THE QUEST OF EL DORADO
In our time the golden word _Eldorado_ has come to mean the goal of
unattained desires, the magic country of dreams that forever lies just
beyond the horizon. Its literal significance has been lost in the
mists of the centuries since when one deluded band of adventurers after
another was exploring unknown regions of the New World in quest of the
treasure city hidden somewhere in the remote interior of South America.
Thousands of lives and millions of money were vainly squandered in
these pilgrimages, but they left behind them one of the most singularly
romantic chapters in the whole history of conquest and discovery.
The legend of El Dorado was at first inspired by the tales of a
wonderful and veritable _dorado_, or gilded man, king of a tribe of
Indians dwelling, at the time of the Spanish conquest, upon the lofty
tableland of Bogota, in what is now the republic of Colombia. Later
investigations have accepted it as true that such a personage existed
and that the ceremonies concerning which reports were current early in
the sixteenth century took place at the sacred lake of Guatavia. There
lived on this plateau, in what is still known as the province of
Cundinamarca, small village communities of the Muysca Indians, somewhat
civilized and surrounded on all sides by debased and savage tribes.
They worshiped the sun and moon, performed human sacrifices, and adored
striking natural objects, as was the custom in Peru.
The numerous lakes of the region were holy places, each regarded as the
home of a particular divinity to which gold and emeralds were offered
by throwing them into the water. Elsewhere than at Guatavita jewels
and objects wrought of gold have been discovered in the process of
draining these little lakes. Guatavita, however, is most famous of all
because here originated the story of "_el hombre dorado_." This sheet
of water is a few miles north of the capital city of Santa Fe de
Bogota, more than nine thousand feet above sea level, in the heart of
the Cordilleras. Near the lake is still the village called Guatavita.
In 1490 the inhabitants were an independent tribe with a ruling chief.
They had among them a legend that the wife of one of the earlier chiefs
had thrown herself into the lake in order to escape punishment and that
her spirit survived as the goddess of the place. To worship her came
the people of other communities of the region, bringing their gold and
precious stones to cast into the water, and Guatavita was famed for its
religious pilgrimages. Whenever a new chief, or king, of Guatavita was
chosen, an imposing ceremonial was observed by way of coronation. All
the men marched to the lake in procession, at the head a great party
wailing, the bodies nude and painted with ocher as a sign of deep
mourning. Behind them were groups richly decorated with gold and
emeralds, their heads adorned with feathers, cloaks of jaguar skins
hanging from their shoulders. Many uttered joyful cries or blew on
trumpets and conch-shells. Then came the priests in long black robes
decorated with white crosses. At the rear of the procession were the
nobles escorting the newly-elected chief who rode upon a barrow hung
with disks of gold.
His naked body was anointed with resinous gums and covered with gold
dust so that he shone like a living statue of gold. This was the
gilded man, El Dorado, whose fame traveled to the coast of the
Caribbean. At the shore of the lake, he and his escort stepped upon a
balsa, or raft made of rushes, and moved slowly out to the middle.
There the gilded one plunged into the deep water and washed off his
precious covering, while with shouts and music the assembled throng
threw their offerings of gold and jewels into the lake. Then the
worshipers returned to the village for dancing and feasting.[1] In the
last decade of the fifteenth century, or while Columbus was making his
voyages, the tribe of Guatavita was conquered by a stronger community
of the Muysca race, and the new rulers, being of a thriftier mind, made
an end of the extravagant ceremony of el dorado. It is therefore
assumed that the gilded man had ceased to be, full thirty years before
the Spaniards first heard of him at the coast.
Humboldt became interested in the legend during his South America
travels and reported:
"I have examined from a geographical point of view the expeditions on
the Orinoco, and in a western and southern direction in the eastern
side of the Andes, before the tradition of El Dorado was spread among
the conquerors. This tradition had its origin in the kingdom of Quito
where Luiz Daza, in 1535, met with an Indian of New Granada who had
been sent by his prince, the Zipa of Bogota, or the Caique of Tunja, to
demand assistance from Atahuahalpa, the last Inca of Peru. This
ambassador boasted, as was usual, of the wealth of his country; but
what particularly fixed the attention of the Spaniards who were
assembled with Daza was the history of a lord who, his body covered
with gold dust, went into a lake amid the mountains.
