GIGIANTIC DRAGONS

Marlborough Express, Volume LX, Issue 232, 1 October 1926, Page 6

GIGIANTIC DRAGONS

CAPTURED IN MALAY AR CFI I PELOGO . . TERRIBLE MONSTERS. In the account of his flight to Australia last month Captain Alan Gobliam said: "We continued our journey to Bima, where we saw two Jive dragons, being two prehistoric reptiles captured from the Island of Komodo. This is the oinly place in the world where thes© dragons are found. They arle terrible orealtlures that tear their prey 'to pieces with their claws and swailow evervthing whole. When annoyed they sipit forth vile odours like tlie legendary dragon." Now comes tlie announcement from New York that Mr Douglas Burden, trust©© of the American Museum of Natural History, is en route for America l*y the Aquitania with two gigantic dragons which were captured in the jungles of Komodo lsland, Malay Archipelago. "An Explorer," writing in the Manchester Guardian recently, said two ©xpeditions were racing to tlie Dutch East Indies to try to trap tlie last great uncaptured wild beast in tlie world. The creature he described as a fieroe man-eating lizard, 30ft long when full grown. There is reason, he proceeded, to helieve that, when more widely distributed in ancient times, it may have travelled westward along the prehistoric land bridge to .Asia, which is now represented by the chain of long, narrow islands between Timor and Singapore, and, establishing itself in similar mountain lairs in China, have been the original dragon that fillefl the early Chinesie with snch dread and pervaded Chinese mythology with dragon-lore. The place where this great lizard survives its monstrous prehistoric oousins is the island of Komodo, in the Sunda Sea, between Fiores iand Sumbawa, some 400 miles soutli-east of Bornco.

Lieutenant J. Iv. H. van bteyn van Hensbroek, when Civil Administrator of tlie eoastal settlement at Reo, on Fiores, crossed to Komodo, investigating the rumors which had reached him, shot ,a young "dragon" 7ft long and preserved tlie skin. He was unable to obta.in one of the hig ones. He found tlie natives very reluctant to participate in his hunting. They called the monster the Boeajadasat, or Crocodile of the Land. It was 110 crocodile, however, foir exaniination of several skins have shown clearly that it is a giant member of the Varanus fanply of lizards. It has a sliort snout .ancl sharp teetli. A kind of raised keel runs down the middle of the back, rising at tlie tail into a. five-tpeaked crest sqmewbat resembling that ■ of our own little ppnd newt. It slashos right and leff with this tail when angry. It has a -yellow to-ngue, nearly a yai'd long, which, on occasion, it darts in and out of its mouth. The "dragons" live up aloft on bare hills, where they can see every moving creature long before it can reach them. Their sleeping quarters are in hani boo thickets around springs at the liead of rocky gullies. Here they spend the night in lairs hpllowed out under overhanging rocks, awakening at dawn to prowl for their prey. The risks of tackling them can be appreciated when it is mentioned that they sometimes go about in parties of a dozen or more, and there are no trees to climb, and that raising themselves on their hind legs, the adults obukl quite easily make a mouthful of a man as high up a rock or pole as the top of a motor-bus. Aldegon "ground-laited" for them with carcasses of wild boar.