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Inca Gold (private adventurers). A British adventurer, one Cecil Herbert Progers, now dead, while prying about the Bolivian heights near Lake Titicaca, found back of a tall and ancient tree a slit in the face of a mountain. Into it he crawled and found a Jesuit warning of imminent and terrible danger and a silver crucifix. Riot and robbery have raged among these Andes crags since the Spaniards first wrung gold from Incas. Natives hid their piles from the first plunderers; and they, from other plunderers later come upon them. Progers thought that he had located $60,000,000 of gold cached away. Then he died, without having made his find. But he left what clues he had; and along the spoors so indicated a band of English speculators, calling themselves the "Sacambaya Exploration Company," and following the lead of a Dr. Edgar Sanders, last week were prepared to go.
Swart Indians (Museum of the American Indian). In the meshes of the jungle that cover the South American heights where Brazil abuts on Bolivia, live 350 swart and naked Indians whom, before the recent penetration of Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, agent of the Museum of the American Indian, white men had never seen. Nor had the tribe before seen white man clothes or gun. They bear no resemblance to any other South American tribe known to Mr. Merrill. Said he, in Manhattan last week: "The average height of the men is 5 ft., 8 in.; which makes them about two inches above the average of other South American Indians. They wear long beards. The men of the tribe buy their wives, taking girls 12 and 14 years old. Their religion is a mixed worship of sex and nature, while for them there is a spirit in every stone and tree and brook. They keep no calendar and no track of the days. They do not know how old anybody is." His supposition is that those black Indians have descended from black explorers who anciently fared from the Malayan Peninsula or South Sea Islands along an archipelago which, he premises, spanned the whole Pacific.
NANA in Brazil (North American Newspaper Alliance). NANA, knowing well that nothing more delights the rocking chair voyager than to read of bold men's wanderings through forests primeval, has sent Commander George M. Dyott to penetrate south central Brazil, westward from Rio de Janeiro. This expedition is to locate British Explorers P. H. Fawcett and two companions "lost" in the Brazil wilds; contingently it is to gather scientific data; also it is to furnish "copy" to those papers who belong to NANA.* Leader Dyott spent several weeks verbosely fussing over his preparations; finally quit the U. S.; reached Rio; and last week was definitely started on his admittedly difficult trek.