"As no historical remembrance attaches itself to any other mountain
lake in this vicinity, I suppose the reference to be made to the sacred
lake of Guatavita, in the plains of the Bogota, into which the gilded
lord was made to enter. On the banks of this lake I saw the remains of
a staircase, hewn in the rock, and used for the ceremonies of ablution.
The Indians told me that powder of gold and golden vessels were thrown
into this lake as a sacrifice to the _Adoratorio_ de Guatavita.
Vestiges are still found of a breach made by the Spaniards in order to
drain the lake.... The ambassador of Bogota, whom Daza met in the
kingdom of Quito, had spoken of a country situated towards the east."
The latter reference means that the legend had spread from coast to
coast. On the Pacific, the _conquistadores_ of Pizarro were for a time
too busily engaged in looting the enormous treasures of the last Inca
of Peru to pay much heed to the lure of golden legends beckoning them
further inland. The first attempt to go in search of the gilded man
and his kingdom was made, not by a Spaniard, but by a German, Ambrosius
Dalfinger, who was in command of a colony of his countrymen settled on
the shore of the Gulf of Venezuela, a large tract of that region having
been leased by Spain to a German company. He pushed inland to the
westward as far as the Rio Magdalena, treated the natives with horrible
barbarity, and was driven back after losing most of his men.
A few years later, and the legend was magnified into a wondrous
description of a golden city. In 1538, there marched from the Atlantic
coast, Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada, surnamed _El Conquistador_, to find
the El Dorado. At the head of six hundred and twenty-five
foot-soldiers and eighty-five mailed horsemen, he made his perilous way
up the Rio Magdalena, through fever-cursed swamps and tribes of hostile
natives, enduring hardships almost incredible until at length he came
to the lofty plateau of Bogota, and the former home of the real gilded
man. More than five hundred of his men had died on the journey of
hunger, illness, and exposure. He found rich cities and great stores
of gold and jewels, but failed to discover the El Dorado of his dreams.
Many stories were afloat of other treasures to be wrested from the
Muysca chiefs, but Quesada, having no more than a handful of fighting
men, feared to go campaigning until he had made his position secure.
He therefore established a base and laid the foundations of the present
city of Bogota. One of his scouting parties brought back tidings of a
tribe of very war-like women in the south who had much gold, and in
this way was the myth of the Amazons linked with the El Dorado as early
as 1538.
Now occurred as dramatic a coincidence as could be imagined. To
Quesada there appeared a Spanish force commanded by Sebastian de
Belalcazar, the conqueror of Quito, who had come all the way from the
Pacific coast, after hearing from an Indian of New Granada the story of
the gilded man. No sooner had this expedition arrived than it was
reported to Quesada that white men with horses were coming from the
east. This third company of pilgrims in quest of El Dorado proved to
be Nicholas Federmann and his hard-bitted Germans from the colony in
Venezuela who had followed the trail made by Dalfinger and then plunged
into the wilderness beyond his furthest outpost.
Thus these three daring expeditions, Quesada from the north, Belalcazar
from the south, and Federmann from the east, met face to face on the
hitherto unknown plateau of Cundinamarca. None had been aware of the
others' march in search of this goal, and each had believed himself to
be the discoverer of this country. They were ready to fly at one
another's throats, for there could be no amity when gold was the prize
at stake. Curiously enough the three forces were evenly matched in
fighting strength, each with about one hundred and sixty men. One
might think that the two Spanish parties would have united to drive the
Germans from the home of El Dorado, but greed stifled all natural ties
and emotions.
A conflict was averted by the tact and sagacity of Quesada and the
priests of the expeditions who acted as a committee of arbitration. It
was finally agreed among the leaders that the several claims should be
submitted to the Spanish Court, and Quesada, Belalcazar, and Federmann
set out for Spain to appear in person, leaving their forces in
possession of the disputed territory. The command of the Spanish
troops was turned over to Hernan Perez de Quesada, the cruel and greedy
brother of the leader, who fortified himself at Bogota and proceeded to
rob the Muysca people of the last ounce of gold that could be extorted
by means of torture and all manner of unspeakable wickedness. In 1540
he tried to drain the lake of Guatavita, tempted by the stories of the
vast treasures of gold and jewels that, for centuries, had been thrown
into the water by the worshipers, but he recovered valuables only to
the amount of four thousand ducats. It was the remains of his drainage
tunnel which Humboldt found and made note of.
