Young Python's Return

In Central Africa, the short, stocky, reddish-haired white man who reached Manhattan on a slow transatlantic boat last week is known as The Young Python. But his passport, the Social Register, the 1914 Harvard Classbook, the tax rolls of Rockland County, N. Y. and the corporation registry of Lugene (swank Manhattan opticians) all list him as Frederic Grosvenor Carnochan. Always well off, he could afford to become an amateur ethnologist. During the past decade he concentrated on the Wanyamwesi, a long-nosed, curly-haired tribe of 4,000,000 members who inhabit 30,000 sq. mi. south of Lake Victoria (in Tanganyika Territory, which Premier Hertzog of the Union of South Africa fortnight ago suggested Great Britain should return to Germany's control).

The doctors and scientists of the Wanyamwesi belong to a secret association called the Empire of the Snakes. Mr. Carnochan became a member, received the guild name Young Python, rose in knowledge and proficiency until only Kalola, the late great emperor of the Snake-Men, out ranked him.

As a Snake-Man Mr. Carnochan was made immune to snake venom. At least the same procedure made natives immune.

They caught cobras, mambas and other deadly serpents with their bare hands, were frequently bitten, but suffered no bad effect. Young Python Carnochan never was bitten, hopes never to be bitten, yet is positive he was immunized by lukago. Lukago is a black sticky medicine made from the heads of venomous snakes and the eyes, brains, tongues and other body parts of eagles, lions, owls, hyenas. In immunizing the Young Python, his Snake-Men colleagues lightly slashed his forehead, arms, back and legs, and into the gashes rubbed lukago. The treatment gave him a terrific headache.

The powder of the kingo root paralyzes the will of anyone poisoned by it and makes him the slave of the poisoner. When Mr. Carnochan got his first & only dose of kingo, he took the precaution of barricading himself in his hut so that no native might take advantage of his willlessness. His experiences, which he described in a report published last month* and again by radio last week:

"I put a canvas-backed armchair in front of my table. On it I put an alarm clock, my shaving-mirror, a pencil, a memorandum pad, a glass of water and a teaspoonful of the powder. I slipped into the chair, faced the mirror, poured the powder into the water--drank it, looked at the clock, took the pencil and wrote on the pad: 'Took powder one minute past two o'clock.' Then I leaned back and waited for things to happen.

''The clock ticked noisily for two minutes while I watched my eyes in the mirror. . . . My eyes did not change. My head felt a little funny. I started to make a notation: 'Three minutes past two o'clock . . , my head. . . .' That was as far as I got. My hand fell upon the table and the pencil rolled to the floor.

"But I was not unconscious. I sat in that chair and stared in the mirror with unwinking eyes for two solid hours while my image stared back. I could hear the clock tick and sounds outside my hut, but I could not move--will, energy, initiative, were dead. I can readily understand how anyone under the influence of kingo could be dragged into a gruesome form of thralldom. . . . It was just after four o'clock when the drug released me as quickly as it had taken hold. One moment I was as soulless as my image in the mirror, and the next I was absolutely normal. I felt no after-effects of any sort. It was an interesting test but I have never tried it since. One voluntary visit to the realm of the living dead is enough in the life of any man!"

At present Mr. Carnochan has a Manhattan organic chemist trying to isolate the effective poison in kingo root.

Another of his exciting adventures was killing a 40-lb. porcupine in its burrow deep underground. This he did as an apprentice in the guild of Porcupine-Men whose duty is to rid Wanyamwesi farms of that crop-destroying beast.

His great good friend, burly Queen Nzele of the Samue group, owned the most famed bed of Central Africa, a native-made fourposter, 7 x 8 ft. No one ever slept in it. She used a mat on the floor, like any native. Enlightened, she conscripted her subjects to build roads and drive away cattle on which pestilential tsetse flies lived. Considerate, she shared her wealth with the tribe by maintaining a squad of husbands and titularly "marrying" girls so that she could gain the right of giving them dowries. Such consideration ended when she became a Mohammedan, and therefore monogamous.

British administration has driven the practice of Snake medicine under cover. Mohammedanism is slowly filtering among the people. Christianity has no good roots. The only Christian institution among the 4,000,000 Wanyamwesi, said Young Python Carnochan in Manhattan last week, was a Catholic school for training native priests. During the past eleven years that Catholic school graduated only one priest.

*EMPIRE OF THE SNAKES--By F. G. Carnochan & H. C. Adamson--Stokes ($2.50).

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