Expeditions

Expeditions are not what they used to be. Sail to the ice-studded shores of Greenland and you can still telephone your wife by wireless. Trek to the heart of Africa and you will not leave the automobile behind you; in fact, a Cape-to-Cairo airplane may pass overhead any day. Last month the British press announced the death of Charles St. John, 86, last white survivor of Missionary David Livingstone's seven-year expedition to find the watershed between Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika, central Africa (1866-73). Concurrently there were reports of modern expeditions, coming and going:

MacMillan. Home from Labrador and Greenland, with plans for going back again to spend five years, came Explorer Donald B. MacMillan last week. He had been investigating ruins and legends problematically indicative of Norse settlements in America a thousand years ago. Maine coastal towns turned out to welcome their state's special hero. The Field Museum of Chicago rejoiced at the prospect of receiving a 1,500-pound walrus carcass and other specimens.

Eastman. At the age of 72, George ("Kodak") Eastman, of Rochester, N. Y., has been spending the summer photographing and shooting big game in Kenya, Tanganyika and the Belgian Congo. Near Nairobi natives chaired him on their shiny shoulders for slaying an eight-foot lion with two express bullets. Last fortnight came a letter from Explorer Carl E. Akeley, with the Eastman party and in charge of collections for the African Hall of the American Museum of Natural History, saying that the Kenya veld, once a hunter's paradise, is now stripped of fauna. "The unhappy remnant . . . now has its ear attuned to the rattle and bang of the motor car, which carries the alleged sportsmen over the veld in the hope of killing the last of a given species." At one water hole, Mr. Eastman photographed giraffes in the act of slaking their exaggerated throats but "couldn't bear the thought of being responsible for the death of one."

Putnam. Publisher George Palmer Putnam of Manhattan, with his small son David Binney Putnam; Art Young, archer; Carl Dunrud, cowboy; Dan Streeter, author; Capt. Bob Bartlett, Explorer Peary's onetime skipper; Knud Rasmussen, explorer; and naturalists from the American Museum of Natural History, have been cruising Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, off Greenland, in constant radio communication with the New York Times. Many a description of Arctic weather effects has been received, couched in Publisher Putnam's best editorial verbiage. Walrus, seals, narwhal and varied seafowl have fallen to the voyagers' trusty guns, a high moment coming last fortnight when the Putnams, father and son, and Dan Streeter touched off their rifles simultaneously into the bulk of a polar bear on a cake of pan ice. David Putnam, 13, veteran of William Beebe's last Galapagos cruise, had been spending days in the crow's-nest sighting for bear; it is unlikely that he will neglect to mention the episode in his projected treatize: David Goes to Greenland.

Smithsonian-Chrysler. Dr. William M. Mann, bearded chieftain of the expedition to collect live animals for the National Zoo (Washington, D.C.) at the expense of Manufacturer Walter P. Chrysler, of Detroit, has kept faithfully in touch with the press from Darkest Africa. After many successful game drives, no small part of his labors have been providing cages and food for antelopes, birds, pythons, mongooses, monkeys, anteaters, hedgehogs, turtles, baboons. Lassoing gnus; dodging buffalos and night-prowling rhinos; cornering giraffes; distinguishing between hyenas and leopards in the dark, were occupations,, routine. "As I write," wrote Dr. Mann from Lake Manyara, "there is a chronic bedlam from the courtyard where our material is kept. A freshly arrived baboon is yowling in a way . . . that makes you admire his persistence." The expedition was homeward bound, having obtained its special objects: giraffes, zebras, rhinoceroses.

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 to know captivity, they were incarcerated in the Bronx Zoo, for which they had been captured by Douglas Burden* of Manhattan, youthful trustee of the American Museum of Natural History.

Some time ago, having "dedicated his life to Science" after a course at Harvard, Mr. Burden read in a bulletin of the British Museum an exhortation to sportsmen to apprehend specimens of the giant lizard reported by P. A. Ouwens, a Dutch hunter, in 1912. (The Duke of Mecklinburg shot a specimen 20 ft. long.) Mr. Burden organized an expedition, including Mrs. Burden, Professor E. R. Dunn of Smith College and one de Fosse, French huntsman. They reached Komodo last June via China. The British flyer, Alan Cobham, stopped at Komodo en route from England to Australia (TIME, Aug. 16 et seq.) and, finding the Burdens there, took them on a reconnaissance flight over the island's jungled, mountainous interior. Sighting the quarry from the air, the Burdens fetched their comrades to the spot, taking along bear-traps, stout cages, rifles. Slain deer and boars were used to bait the lizards up to a screen, behind which Chinamen cranked the expedition's cinema camera. The hunters saw one huge reptile chase, catch and drag down a horse. Several specimens were shot and will be mounted for the American Museum. Three were taken alive by the method small boys employ to snare rabbits: a noose dangling from a bent sapling. The largest of the three escaped, traveling far faster than a man can run.

The Dutch name for this monster lizard is boeaja darat (land crocodile). Science calls him varanus komodensis, identifying him as a big cousin of the African monitor lizard. Dr. Robert Cushman Murphy, assistant director of the American Museum, sailed last March with Manufacturer and Mrs. Jesse Metcalf of Manhattan on the same quest the Burdens last week completed (TIME, March 22). The Burdens also collected: seven rare specimens of poisonous snakes (dead); a 450-lb. saddleback tapir with a 40-in. snout (alive).

* Son of James A. Burden, who had the honor to place his Long Island home at the disposal of Edward of Wales during the latter's visit to the U. S. in 1924.