The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

LONDON, May 18.

Extract of a letter from Vienna, in Germany, dated February 21. 1781.

" A sect of men called Bohemians, who are dispersed all over Hungary, have carried profligacy so far; as oblige the Government strictly to prohibit their living together. They were distributed into different tribes, or companies, inhabiting the villages, whilst a few among them lived under ground.--In general, they, to all appearance, behaved themselves with great veneration for the laws, till last summer, when one of them being taken up and brought before the judge, gave to his interrogatories such answers as led to the discovery of the most flagitious atrocity: a strict search was made; and from inquiries set on foot, it appeared, that for these twelve years the Bohemians, dispersed in the counties of Hungary, bordering on the province of Austria, had fed on human flesh, without the least knowledge of so shocking an instance of brutality coming to the ear of the executive power. The pedlars or wandering traders, who travelled with boxes of goods from town to town, were chiefly the victims of those monsters, who way-laid them, and having dragged them into their woods, butchered them in the most ferocious manner, to the sound of their musical instruments: the murdered victims were afterwards jointed and preserved in salt, as food for the wives and children of the barbarians. It is unknown how many have perished by their hands: but it is supposed a considerable number, as the prisons were crowded by a great number of those wretches, who, upon conviction, were doomed to the most excruciating death; but the Emperor, who disapproves of such executions, reversed the sentence of the ordinary judges, and ordered every Bohemian, male and female, to be banished into the Turkish territories."