THE FIRE OF AGUIRRE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6132, 19 March 1898, Page 1

THE FIRE OF AGUIRRE.

(New York Sun.) "It was ten o'clock of a moonless night that Domingo Verato, the llanero, or plainsman, and I started from camp to ride the last ten miles of our round," said! Edgar Maystrom, who for several yeai*3 was engaged in exporting cattle and hides from Venezuela. "It was the time of year when the annual inundation of the Orinoco and its tributary valleys was to be expected, and on the broad ranges of Diego Perez and his neighbours along the Apure River, all hands for weeks past had been in the saddle driving the cattle from the river bottoms and savannas to the higher plains where they would be safe from the freshet. We had gathered all the cattle we could find late at the close of this day, and had eaten our supper of broiled beef and tortillas cooked at a camp fire. Then, while the other llaneros drove the stock toward the mountains, Veraco and I rode for the great bend of the river to see if there were any signs yet of high water. " We had gone perhaps half the distance when I saw off on the right, at about the level of my eyes, a ball of flame which, if it had been on the ocean, I should have taken to be the starboard light of a ship. It was red of colour, and in the darkness that shrouded the plain it could not be told whether it was near or far away. T callad my companion's attention to it, but he muttered something that I could not understand, and sheered his horse a little 1 from the light. As we rode on for a while without speaking, I noticed that the light kept abreast of us. I spoke again. " ' What is it, Domingo ? ' I asked. ' Let's ! ride over and see.' "As I spoke I turned my horse's head toward the flame. The llanero laid his hand on my bridle rein. " ' Senor, in the name of Jesus aDd Mary and Joseph, ride straight on/ he said, swerving from the light as he quickened his horse's pace. Do you not know ? That light is the fire ot Aguirre.' " I had not been years in the pampas country without having heard of the fixe of Agnirre — the ignis fcrtuus that moves and shifts about the Venezuelan pampas, appearing sometimes as a distant light, and again as a ball of living fire in the traveller's path. Llaneros who have been bold enough to approach this flame assert that near at hand there may be seen in it the burning entrails of Aguirre — Lope de Aguirre, the tyrant, the discoverer of tho upper Amazon, and oppressor of Spaniard and Indian in his rulership of New Granada. Now, the llaceros believe his soul is condemned to wander on the pampas wrapped in flame, and this roving fire is an evil omen. Domingo Verato, my companion, was a\ brave man, whom I had seen face wild bull and jaguar without flinching, and he bore on his body the ecars of more than one knife duel, but plainly he was uneasy in mind at the sight of this light that had come into view, and would have liked to be somewhere i else. [^ "' No, senor, do not venture near-the-j liglit, but pray that it depart,' he said, as our horses loped over the plain, 'Have you heard of what befell Abran Lo3tando, | who last year rode toward the flame of j Aguirre thinking that it was a camp fire of his fellows where he could find warmth and food ? Ho suspected nothing of the reality until his horse stumbled in a badger hole at the edge of a gully and they rolled to the bottom together. The horse's leg was broken and Abran liniped home with his shoulder wrenched and two ribs broken, so that he did not ride again for three months. Worse still was the fate of Antonio Lestro in my father's day. He was a daredevil who feared nothing, and one night during the rodeo wlien the fire of Aguirre appeared he rode toward it, saying to his comrades that he would not return until he had overtaken the light.. Horse and rider, never were seen by mortal eye again ; only the tracks of the horse leading into ,a broad pool of tho Apure. Crocodiles? Caribes? The fiend in person it may have been ! Quien sabe? There were plenty of "ways for his ending once he had followed the evil light where it took him.' " I do not account myself in the least superstitious, and the talk of Verato only served to excite ray curiosity and make ma desirous to investigate the causes of this mysterious light. In northern forests I had seen the phosphorescent glow of punkwood in timber swamps and the vaporous lights that float sometimes above marshes. The light that I now saw was intenser and brighter, more resembling those balk of fire which in high southern latitudes appear at the masthead and yardarms of ships — the corpus sancti lights, or, as sailors call them, corposants, which usually are assumed to be of electrical origin. 1 thought I saw a chance to make the investigation I desired, when, with an exclamation that was an oath if not a prayer, the llanero brought his horse to a standstill with a jerk at the bride that nearly set the creature back on its haunches — for there, dead ahead, at about its former distance away, was blazing the light which an instant before had been abreast of us. " f We won't turn out for it, Domingo/ I said, and touched my horse with the spur. I heard the llanero calling to me in horrorj stricken tones, but I gave him no heed as [my horse bounded ahead, for all my attention was bent upon the light which I meant should not escape me. "How long I went and how far I could form no idea, for the light, receding, seemed to grow upon my consciousness so that I lost all sense of time and space. Then something fell softly around my arms and body, tightened sharply about mo, and, as my horse plunged forward and downward, as if the earth -had dropped from beneath his feet, I was drawn swiftly backward out from my saddle. I struck the ground, a considerable distance in the rear of where I had left the horse's back, and instantly was dragged through the grass for some distance, unable to help myoelf until the pull upon mo slackened, and, half stunned by the rough handling J I had undergone, I looked up at Domingo j Verato bending over me loosening the noose of his lasso from about my arms and body. ■ t " ' Hullo ! What does this performance mean? What happened, anyway?' I asked, getting to my feet and staring around. ' Where's my horse gone ?' " Verato's horse was standing close by, its ears pricked and uostriJs distended, in high excitement. My horse was nowhere in view. As my eyes* took in these things there came to my eats the sound of surging waters and heavy splashing. The llanero pointed in the direction his horse was looking, and I saw, at the ssime distance away as before, tho light I had followed. It blazed above a. groat uprooted tree that swung and tiited m a vast expanse of heaving waters, ' overspreading what on the day before had been the dry savauna and bottom lands by the river. " Surging and eddying against the steep bank that separated the lower from the higher plain, the waters continually were undermining it, and the slashings I neaia were the fall of earth and trees into the flood. Amid the heavier sounds rose the frightened cries of birds and beasts, and on the face of the waters could be seen. j

indistinctly b6re and there a swimming capyvara or a jaguar driven from its covert, or the horned heads of cattle overlooked in the round-up of the weeks before. Of my horse nothing was to to be seen. It had been swept away instantly and drowned. "The inundation had come, and Verato and I were the first in the Diego Perez country to behold it. As we" rode for the ranch, riding double upon his horse, he told me how in spite of his fears, he had j followed me when I took after the deluding | light. It had been a long pursuit, far , longer than I was aware of, and strangely I had heard and seen nothing of the flood as I apprcached the bank. I now believe that I was mesmerized ov hypnotized through steadily gazing upon the floating flame. Indeed Verato said as much to me. " ' You were encantado (enchanted) with the fire of Aguirre/ he said. ' You ride straight after it into the water and drown — never think.' "Luckily he had heard and recognised the sounds of the inundation, and spurring after me had thrown his lasßO just in time to pull me back from destruction. " This is one experience — my own — with the fire of Aguirre. If you go to the Venezuelan pampas tho llaneros will tell you a thousand. Of course, the phenomenon, which is no more remarkable than that of the corpus sancti of the seas, must be explainable on accepted natural grounds. Nevertheless, my advice, like that of the llaneros, would be to let it alone, for it will lead its follower into undesirable places. It is not for nothing that this will-o'-the-wisp bears its bad name."