LIVE DRAGONS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3543, 28 September 1926, Page 4

LIVE DRAGONS.

FOUND IN ISLAND OF EAST INDIES.

CQBHAM’S STORY CONFIRMED.

“We continued our journey to Bima, where we saw two live dragons, being two prehistoric reptiles captured from the Island of Komodo. This is the only place in the world where these dragons are found. They are terrible .creatures that tear their prey to pieces with their claws and swallow everything whole. When annoyed they spit forth vile odours like the legendarydragon.”

This passage from Cobham’s account of his flight to Australia, in August last, appeared fantastic*’ enough at the time, hut is confirmed by the following message from New York under date 24th September.— It is announced'that Douglas Burden, trustee of the American Museum of Natural History, captured two gigantic dragons in the jungles of Komodo Island, in the Malay Archipelago. He is now en route for America by; the Aquitania with the huge lizard-like creatures eight feet long and 200 pounds in weight, with an appearance horrid in the extreme.

The dragons are as thick as a man’s body and entirely covered by a close protective armour. They have stubby legs and can run faster than a man. They are entirely carnivorous. the expedition was effecting the capture, one leaped on the hack of a liorse, which was so injured that it had to he shot. The other consumed the hindquarters of a deer at/ a single meal. MAN-EATERS THIRTY FEET LONG. Some of the biggest big-game hunting thrills ever experienced should he forthcoming shortly, up in the bare, sun-searched mountains of the uninhabited interior of a lonely island in the Dutch East Indies, writes “An Explorer,” in the “Manchester Guardian.” Two expeditions are racing thither to. tty to trap the last great uncaptured wild beast in the world and bring two or throe of him hack alive for exhibition in zoological gardens. The creature) is a fierce man-eat-ing lizard, 30 feet long when fullgrown. There is reason to believe 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 filled the early Chinese with such dread and pervaded Chinese mythology with dragon-lore. Mr Jesse Metcalf, of New is leading one of the expeditions, and Mir and Mrs IV. G. Burden, also of New York, the other. Mrs Burden is going to try to take moving pictures of the monsters. The place where this great lizard survives its monstrous prehistoric cousins, is the island of Komodo, in the Sunda Sea, between Flores and Sumbawa, some 400 miles south-east of'Borneo.

AS FAST AS A.MOTOR CAR. The last time I was out in the Malay Archipelago, I managed to obtain from various Dutch officials, tidings of'some personal experiences with the creature. Only little ones have hitherto been killed, for the simple reason that the big ones which have several times been sighted, go killing on their own account with such zest that it is very difficult to induce natives to accompany a white man after them. They can move as fast as a motor car, and they are quite fearless in going to the defence of their young. Their tough, scaly hide, is impervious to native weapons, and even with a high velocity rifle it is hard to get a shot that will stop their onrush. Like robber barons of old, the “dragons” live up aloft on bare hills, where they can sec every moving creature long before it can reach them.. Their sleeping quarters are in bamboo thickets around springs at the head of rocky gullies. Here they spend the night in lairs holjowcd 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, that there are no trees to climb and that, raising themselves on their hind legs, the adults could quite easily make a mouthful of a man as high up on a rock or pole as the top of a motor bus. Aldegon “ground-baited” for them with carcases of wild boar.