GENUINE DRAGONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 June 1928, Page 9

GENUINE DRAGONS

CAPTURES IN KOMODO. It may seem incredible, but true dragons are still living, and not very far from Australia. Their home is on the little island of Komodo, lying between Sumbawa and Fiores islands. It is about twenty-two miles long by twelve in width, and some pearl fishermen who anchored in one of its harbours reported the presence of strange monsters. The zoological authorities of Java sent officials, who brought baqk some specimens, but just then the Great War broke out and proved so insatiable a dragon that all others were forgotten. Quite recently Mr W. Douglas Burden. of New York, accompanied by his wife and by an experienced old IndoChinese hunter and a doctor, who was an expert in reptiles, agreed to go dragon hunting, secured the assistance of the authorities, went off to Komodo, and brought home fourteen specimens of these antediluvian creatures, two of which were alive. The book, in which the adventure is described is “Dragon Lizards of Komodo.” Many deeply interesting questions regarding these animals yet remain to be answered. To what age do they live? How comes it that such an ancient animal is found on such a young island, that is, an island that has only recently risen above the level of the sea'? Where did the dragon come from, and why is he found only on Komodo and a few adjacent islands?

Most nations give a prominent place to the dragon in their legendary poetry and mythology, and generally as the" emblem of all that is hostile and horrible. There is, however, in China and Japan a veneration fur the “bogtailed dragon.” but this is quite an exception. The dragon of mythology has wings, spools lire and fury from both mouth and tail, and is Hie merciless enemy of Hie human race. Hercules, Apollo and Perseus were great dragon slayers. Siegfried killed one of Worms, and the same doughty deed is credited to Beowulf and to Thor himself. The dragon figured on the shields and banners of the Teutonic tribes who settled in England, and in the royal' arms of the Tudors, and the familiar story of St. George shows the vanquishing of the dragon of paganism as the enemy of Christianity. It has been reserved for a party of enterprising and courageous Americans, one of whom was Mrs Burden, to look upon the actual dragon in all his ugliness and ferocity. It was the intention en route to visit trie Gobi Desert to see Hie wonderful work of the Central Asiatic Expedition, and for this purpose to join Dr Andrews, who was to meet them at Tientsin and motor them up. They found thill the Chinese war was raging, had all sorts of hairbreadth escapes at Pekin, and were glad to gel Io Shanghai and finally to Batavia, where Dr Dunn, the herpetologist of Hie party, met them Here they saw the Dutchman in his characteristic aspect of a combination of fat and pyjamas, sluggish even while eating, “almost too lazy Io breathe, and unutterably bored’’ The Governor-General furnished Hie pari.v with a 400-toii Government boat for two months, letters of recommen dation Io all the residents of Hie islands and after visiting Bali, "a

land in which it seemed always afternoon,” and at last landed at Komodo in June, 1926. It..looked like a lost world, a melancholy land, fit habitation for dragons. Lava rocks were everywhere, and the heat was intense. The island has only one village, and it contains 40 convicts deported there from Sumbawa, all of them diseased, degenerate and degraded. The first animals seen were wild boars and a herd of deer, and then Burden came on the tracks of wild water buffalo, one of which had been konwn by Merean Cooper to toss and kilj a tiger weighing 6001 b. One of them chas,ed Burden for his life. One morning he saw his first dragon lizard. He was a monster, huge and hoary, working his way clown through the rocks, a primeval monster in a primeval setting. “He stalked slowly and sedately along, obviously hunting for something in the grass, his yellow tongue working incessantly, his magnificent head swinging ponderously this way and that.’’ He looked black with age and battle scars. As he came nearer three pigs dashed away, and in a mysterious way the dragon disappeared as completely as if the very earth had swallowed him. At first sight he looked about 20 feet in length, but when killed measured only nine feet. Some of them were caught alove in spring traps. A tree is bent over, fastened down, and so fixed that when the dragon puts his head through the noose to get at the bait he liberates the bent tree, and is jerked aloft. Coolies then lassoo him, and lash him to a pole. The bait is usually the carcase of a pig, and for hours at a time the hunters hid in the trees, observed the dragon on dose quarters. He is thickset, muscular, has a heavy body ami tremendous muscles. His Jong, sharp daws scrape and tear the .meat, and his thin recurved teeth rip off great chunks. All the while be see-saws backwards and forwards on braced legs, giving a wrench at the bait to tear it away. When he gets a. piece he lifts his head, and gulps it, no matter how big it is. “On one occasion a lizard swallowed the whole hindquarters of a boar at one gulp—hoofs, legs, hams, vertebrae and all.” The comical feature of the performance is that if he is surprised and excited he at once vomits up everything When he wants to look round his hindquarters and tail are on the ground, his forelegs are braced and his head is up in the air for some minutes. Sometimes he will sit up like a rabbit, with his forefeet dangling. He is quite deaf, can swim well, but no eggs were found by the hunters. The dragons swim with their heads well up above water. One day Burden saw a wild boar flee at the sight of one of the monsters. \ trap was set at a likely place, and from a shelter Burden watched a dragon approach it. The brute seemed suspicious and wary. He suspected, sniffed, kept moving his forked tongue, then would walk away and sit motionless, looking about him for five or ten minutes. At last he seized the bait and vas captured. As the coolies ran. to surround him be. began vomiting, and lashed himself into a frightful ra.ge, the foam dripping from his jaws. Fastened to a pole he was carried home, put into a cage, where

again he began vomiting, and to the giief of his captors the cage was empty next morning. The strongest wire had been ripped open. Other specimens were shot, and two more were taken alive. Some notes are added to this very fascinating story of travel and peril, and scientific interest. The Varnmis varius of Australia is the most similar to the Varaiius Kcmodoeusis. Whether the Komodo dragon arrived in its presen I form and by what route it. reached its habitat, are unanswerable ques- • Burden thinks the dragon arrived from Australia via the Sahul Shelf, which in recent geological times was land The old hunter who was with Bur den wisited he could settle on the island, and be King of Komodo, Probably not many of us would care to be his subjects.