With the conquest of this region was obtained the last great store of
gold discovered by the plundering Spaniards in South America. These
explorers finished when [Transcriber's note: what?] Pizarro had begun
in Peru. To convey the treasure from Bogota to the coast of the
Carribean a road was built through the mountains, much of it cut as a
narrow shelf in solid rock, winding and dipping in a dizzy route to
connect with the upper reaches of navigation on the Rio Magdalena.
This was the famous _El Camino Real_, or "King's Highway" which is
still used as one of the roads by which the capital of Colombia, Santa
Fe de Bogota is reached by the traveler of the twentieth century. It
was to intercept one of these treasure trains that Amyas Leigh and his
doughty comrades of "Westward Ho!" lay in wait, and the fiction of
Kingsley will better serve to portray the time and place than the facts
as the old historians strung them together.
"Bidding farewell once and forever to the green ocean of the eastern
plains, they have crossed the Cordillera; they have taken a longing
glance at the city of Santa Fe, lying in the midst of rich gardens on
its lofty mountain plateau, and have seen, as was to be expected, that
it was far too large for any attempt of theirs. But they have not
altogether thrown away their time. Their Indian lad has discovered
that a gold-train is going down from Santa Fe toward the Magdalena; and
they are waiting for it beside the miserable rut that serves for a
road, encamped in a forest of oaks which would make them almost fancy
themselves back in Europe were it not for the tree-ferns which form the
undergrowth; and were it not for the deep gorges opening at their very
feet; in which while their brows are swept by the cool breezes of a
temperate zone, they can see far below, dim through their everlasting
vapor bath of rank, hot steam, the mighty forms and gorgeous colors of
the tropic forest.
"... At last, up from beneath there was a sharp crack and a loud cry.
The crack was neither the snapping of a branch, nor the tapping of a
woodpecker; the cry was neither the scream of a parrot, nor the howl of
a monkey.
"'That was a whip's crack,' said Yeo, 'and a woman's wail. They are
close here, lads!'
"'A woman's? Do they drive women in their gangs?' asked Amyas. 'Why
not, the brutes? There they are, sir. Did you see their basnets
glitter?'
"'Men!' said Amyas in a low voice. 'I trust you all not to shoot till
I do. Then give them one arrow, out swords, and at them! Pass the
word along.'
"Up they came, slowly, and all hearts beat loud at their coming.
First, about twenty soldiers, only one half of whom were on foot; the
other half being borne, incredible as it may seem, each in a chair on
the back of a single Indian, while those who marched had consigned
their heaviest armor and their arquebuses into the hands of attendant
slaves, who were each pricked on at will by the pikes of the soldiers
behind them.... Last of this troop came some inferior officer also in
his chair, who as he went slowly up the hill, with his face turned
toward the gang which followed, drew every other second the cigar from
his lips to inspirit them with those pious ejaculations ... which
earned for the pious Spaniards of the sixteenth century the
uncharitable imputation of being the most abominable swearers in Europe.
"... A line of Indians, Negroes, and Zamboes, naked, emaciated, scarred
with whips and fetters, and chained together by their left wrists,
toiled upwards, panting and perspiring under the burden of a basket
held up by a strap which passed across their foreheads. Yeo's sneer
was but too just; there were not only old men and youths among them,
but women; slender young girls, mothers with children running at their
knee; and at the sight, a low murmur of indignation rose from the
ambushed Englishmen, worthy of the free and righteous hearts of those
days, when Raleigh could appeal to man and God, on the ground of a
common humanity, in behalf of the outraged heathens of the New World.
"But the first forty, so Amyas counted, bore on their backs a burden
which made all, perhaps, but him and Yeo, forget even the wretches who
bore it. Each basket contained a square package of carefully corded
hide; the look whereof friend Amyas knew full well.
"'What's in they, Captain?'
"'Gold!' And at that magic word all eyes were strained greedily
forward, and such a rustle followed that Amyas, in the very face of
detection, had to whisper:
"'Be men, be men, or you will spoil all yet.'"
