The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Following the blood-track, the two men entered the parlor, with
suspended breath and hearts that almost ceased to beat. There they
found the dead body of James Blount,--his clothes half torn off, in the
violence of the strife that could end only in murder. A long, deep cut
on the throat had terminated that awful struggle, though many other less
dangerous wounds showed how desperate it had been. He lay just as he
fell,--his features still contracted with a look of defiance and
hatred, and in his right hand still clasped a long, sharp knife. He had
succumbed in that mortal conflict, which quenched a lifelong quarrel,
and was to prove fatal alike to victor and vanquished. Thus the vow of
John Blount was fulfilled,--the pent-up hatred of years satisfied in his
brother's murder.
The room was in the wildest disorder,--chairs thrown down and broken,
tables overturned, and the carpet torn. In one corner they found a
second long, sharp knife. It had been at least a fair fight.
They laid the two ghastly corpses side by side: they had been chained
together all their lives; they were chained together in death. The two
fratricides are buried in one grave.
This terrible tragedy blighted the spot where it took place. No one
would ever inhabit that house again. The furniture was removed, except
from the one room which to this day remains unchanged, and the building
left to fall to decay. The superstitious affirm, that, in the long
winter nights, oaths and groans steal out, muffled, on the rising wind,
from the dark shadows of the Lonely House.
* * * * *
BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.
In the interior of the island of Borneo there has been found a certain
race of wild creatures, of which kindred varieties have been discovered
in the Philippine Islands, in Terra del Fuego, and in Southern Africa.
They walk usually almost erect upon two legs, and in that attitude
measure about four feet in height; they are dark, wrinkled, and hairy;
they construct no habitations, form no families, scarcely associate
together, sleep in trees or in caves, feed on snakes and vermin, on ants
and ants' eggs, on mice, and on each other; they cannot be tamed, nor
forced to any labor; and they are hunted and shot among the trees, like
the great gorillas, of which they are a stunted copy. When they are
captured alive, one finds, with surprise, that their uncouth jabbering
sounds like articulate language; they turn up a human face to gaze upon
their captor; the females show instincts of modesty; and, in fine, these
wretched beings are Men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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