GREAT JUMPING TURTLES!

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17345, 27 September 1924, Page 17

GREAT JUMPING TURTLES!

QUEER CARGO OF EXPLORERS. j ADVENTURES IN SOUTH | AMERICA. Several strange creatures lay gasping on the deck of the s.s. Pntuca, which arrived at Avonmouth. England, from Jamaica recently. They are bocatoros, a .species of turtle with a bristling spiked tail and webbed feet, with claws hard as steel and .-harp as needles. With them was a hawk-billed turtle with wing-like fins. This queer cargo belonged to .Mr Mitchell Hedges and Lady ( Richmond) Crown, the explorers, who have spent the last six months in the lagoons of British llnn- “ The hoc a tor*» is iho most wonderful reptile,' ’ Mr Hedges said. “ It can spring 6ft with the greatest ease, (’arching them is great fun. Yen use a piece of meat fixed to a lump of wood at the end of a wire line. The bocat-oro seizes both meat and wood ami will not let go, so you pull him ashore. If lie bites vou, though, you have vour finger off.’ 1 Mr Hedges maintains that prehistoric beasts still o\i-t in the sea. Ho displayed a skull almost, as big as a bull’s—of a mammoth turtle. “I am confident.” lie declared. “ that that turtle was alive vear ago.” Mr Hodges had planned to bring hark a living sea-row for rho /.in, 1 nt Lady Brown lias decided n return to British Honduras with Mr I{• lg**s in October for furl her research. Lady Brown’s speciality i- shark-shooting. Recently she lu.oked and killed a shark 9ft. Bin in length and weighing 2601 b. .Making their May up tho Rio Gralido. Lady Brown and Air Hodges wore capsized and had to spend a, terrifying night. in an impenetrable jungle. I shall never forgot that night,” she shuddered. -There Mere torrential rains at iho. time and we Mere driven almost mad l>v mosquitoes, and two jaguars and a minor boa constrictor visited us!” With the explorers returned Dr , Thomas Gann, the archaeologist., who, discovered in the interior of British Honduras remains of the ancient Maya civilisation which flourished in 2000 B.C.