The muskets and long-bows of the stout Englishmen avenged the wrongs of
this pitiable caravan, although there was no help for a vast multitude
of Indians who were put to death with devilish torments by their
conquerors. But the legend of the El Dorado still survived and it
spread like an avenging spirit. "Transplanted by the over-excited
imagination of the white man, the vision appeared like a mirage
enticing, deceiving and leading men to destruction, on the banks of the
Orinoco, and the Amazon, in Omagua and Parime." The conquest of Bogota
made them believe that the gilded man and his golden kingdom were
somewhere just beyond. The licentiate, Juan de Castellanos, wrote a
poem which was published in 1589, telling of the legend as it had
existed in Quito in the days of the _Conquistadores_.
"When with that folk came Annasco,
Benalcazar learned from a stranger
Then living in the city of Quito,
But who called Bogota his home,
Of a land there rich in golden treasure,
Rich in emeralds glistening the rock.
. . . . . . . . . .
A chief was there, who stripped of vesture,
Covered with golden dust from crown to toe,
Sailed with offerings to the gods upon a lake
Borne by the waves upon a fragile raft,
The dark flood to brighten with golden light."[2]
Another and more imaginative version of the story was told to Oviedo[3]
by divers Spaniards whom he met in San Domingo. They had heard from
Indians in Quito that the great lord, El Dorado, always went about
covered with powdered gold, because he thought this kind of garment
more beautiful and distinguished than any decorations of beaten gold.
The lesser chiefs were in the habit of adorning themselves likewise,
but were not so lavish as the king who put on his gold dust every
morning and washed it off at night. He first anointed himself with a
fragrant liquid gum, to which the gold dust adhered so evenly that he
resembled a brilliant piece of artfully hammered gold metal.
For more than half a century, the mad quest continued, and always there
came tragedy and disaster. The German colony of Venezuela was wiped
out because of these futile expeditions into the interior. Gonzalo
Pizarro, brother of the great Francisco, set out to find the city of
legend, and returned after two years, in such dreadful plight that the
survivors of the party looked more like wild animals than men, "so that
one could no longer recognize them." Pedro de Urzua started from
Bogota to find a "golden city of the sun," and his expedition founded
the town of Pampluna. In 1560 the same leader was appointed "governor
of Omagua and El Dorado," and he set out to find his domain by way of
the Amazon. Urzua was murdered by Lope de Aguirre who treacherously
conspired against him, and Aguirre descended the great river and
finally reached Venezuela after one of the maddest piratical cruises
ever recorded. Guimilla, in a "History of the Oronoke," says:
"I find it (El Dorado) related with such an exact description of the
country, as the missionaries of my province and myself have recognized,
that I cannot doubt it. I have seen in the jurisdiction of Varinas, in
the mountains of Pedrarca, in 1721, the brass halberd which Urzua took
with him in his expedition. I have been acquainted with Don Joseph
Cabarte who directed for thirty years the missions of Agrico and the
Oronoke, the countries traversed by Urzua, and he appeared to be fully
persuaded that that was the route to El Dorado."
Meanwhile the myth had assumed new forms. On the southwestern
tributaries of the Amazon were the fabled districts of Enim and Paytiti
said to have been founded by Incas who had fled from Peru and to have
surpassed ancient Cuzco in splendor. North of the Amazon the supposed
city of El Dorado moved eastward until in Raleigh's time it was
situated in Guiana beside Lake Parima. This lake remained on English
maps until the explorations of Schomburgh in the nineteenth century
proved that it was nothing more than a pond in a vast swamp. The
emerald mountain of Espirito Santo and the Martyrios gold mine, long
sought for in Western Brazil recalled the El Dorado myth; while far to
the southward in the plains of the Argentine the city of Caesar, with
silver walls and houses was another alluring and persistent phantom.
It was said to have been founded by shipwrecked Spanish sailors, and
even late in the eighteenth century expeditions were sent in search for
it.
It was not until 1582 that the Spanish ceased to pursue the fatal
phantom city of El Dorado and Southey's History of the Brazils is
authority for the statement that these "expeditions cost Spain more
than all the treasures she had received from her South American
possessions." There is more meaning than appears on the surface in the
Spanish proverb, "Happiness is only to be found in El Dorado which no
one yet has been able to reach."
