Lost Found

Japanese census takers, nosing around in the northern mountains of their country, discovered a village, unmentioned by maps, containing 152 inhabitants, none of whom had ever heard of the outside world. They wore clothes of a style fashionable in Japan centuries ago. Their teeth were blackened for beauty; they ate only fruit and vegetables. Archaeologists calculated that they must be descendants of a clan called Heike which was driven into the mountains in the 11th Century by Genji, amorous but warlike royal bastard, whose biography* has lately been appearing in English, translated by scholarly Arthur Waley.

In Sydney, Australia, came one Palmer Kent, composer, whom listeners judged-either a lucky fellow or a great liar. He had been on a walking tour in the New Hebrides, where head-hunting cannibals still abound, when a band of blackamoors, nearly nude save for weapons, surrounded him with melting eyes. Defenseless, he instinctively began to wriggle his toes, his feet, his ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, to fling his whole body about in the loose gyrations of the Charleston. So enchanted were the cannibals, he said, that they took lessons, gave him presents instead of eating him up.

For a rediscovered Slav island in Bering Strait see Russia.

*THE TALE OF GENJI--Lady Murasaki-- Houghton, Mifflin ($3) was reviewed in TIME, Aug. 3, 1925. Sequels are called The Sacred Tree and The Wreath of Cloud.

* Australians swear that this knee-wagging hip-smacking, arm-swinging dance, commonly thought by the U. S. to have originated with Carolina Negroes, started as a war dance in the Australian hinterland.