CORNERS OF THE WORLD

Evening Star, Issue 22619, 10 April 1937, Page 26

CORNERS OF THE WORLD

QUEST FUR RARE ANIMALS AMD BIRDS COURAGE AND ENDURANCE NEEDED Every year a number of expeditions set out on some quest in the less known corners of the world. Some of them pursue scientific aims but the majority consist of men, lately also of an increasing number of women, overcome by a sudden desire to break with a commonplace and secure present and go in search of risk and adventure, writes Michael Candle. But quite a few of these expeditious are organised for the purpose of capturing rare animals and birds and “ bringing them back alive, for this is merchandise which knows no depression. , , Within the past few years at least 300 people have tried to win the prize offered by the London Zoo for a certain antelope. All of them failed, which is all the more surprising, as some of these creatures have a very showy fur and have frequently been observed by natives and white men. The London Zoo will pay from 5,000 dollars upward for a specimen of the bonzo or chirou, and the lucky fellow who brings a dwarf antelope of New Guinea to London will earn the eternal gratitude of the zoo, even if he deigned to accept the 20,000 dollars offered for it. The creature haunts the dreams of the zoologists which is not to be wondered at, considering that it is striped like a zebra and not larger than a rabbit. A similar amount is offered for a specimen of the “ spectacled ” antelope. The highest price would undoubtedly he fetched by a live okapi. The only specimen living in captivity died recently. It was the property of the Antwerp Zoo and the pet of the nation. Most likely it would fetch from 20,000 dollars to 30,000 dollars to-day. The giant or Comedo Lizard, the only survival of the legendary creature, discovered a few years ago, brought 20,000 dollars, so that the American who captured eight of them made quite a lot of money. Nobody can say that this is a business which is not lucrative. Strangely enough, not a living animal but a prehistoric skeleton heads the list of these quotations. Searchers from all lands have dug up the sands of New Zealand, and only one expedition was lucky enough to find a few bones, which could be reconstructed into part of the skeleton of the moa. Even this meagre booty brought the lucky finders several hundred thousand dollars. The man who finds a complete skeleton will become a millionaire' over night. It was the passion of adventure that drove my friend Captain Swen, whose acquaintance I had made somewhere on the Baltic, to give up his ship and lucrative hunting trade' and join a Russian expedition to Kamchatka. After a long, and perilous journey on sledges fortune smiled, on them; they discovered three great mammoths. _ In glowing colours Swen himself described the details of his unique experience. After several charges of dynamite they finally succeeded in releasing one of the beasts from its prison of ice in which it must have been sleeping at least 300,000 years. Awe-stricken, they stood before it, and even the Eskimo dogs, famous for their courage, were trembling with fear. The mammoth looked exactly as it-must have looked the day it was overtaken;by;death. The flesh was as fresh and* appetising as though it had just come 'from the butcher. They were almost sorry to have sliced it off. It was thrown to the dogs, who enjoyed their meal hugely and, were none the worse for it. On my peregrinations through the port of Rio I ran into my old friend Sanchez, who was walking toward me dangling a bag on his arm. “ Want to see what’s in it?” he asked me. I plunged my arm into the bag and pulled out something of the size of a large apple, covered with a coarse, thick down. I took a look at it and threw it away with a scream of horror; the horrible, shrivelled little thing had eyes, hair, a nose, and a mouth! It was a reduced human head. Sanchez looked at me disapprovingly, picked up the head, and carefully replaced it in his bag. “ Since you- Parisians never know what is going on in your city, you may not be aware that these knick-knacks are all the craze just now. I supply two Paris firms and I can’t fill their orders, although I am particularly well placed for getting the ‘ mammons.’ ”

He then proceeded to expain the rather complicated processing of these horrors. The skull is smashed open, emptied, and filled with hot sand. Ihen a substance, for which each tribe has its own jealously guarded secret formula, is poured into the nostrils. A second time I came across human heads, in natural size, however, at a curio shop in San Francisco. They came from New Guinea, the dealer told me. He had only four left of a collection of 150, ; sold out in a few days. His agent, a Mi- Brown, was exploring the interior of New Guinea in search of more merchandise. He had not heard from him for eight months, and had therefore sent out a’ second man. He was expecting to hear from the latter in a few days, and invited me to call again. I did call again in 10 days, and, as the dealer had suspected, Mr Brown had fallen the victim of his devotion to the business. He employed a native boy to'help-him hunt for “bargains.” As they had not found anything for quite some time, Brown offered the boy a special reward if he would dig up something. This set the native thinking, and he remembered that he had an enemy of long standing in the neighbourhood. He then decided to satisfy his spirit of vengeance and earn the reward in one stroke. The head was duly chopped off and brought to Mr Brown, but the boy’s triumph was short-lived. The relatives of the victim found him out and chopped his head off. This started a bloody feud between the two clans, and not a day passed without a murder. The war soon spread to one-half of the island, and a British cruiser had to be summoned to make peace._ In the meantime, however, the original head was discovered in . the possession of MiBrown, who paid with his own life for his imprudence. The news reached the dealer a few days before the merchandise shipped by the second agent. When he went about unpacking the cases—something he always attends to personally—he nearly fainted, for one of the packages contained the unfortunate Mr Brown’s head, complete with red hair and golden teeth. He spent a sleepless night wondering whether he ought to burn it or drop it into the ocean, since he could not very well present it to the widow. Finally he decided to sell it and share the proceeds with the widow. After that, who could say that romance and adventure have gone out of our lives? There is still plenty of both. What is lacking is the courage to break with comfort and convention and to exchange security for the hazards of adventure. And no -wonder, for the dreams of those who dare seldom come .trims