Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/121

Before doing so lie instigated a number of murders at Margarita. At length lie succeeded in getting a vessel, on which he sailed "on the last Sunday of August, 1561," at the head of a well-armed band of criminals, for Burburata. The people of this place fled into the woods with their property as soon as they saw the vessel, which bore two blood-red swords, crossed, on its flag. Without halting at Burburata, Aguirre marched inland to Lake Tacarigua, on the shore of which the settlement of Valencia had existed since 1555. Some of his men deserted him in the tropical wilderness through which his road lay. Valencia had been abandoned, and the Marañones burned the vacant houses. Aguirre was ill, and therefore twice as irritable as usual, and gave himself up to the wildest cruelty, even toward his own men. In Valencia he composed a manifesto to the King of Spain, and sent it by a priest whom he had brought from Margarita as a hostage to the coast. The letter, which has been preserved by Vasquez and by Oviedo y Banos, begins, "To King Philip, a Spaniard, son of Charles the Invincible," and ends with the words, "and on account of this ingratitude, I remain till death a rebel against thee.—Lope de Aguirre, the Wanderer." The document is full of reasonable and unreasonable reproaches, contains the most glaring and absurd contradictions, and bears throughout the marks of insanity. From Valencia Aguirre went southwest toward Barquicimeto. The royal party was not prepared for resistance in the open field; but the number of the Marañones was perceptibly