Alas, that Sir Walter Raleigh should have been lured to seek in Guiana
the fabled El Dorado which had now become the splendid city of Manoa
built on the shores of a vast inland lake of salt water. It was in
this guise that he heard the transplanted and exaggerated story of the
gilded man. His own narrative, as included in Hakluyt's Voyages, is
entitled:[4]
"The discovery of the large, rich and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with
a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards
call El Dorado) and the provinces of Emeria, Aromaia, Amapaia, and
other countries, with their rivers adjoining. Performed in the year
1595 by Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight, Captain of Her Majesty's Guard,
Lord Warden of the Stanneries, and Her Highness' Lieutenant General of
the County of Cornwall."
It was while touching at the island of Trinidad, outward bound, that
Raleigh had the misfortune to learn the story of a picturesque liar by
the name of Juan Martinez, a derelict Spanish seaman, who had sailed
with the explorer Diego de Ordas in 1531. "The relation of this
Martinez (who was the first that discovered Manoa) his success and end
are to be seen in the Chancery of Saint Juan de Puerto Rico," writes
Raleigh, "whereof Berreo had a copy, which appeared to be the greatest
encouragement as well to Berreo as to others that formerly attempted
the discovery and conquest. Orellana, after he failed of the discovery
of Guiana by the said river of the Amazon, passed into Spain, and there
obtained a patent of the king for the invasion and conquest, but died
by sea about the Islands, and his fleet severed by tempest, the action
for that time proceeded not. Diego Ordas followed the enterprise, and
departed Spain with six hundred soldiers and thirty horse, who arriving
on the coast of Guiana, was slain in mutiny, with the most part of such
as favored him, as also of the rebellious part, insomuch as his ships
perished, and few or none returned, neither was it certainly known what
became of the said Ordas until Berreo found the anchor of his ship in
the river of Orinoco; but it was supposed, and so it is written by
Lopez that he perished on the seas, and of other writers diversely
conceived and reported.
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[Illustration: Sir Walter Raleigh.]
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"And hereof it came that Martinez entered so far within the land and
arrived at that city of Inca, the Emperor; for it chanced that while
Ordas with his army rested at the port of Morequito (who was either the
first or second that attempted Guiana) by some negligence the whole
store of powder provided for the service was set on fire; and Martinez
having the chief charge[5] was condemned by the General Ordas to be
executed forthwith. Martinez, being much favored by the soldiers, had
all the means possible procured for his life; but it could not be
obtained in other sort than this; That he should be set into a canoe
alone without any victuals, only with his arms, and so turned loose
into the great river.
"But it pleased God that the canoe was carried down the stream and that
certain of the Guianians met it the same evening; and having not at any
time seen any Christian, nor any man of that color, they carried
Martinez into the land to be wondered at, and so from town to town,
until he came to the great city of Manoa, the seat and residence of
Inca, the Emperor. The emperor after he had beheld him, knew him to be
a Christian (for it was not long before that his brethren Guascar[6]
and Atabalipa[6] were vanished [Transcriber's note: vanquished?] by the
Spaniards in Peru) and caused him to be lodged in his palace and well
entertained. He lived seven months in Manoa, but was not suffered to
wander into the country anywhere. He was also brought thither all the
way blindfold, led by the Indians, until he came to the entrance of
Manoa itself, and was fourteen or fifteen days in the passage. He
avowed at his death that he entered the city at noon, and then they
uncovered his face, and that he traveled all that day till night
through the city and the next day from sun rising to sun setting ere he
came to the palace of Inca.
"After that Martinez had lived seven months in Manoa, and began to
understand the language of the country, Inca asked him whether he
desired to return into his own country, or would willingly abide with
him. But Martinez not desirous to stay, obtained the favor of Inca to
depart; with whom he sent divers Guianians to conduct him to the river
of Orinoco, all laden with as much gold as they could carry, which he
gave to Martinez at his departure. But when he was arrived near the
river's side, the borderers which are called Orenoqueponi robbed him
and his Guianians of all the treasure (the borderers being at that time
at war, which Inca had not conquered) save only of two great bottles of
gourds, which were filled with beads of gold curiously wrought, which
those Orenoqueponi thought had been no other thing than his drink or
meat, or grain for food, with which Martinez had liberty to pass.
