Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-20

He entered Quito in triumph, ,calking
under forUer arches that proclaimed
him ''The lightning of Var and the
Rainbow of Peace
Now it was that Bolivar showed the in
domitable will, the deathless courage, that
lifted him above the fluid souls of lesser men.
Escaping to New Granada (now Colombia), he
begged aid of a revolutionary group, and In
vaded Venezuela from the west, calling upon
the people to rise and strike. They came in
food armed only with knives and homemade
spears, but catching fire from Bolivar's UNI
conquerable spirit these rude levies beat down
the veterans Of Spain.
A LII of BoliVar'S campaigns had the emo
tional quality of crusadeS His addresses
before each battle were war songs, and his
proclamations rang with epic passion that
wrapped every man in the armor OF invincibn-
ity. There were to be weary days when the only
food was raw meat, put beneath saddles that
the horses sweat might salt it. yet when he
burst into one of his inspiring chants. dying
men came TO life and fought like Cids.
Not all the alteration of plain people, how
ever, could guard Bolivar against the treach-
cries of lieutenantS and from first to last he
walked q lane of Benedict ArnoldS. Even as
foundations of freedom every bright promise
was destroyed by envy and intrigue, and 1914
saw whole population fleeing before the wrath
of the victorious Spaniards. Women and chill
dren were in that CHASTITY hegira and dying
mothers threw their babes into mountain gorges
rather than have them fall into the power OF
the human tigers that pursued.
A penniless fugitive in jamaica we find
Bolivar charming a certain rich man. Brion,
into an offer Of ships and money; Potion, the
black President of Haiti, no less enthralled
by the magnetism and torrential eloQuence of
the indomitable Venezuelan, and in the Spring
of 1917 we find him renewing the revolution,
sublimely confident. Yet not one ray of light
shot through the darkness before him, for Fer
dinand VII, returned to the throne, had sent
10000 soldiers to South America, and offered a
fortune for Bolivar's head.
This time however there was a new ap-
proach, for the liberator put the seacoaSt and
its cities behind him, and made dash for the
interior. There Jose PaeZ had gathered the
wild plainsmen into guerrilla bands, and with
the Orinoco his base of operations Bolivar
cried a new challenge to the might of Spain.
Defeats alternated with victories; one day he
beat at the very gates of Caracas and the next
saw him alone and hunted; twice he missed
capture by a hair; unruly lieutenants defed
his authority; and, forced to recognize the
hopelessness of the Venezuelan campaign
Bolivar's genius marked New Granada as the
one battlefield where success might be won.
Not in all the annals Of warfare is there any
equal to this march of unrelieved horror, suffer-
ing and death. The rainy season had turned
the endless stretch Of grassy plain into an in
land sea, and for weary weeks the half-clothed,
half-starved men waded through water up TO
their waists, swimming rivers where alligators
took deadly toll.
At last the dread Cordilleras rose Def re
them, and now they froze, men falling to death
as their numb fingers refused to take firm grip
on mountain walls. Like crippled beasts they
crawled across the Paramo de Pisba, lofty
desert swept by icy winds, barren of animal or
vegetable life, more frightful than any of
Dante's conceptions. Hundreds fell, never to
rise again, and as the survivors staggered on,
thy beat each other with 'stourges that their
bN cd might not CONCEAL