War with the Newts

 War with the Newts by Karel Capek

I'm reading War with the Newts by Karel Capek. It tells the curious story of the discovery of a race of six foot Salamanders in the South Pacific and their exploitation by various 19th century organizations. 

It's not a great story, but it is a curious one, and I am plugging along.

At the beginning of chapter 8 I find a list of islands, and me being me, I have see if they are real islands or just figments of the author's imagination. Turns out most of them are real, and the only three I didn't find (Hiau, Uap, Fukaofu) could well be because of the funny spelling of island names.

Chapter 8

Andrias Scheuchzeri

ENDLESS is human curiosity. It was not sufficient that J. W. Hupkins (Yale), the greatest authority alive at the time having anything to do with reptiles, declared that those mysterious creatures were unscientific humbug and sheer fantasy in the scientific journals and in the news-papers accounts began to increase of the discovery of so far unknown animals resembling huge salamanders in the most diverse parts of the Pacific Ocean. Relatively reliable statements claimed their discovery on the Solomon Islands, on Schouten Islands, on Kapingamarangi, Butaritari, and Tapeteuea, as well as on the whole group of smaller the islands: Nukufetau, Funafuti, Nukunono, and Fukaofu, then as far as Hiau, Ua Huka, Uap, and Pukapuka. There were legends quoted of the devils of Captain van Toch (mainly in the Melanesian zone) and of the Tritons of Miss Li (more in Polynesia) then the newspapers inferred that it was a matter of various kinds of submarine and antediluvian monsters mainly because the summer season had begun, and there was nothing to write about. Sub-marine monsters are usually well received by the reading public. In the United States especially Tritons became the fashion: in New York a showy revue ran for three hun-dred nights featuring Poseidon with three hundred most beautiful Triton girls, Nereids, and Sirens in Miami and on the beaches of California youth bathed in the costumes . . .

War with the Newts Chapter 8 Islands