"And so in canoes he fell down from the river of Orinoco to Trinidad
and from thence to Margarita, and also to Saint Juan de Puerto Eico,
where remaining a long time for passage into Spain, he died. In the
time of his extreme sickness, and when he was without hope of life,
receiving the Sacrament at the hands of his confessor, he delivered
these things, with the relation of his travels, and also called for his
calabazas or gourds of the gold beads which he gave to the church and
friars to be prayed for.
"This Martinez was he that christened the city of Manoa by the name of
El Dorado, and as Berreo informed me, upon this occasion; Those
Guianians, and also the borderers, and all others in that tract which I
have seen, are marvelous great drunkards; in which vice, I think no
nation can compare with them; and at the times of their solemn feasts
when the emperor carouseth with his captains, tributaries, and
governors the manner is thus:
"All those that pledge him are first stripped naked, and their bodies
anointed all over with a kind of white balsam (by them called _curca_)
of which there is great plenty, and yet very dear amongst them, and it
is of all other the most precious, whereof we have had good experience.
When they are anointed all over, certain servants of the emperor,
having prepared gold made into fine powder, blow it through hollow
canes upon their naked bodies, until they be all shining from the foot
to the head: and in this sort they sit drinking by twenties, and
hundreds, and continue in drunkenness sometimes six or seven days
together.
"The same is also confirmed by a letter written into Spain, which was
intercepted, which Mr. Robert Dudley told me he had seen. Upon this
sight, and for the abundance of gold which he saw in the city, the
images of gold in their temples, the plates, armors, and shields of
gold which they used in the wars, he called it El Dorado."
After mentioning in detail the several ill-fated expeditions of the
Spanish to find the El Dorado, Raleigh reviews the mass of evidence in
favor of the existence of the hidden and magnificent city, and as
gravely relates the current reports of other wonders as prodigious as
this. He it was who carried back to Europe the story of the Amazons,
"being very desirous to understand the truth of those warlike women,
because of some it is believed, of others not. And although I digress
from my purpose, yet I will set down that which hath been delivered me
for truth of those women, and I spake with a caique or lord of the
people, that told me he had been in the river and beyond it.... They
are said to be very cruel and bloodthirsty, especially to such as offer
to invade their territories. These Amazons have likewise great stores
of these plates of gold which they recover chiefly by exchange for a
kind of green stones." That the natures of these stern ladies had a
softer side is prettily indicated by Raleigh in the statement that in
the month of April "all kings of the border assemble, and queens of the
Amazons; and after the queens have chosen, the rest cast lots for their
Valentines. This one month they feast, dance, and drink of their wines
in abundance; and the moon being done, they all depart to their own
provinces."
Among the perils that beset the road to El Dorado was a terrible nation
of men with no heads upon their shoulders. Raleigh did not happen to
encounter them during his voyage up the Orinoco, but nevertheless he
took pains to set down in his narrative, "which though it may be
thought a mere fable, yet for mine part I am resolved it is true,
because every child in the provinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirm the
same. They are called Ewaipanoma; they are reported to have their eyes
in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts and
that a long train of hair groweth backward between their shoulders.[7]
The son of Topiawari, which I brought with me into England told me that
they are the most mighty men of all the land, and use bows, arrows, and
clubs thrice as big as any of Guiana, or of the Orinoco, and that one
of the Iwarawakeri took a prisoner of them the year before our arrival
there, and brought him into the borders of Aromaia, his father's
country. And farther when I seemed to doubt of it, he told me that it
was no wonder among them, but that they were as great a nation, and as
common as any other in all the provinces, and had of late years slain
many hundreds of his father's people: but it was not my chance to hear
of them until I was come away, and if I had but spoken but one word of
it while I was there, I might have brought one of them with me to put
the matter out of doubt. Such a nation was written of by Mandeville[8]
whose reports were holden for fables many years, and yet since the East
Indies were discovered, we find his relations true of all things as
heretofore were held incredible. Whether it be true or no, the matter
is not great, neither can there be any profit in the imagination. For
my own part, I saw them not, but I am resolved that so many people did
not all combine or forethink to make the report.
