“I have never run into a place where the cannibals are so thick.”

I don’t know that a whole lot of fact-checking went into the September 29, 1926 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In that issue, ship captain Edward Harper told tales of cannibalism in Somalia to reporter E.K. Titus, which were seemingly published verbatim. The opening:

“Guardaful is a bad place to be a lighthouse-keeper. The holder of this post may be flesh and bones one day and mince meat the next. 

‘Every now and then, when we pass this light, just outside the Arabian Gulf, we notice that the light is not burning. This means that the lighthouse-keeper and his two aides have just been eaten up,’ explained Edward Harper, famous old bos’n of the S.S. Sandown Castle of the Barber line, which docked at the foot of Pioneer St. yesterday.

‘Italy owns this outpost, and I’m telling you it’s a tough job to navigate past it, when the lighthouse keeper has been consumed, and there is no one to keep the glimmer going. It gets harder and harder every year for Italy to find anyone to go out there. I think they’ll soon have to assign a regular garrison to the place to keep the light going.

“Guess even Mussolini can’t keep the cannibals on the straight and narrow path.”

‘Guess even Mussolini can’t keep the cannibals on the straight and narrow path in Guardaful. In all my experiences of 40 years sailing the seas I have never run into a place where the cannibals are so thick. 

Zulus Know How to Live.

But my boy, if you want to have a good life, you ought to become a citizen of Zululand. Guess you would have to black your face up with a little charcoal before they would take you into their commonwealth and make you a chieftain. But they sure know how to live.

‘Don’t get the Zulus mixed up with the cannibals. They are altogether different. Where the Zulus excel is in knowing how to have a large number of wives.

Wives cost $75 to $150.

‘Wives in Zululand cost from $75 to $150, depending on how large they are. The larger and stronger, the more expensive they come. When a Zulu has bought four wives he is made a sort of chieftain and is given some land for his own and his worries are finished.

‘A Zulu, working as a longshoreman, can earn five shillings or $1.25 a day. This is about five times as much as they could earn ordinarily on shore. They don’t figure in dollars though, but in bullocks. For $10 they can buy a bullock. For six bullocks they can buy a wife if they’re not particular. If they want a nice, big, strong wife it costs them 12 bullocks. And with four wives they can retire.”