sasha A. Siemel.

(W. H. Shippen, Jr.)

Dr. Charles E. Boys of Kalamazoo, Mich., had done a lot of hunting in his day—kodiak bears in Alaska, Rocky Mountain sheep in the United States and Canada, quail in Michigan, etc.

Dr. Boys is a big, husky man, but a lot of this new friends were worried about him. They had just heard Mr. Siemel lecture in the dance salon, telling how he speared jaguars and dodged alligators and pharinas, the little cannibal fish which swim in schools and strip a body to a skeleton in less time than it takes to mention it.

A Testimonial, Free.

“I’ll catch your ship on the way back about the first of June,” said Dr. Boys.

“What makes you so optimistic?”

“I have my bow and arrow along. If I miss my shots I’m sure the little lady from Philadelphia who is accompanying us will kill the tiger.”

As a matter of fact, the girl, who has been to the Matto Grasso before with Mr. Siemel and his hunting parties, is pretty good with a bow and arrow. Twice each day she and Mr. Siemel riddle a target fixed on the freight deck forward.

The target is beside a passage from which I bring water from the crew’s galley for Zoo Director William M. Mann’s menagerie. If the girl hadn’t been good at archery I probably would have been buried at sea some days ago.

Dr. Boys puts more faith in gunpowder than bows and arrows. He’s heard a lot of snake stories about the interior of Brazil, although Mr. Siemel says there are no poisonous varieties—just a few anacondas, one of the world’s largest boas.

Copper-Lined Boots.

In New York Dr. Boys got fitted at a swank sporting store in a pair of copper-lined, snake-proof boots. His wife (who plans to leave hime to his jungle adventures while she sees something of Brazil’s more civilized life) told him not to get the boots. She saw him trying them on and they seemed cumbersome.

“I’d rather see you bitten by a snake than unable to outrun a tiger after you shoot him with a bow and arrow,” she said. So the doctor came along without his boots.

“You’ll need some track shoes if one of those ‘campo’ fires begins to run toward your camp?”

“That’s true,” admitted Dr. Boys, “and I’ve brought along a mosquito net to keep off the vampire bats.”

“How can you take a bath in one of those rivers full of mandating fish and alligators?”

“That’s one of the reasons why I’m on my way to Brazil—I won’t have to take a bath!”

“Do you think you can sleep in a hammock?”

“I think I can sleep anywhere after this trip south. You see, my cabin is up forward—next to Dr. Mann’s buffaloes.”

The hunter insisted he warn’t afraid of fire ants, sunstroke or electric eels.

“But the food, sir. After the elaborate meals you’ve been enjoying on the boat, how can you accustom yourself to camp fare?”

“Ah, ” cut in Dr. Siemel, “no matter how bad our food, our appetites will be magnificent!”

“Dr. Boys, have you heard of Col. Fawcett—late of this majesty’s royal artillery, or some such regiment?”

“No, what happened to him?”

“Nobody knows. He went into the Matto Grasso in search of a ‘lost world.’ Nobody has heard from him since, and that was 10 years or so ago.”

“Did you say you are catching boat back in a month, doctor?”

“I hope so,” said Dr. Boys,

Wild Bill Throws Tantrum as Ship Pulls Into Rio

Shipmates Relieved as Yearling Buffalo Quiets Down

Bearing gifts for South American zoos, Dr. William M. Mann, director of the National Zoological Park, is en route to points in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay to collect birds, reptiles and animals. Among those on board his ship is William H. Shippen, jr., feature writer of The Star staff, who here presents the 12th of a series of articles about Dr. Mann’s expedition.

By W. H. SHIPPEN, Jr.,
Star Staff Correspondent.

S. S. URUGUAY AT RIO DE JANEIRO.—Nobody is disappointed with Rio, not even Wild Bill, the yearling buffalo.

Bill, who war called Ferdinand by the crew until he began trying to kick the slats out his crate and buck the top off, quieted down after we docked this morning.

Quite a few persons aboard ship were relieved when Wild Bill got so busy gathering hay he forgot to raise cain.

(W. H. Shippen, Jr.)

The drumming of his hoofs and horns had been an entertainment by day and something more than that by night.

“Not even a young bull buffalo can hold that pace,” said Dr. Mann. “If he keeps fighting his crate, he won’t be Wild Bill, but just another Sweet William—by the time we hit B. A.”

Mountains Gird Port.

The mountains which loomed about the port as we came in this morning strained the credulity of this Southern hillbilly.

I couldn’t believe in such fantastic shapes. The mountains were broken and twisted, some stood on end, for no apparent reason, others were folded like a sheet of paper wadded and tossed aside—but what a sheet!

The gulls, too, had a strange shape—thin wings like scimitars and forked tails. The harbor was full of shipping. Sailors shouted at each other across the water in an unfamiliar tongue. We were scarcely prepared for the modern city of skyscrapers and huge, thriving docks…but, after all, that’s in every guidebook.

The guidebooks, however, probably overlooked the white mongrel puppy which rode with us on the cablecar to the top of Sugar Loaf. The puppy rode on the roof—on an unguarded platform, no bigger than a postage stamp, where his master, the mechanic, sat just under the cable to watch for the possible parting of a strand and to see how the wheels function.

The puppy came up with us and the made a return trip. From the top of Sugar Loaf I watched him through binoculars. He was frisking about at his master’s knees, while half a mile below buzzards wheeled and the jungle yawned.

Motif Taken From Palms.

Over across the way—surmounting a mountain still higher and almost as precipitate as Sugar Loaf—stood a heroic figure of Christ, with arms outstretched. As we watched a cloud broke on the mountain, spread and streamed up its face. It flowed over the top, severing the figure from its mundane anchorage. For an instant it seemed that the stature, serene and far away, was moving though the sky—actually moving and trailing flowing robes of mist.

Rio’s water front on the ocean side is a wide beach, a curving drive and a series of tall, modernistic apartment houses. The builders must have taken an architectural motif from the royal palms, which shoot up 50, 100 feet, straight and flawless as an arrow shaft or a cathedral candle.

The surf today came in with a boom and a great rush and smother of foam—enough to chill a life guard at Nags Head, N. C. The guards just stick a red flag in the sand, and after that a swimmer is on his own. The bathing season is almost over, and after that fall approaches. Already beach accommodations can be had at off-season prices.

After glimpsing the statue of Christ from afar, we motored to its base today, zig-zagging on turns that would balk a Rocky Mountain goat—moving under palms clustered with parasites, and strange, creeper-hung trees, all packed together in a jungle density. Tiny monkeys fled through the tree tops and parrots broke from cover, always flying in pairs. Once on the concrete parapet at the base of the statue the sheer drop on all sides made a few of us a bit dizzy—especially those still accustomed, after more than a fortnight at sea, to the motion of a boat.

A Day to Be Remembered.

Buzzards banked in the strong up-draft about the statue and Rio’s vast panorama was almost dwarfed by the reaches of the ocean and the purple mountains, faintly glimpsed like clouds, high on the Western horizon. It was a day of sunshine, mist and brief rain flurries—a day long to be remembered!

The lights of Rio glittered through the dusk as our car wound down from the mountains.

Back on board the Uruguay we saw her sister ship, the Brazil, casting off from a berth just forward—bound for the States.

We watched the tugs worry her into the channel, and saw her lights dwindle and vanish as she went out past Sugar Loaf.

For a moment, I was homesick…the Brazil would be pulling into New York while we were a long way south of this city. Homesick, but only for a moment.

Too much, I felt, lies to the South.

Tomorrow: Reducing the death toll from snake bite.