FISH FALL FROM SKY

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1926, Page 10

FISH FALL FROM SKY

A CRIMSON STREAM. MYSTERIES OF CENTRAL AMERICA Mr. F. A. Mitchell Hedges, the explorer, who is now on a tour of the Central American Republic writes to The Daily Mail from Managua, Nicaragua. ... The Republic of Honduras is in many- ways remarkable. There are thousands of square miles of jungle, iwamp, and’ mountain where no white man has ever set foot. There are primitive Indian tribes whose culture has not yet reached that of the Stone and Iron Ages. Their tribal customs and grotesque religious ceremonies are only vaguely suspected from the tales which reach outlying villages through other Indian tribes. In a remote part of this strange land a crimson stream gushes from the bowels of the earth. The Indians cannot be induced to approach the place. They allege that millions of bate ' live in gigantic underground caverns and that the Wood conies from their bodies as perpetually- they- fight and tear #>ne another to pieces by thousands. .The Indians believe that at death all people who have lived an evil life on earth turn into bats. This is theii conception of hell; hence the. place is regarded with dread. I suggest that this phenomenon is caused by a spring of water passing through mineralised red soil. There are many mysteries m tins country. In Yoro nearly every June during' the wet season swarms of -fish three° to seven inches in length fall from the sky. The natives eagerly collect them, and they are considered a great delicacy. The Indians call this the feast of the fishes. Leaving Tegucigalpa, the 'capital of the Republic of Honduras, on our 100-miles journey to the Pacific, we passed through wonderful country before reaching -San Lorenzo, where the Government launch awaited us. In this crossed the Gulf of Fonseca which is much finer than the Bay ot Naples, and arrived at the little town of Amapala, nestling at the foot of a big, extinct volcano, which rises out of the gulf and forms an island. On the day- of our departure a terrific chubasco (an electric storm preceded by violent wind) broke. The placid waters of the gulf were turned into a seething maelstrom, and so great was the velocity of the wind that tlifS water ripped from the waves cut one’s face like a whiplash. It became black as night. The storm redoubled in fury-, several natives’ dug-outs were blown up off the beach, and in the midst of this inferno there came a blinding glare, xou could feel the heat and hear the rip of the flame, and the earth rocked under the shock of the explosion. The enveloping black pall was rent -asunder and a roar of water fell in a solid mass,, flattening out the waves on the gulf, hive minutes later there was no. sign of storm and the sun blazed down from a clear sky.