Pamplona's Encierros

For 51 weeks of the year the capital of Navarra is a sleepy little Spanish city where half-naked children play in the narrow streets and cafe waiters doze under the arcades of the broad, quiet Plaza de la Constitucion. But in the second week of July, Pamplona becomes bull-mad, its streets and plaza are full of snuffing, rushing bulls. Hotels and rooming houses overflow with visitors from Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastian, with tourists from St. Jean-de-Luz, Biarritz and Paris. Peasants from miles around sleep in wagons, in the fields, or do not sleep at all. For four days from 6 a. m. until long after midnight sleep is next to impossible while Pamplona celebrates the Fiesta of San Fermin, its patron saint. There are bullfights, street dancing, parades of huge grotesque figures, much drinking of strong Spanish wine. But by far the most exciting ceremony--one which takes place only at Pamplona--is the encierro (driving of the bulls).

Soon after dawn the first day of the fiesta this week, hundreds of youths gathered at the edge of town near the railroad station. Men climbed upon six big cages, reached down and opened them. Out walked six bulls, blinking in the sunlight. They were strong, lithe, handsome, each branded with the mark of Don Ernesto Blanco. They looked around, uncertain what to do, until from the crowd of youths came a yell: "Hah! Hah! . . . Toro!" The bulls lowered their heads, charged the crowd. The crowd took to its heels, the bulls stampeding in pursuit.

Through the narrow streets rushed the yelling rabble of boys and young men, while women cheered from the safety of windows. From every doorway came male recruits to swell the throng. Across the city they ran, the foremost bull not three paces behind the last man. At the plaza the path of the encierro is marked by fences, behind which hundreds of tourists and visitors watched. A few, carried away by the excitement, vaulted the fence, joined the runners. Occasionally a runner fell, lay still while the bulls, their eyes on the moving mass, pounded over them. From the plaza the chase poured into another small street, then men & bulls made one mad rush for the entrance of the bull ring.

The gate is far too small to let all through at once. Those who could not get in fell to the ground. Men piled upon men, bulls leaped over a human wall and charged snorting into the ring. There they found men waving coats, shirts, rags--anything that remotely resembled a matador's cape. The bulls charged here &; there. Sometimes a novice held his bull's attention, executed several passes. Sometimes he went down with a horn wound in his leg.

Into this bedlam now trotted a bunch of steers. The bulls charged, goring the steers at first but gradually making friends with them, quieting down in the company of fellow cattle. Then the steers led the bulls out to pens under the arena.

That afternoon matadors killed the six fine bulls of Don Ernesto Blanco for the glory of Spain's national sport. The next three days the encierro was repeated with different batches of bulls. At the end of four days thousands of people had seen Spain's leading matadors perform. They included: Marcial Lalanda, long considered the best; Nicanor Villalta and Vincente Barrera, also oldtimers; Domingo Ortega, who in his second season is the most talked of matador in Spain; Jaime Noain, another fast-rising youth; Luis Fuentes Bejarano, who is sometimes brave, sometimes funny.

The Bull is Spain's chief animal. He is a descendant of the wild bulls that roamed the Iberian peninsula, a closer cousin of the African Cape buffalo than of any domestic cattle. Spanish ganaderias (bull-raising establishments) raise their bulls in a wild state. Carefully bred to bring out all the courage of the strain, the best specimens are rigorously tested, the tame ones weeded out to be butchered. Those raised to fight are never allowed to come in contact with a man on foot lest they learn his tricks. They must remain virgin. The young ones and defectives are fought by novilleros (novices); full-grown bulls (over three years) are killed by full-fledged matadors. Most of the ganaderias are near Salamanca, in the west of Spain, and in Andalusia, south of Seville. Largest, fiercest, most cunning are the bulls of the sons of Don Eduardo Miura, whose ganaderia is near Seville. Miura bulls kill many horses.* Few matadors like to fight Miuras; some will not. Many breeders have bred smaller bulls at the behest of cautious matadors, but if a bull is too small he is whistled out of the ring. For those who wish to judge bulls before they reach the ring two occasions are important: the feria (fair) at Seville in the spring and the July encierros at Pamplona.

Sweet Butterflies

For 24 years Austin Hobart Clark has been smelling butterflies in & about the District of Columbia. Just how much pleasure he has got from it he told last week in a 337-page volume laconically entitled The Butterflies of the District of Columbia & Vicinity. In it Butterfly Lover Clark, who is curator of echinoderms at the U. S. National Museum and only smells butterflies as a pastime, poetically reveals several hitherto unsuspected facts concerning the butterfly. Items:

Many male butterflies have the fragrance of flowers. The common orange-&-black regal fritillary, a shy little fellow, emits a strong, sweet, spicy odor resembling that of sandalwood. He feeds on the tops of red milkweeds and thistles, will flee if approached by man. The smell of the female is exceedingly nauseating. The blue butterfly smells like "newly stirred earth in spring or crushed violet stems." The lesser sulphur exudes the fragrance of dried sweet grass. The orange clover's scent resembles heliotrope. If a cloud obscures the sun it at once seeks a resting place, preferably on something yellow. It is very social. The cloudless clover smells of violets and musk, the cabbage butterfly of mignonette and sweet briar, the yellow swallowtail of "certain brands of honey biscuits." The milkweed butterfly has an odor like "the faint sweet fragrance of red clover blossoms." The female smells like a cockroach.

Butterflies are strong and brave. The milkweed has been seen 100 miles at sea. It flies 10 to 15 feet above the water at a speed of 20 m.p.h., always in a straight line. Mr. Clark says he once saw a blue swallowtail chasing an English sparrow.

Butterflies grow up in odd places. The cabbage butterfly, in its caterpillar state, will sometimes pupate on firewood, often emerges from its cocoon in midwinter, much to the astonishment of gentlemen warming their feet in fireplaces. The cybele will lay eggs only on violets.

* Most of the horses used in Spain's bullfights, whose disembowelling so annoys U. S. tourists, are bought in St. Louis at $5 a head.

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