Word: komodo
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Lizards. Last week the Aquitania docked in Manhattan with two of the most gruesome immigrants in history aboard. They were giant carnivorous lizards, over nine feet long, from the Island of Komodo, Dutch East Indies, descendants of the dinosaurs, the the probable originals of the dragon on China's flag. Out of their mouths shot forked tongues of scarlet, like flames. When angered, they hissed like escaped steam. Their bodies, thick as a brawny man's, were studded with scales like nail heads. Down their backs ran a jagged ridge of tough "armor plate." First of their kind...
...Force had volunteered-the listeners' eyes shifted to a beet-red, grinning stalwart beside Pilot Cobham-and together they had whirred high over the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, drifting slightly out of their course and bringing up in the Dutch East Indies There, on the island called Komodo, they had seen a portent-two enormous captive dragons, ten feet long, with claws and jaws rapacious enough to slaughter horses, veritable St. Georgian monsters,* "emitting fumes not unlike smoke. Cobham planned to rest at Melbourne only long enough to have his ship overhauled. Then he was off again...
...Despatches were meagre concerning these "dragons," but doubtless the flyers had met the expedition under Jesse Metcalf, Manhattan woolens manufacturer, which sailed for Komodo last spring (TIME, March 22 SCIENCE), to capture the large lizard called "boeaja darat" by the Dutch, "land crocodile" by the English. Nearly extinct, this creature is a descendant of dinosaurs; he travels fleetly, his belly free from the ground; eats flesh by night; has been killed in lengths of 18 and 21 ft. Deaf, he is fairly easy to hunt. Of the "fumes not unlike smoke" scientists awaited further explanation...
...becoming fashionable among wealthy folk as things to do instead of merely as things to finance. William K. Vanderbilt, amateur ichthyologist, cruised the Pacific last winter and brought home strange specimens in his yacht Ara (TIME, Apr. 12). Manufacturer Jesse Metcalf (woolens) is off to collect monster lizards at Komodo, Dutch East Indies, (TIME, March 22). George Eastman (kodaks) is in Africa hunting with his cameras (TIME, March 22). Last week, Mrs. Marshall Field of Chicago, in the role of official photographer, sailed with a Field Museum expedition bound for the game-infested interior of Brazil. It was her first...
...long are the monster lizards that crawl about the island of Komodo...