"When I came to Cumana in the West Indies, afterwards by chance I spake
with a Spaniard dwelling not far from thence, a man of great travel,
and after he knew that I had been in Guiana, and so far directly west
as Caroli, the first question he asked me was, whether I had seen any
of the Ewaipanoma, which are those without heads: who being esteemed a
most honest man of his word, and in all things else, told me he had
seen many of them."
That Sir Walter Raleigh, the finest flower of manhood that blossomed in
his age, should have believed these and other wonders does not belittle
his fame. He lived and fought and sailed in a world that had not been
explored and mapped and charted and photographed and written about
until all the romance and mystery were driven out of it. The globe had
not shrunk to a globule around which excursionists whiz in forty days
on a coupon ticket. Men truly great, endowed with the courage and
resourcefulness of epic heroes, and the simple faith of little
children, were voyaging into unknown seas to find strange lands, ready
to die, and right cheerfully, for God and their King. Sir Walter
Raleigh was bound up, heart and soul, in winning Guiana as a great
empire for England, and when his enemies at home scouted his reports
and accused him of trying to deceive the nation with his tales of El
Dorado, he replied with convincing sincerity and pathos:
"A strange fancy it had been in me, to have persuaded my own son whom I
have lost, and to have persuaded my wife to have adventured the eight
thousand pounds which his Majesty gave them for Shelborne, and when
that was spent, to persuade my wife to sell her house at Mitcham in
hope of enriching them by the mines of Guiana, if I myself had not seen
them with my own eyes! For being old and weakly, thirteen years in
prison, and not used to the air, to travel and to watching, it being
ten to one that I should ever have returned,--and of which, by reason
of my violent sickness, and the long continuance thereof, no man had
any hope, what madness would have made me undertake the journey, but
the assurance of this mine."[9]
He was referring here to his fourth and last voyage in quest of El
Dorado. Elizabeth was dead, and James I bore Raleigh no good will.
After the long imprisonment, for thirteen years under suspended
sentence of death, he was permitted to leave the Tower and embark with
a fleet of thirteen ships in 1617, it being particularly enjoined that
he should engage in no hostilities with his dearest enemy, Spain. It
is generally believed that King James hoped and expected that such a
clash of interests as was almost inevitable in the attempt to plant the
English flag in Guiana would give him a pretext to send Raleigh to the
headman's block. It was on this voyage that Raleigh lost his eldest
son, besides several of his ships, and utterly failed in the
high-hearted purpose of setting up a kingdom whose capital city should
be that splendid lost city of Manoa. He was unable to avoid battles
with the insolent Spanish, it was in one of these that his son was
killed, and when he returned to England, the price was exacted and
paid. Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in the palace yard, Westminster,
and thus perished one who brought great glory to England by land and
sea.
Concerning El Dorado, Raleigh had given credence to no more than was
believed in his time by the Spanish of every port from San Marta on the
Caribbean to Quito on the Pacific. The old chronicles are full of it.
One instance, chosen almost at random from many of the same kind is
quoted by De Pons in his History of Caraccas.[10]
"When the wild Indian appeared before the Spanish governor of Guiana,
Don Manuel Centurion of Angostura, he was assailed with questions which
he answered with as much perspicuity and precision as could be expected
from one whose most intelligible language consisted in signs. He,
however, succeeded in making them understand that there was on the
border of Lake Parima a city whose inhabitants were civilized and
regularly disciplined to war. He boasted a great deal of the beauty of
its buildings, the neatness of its streets, the regularity of its
squares, and the riches of its people. According to him, the roofs of
its principal houses were either of gold or silver. The high-priest,
instead of pontifical robes, rubbed his whole body with the fat of the
turtle; then they blew upon it some gold dust, so as to cover his whole
body with it. In this attire, he performed the religious ceremonies.
The Indian sketched on a table with a bit of charcoal the city of which
he had given a description.
"His ingenuity seduced the governor. He asked him to serve as a guide
to some Spaniards he wished to send on this discovery, to which the
Indian consented. Sixty Spaniards offered themselves for the
undertaking, and among others Don Antonio Santos. They set off and
traveled nearly five hundred leagues to the south, through the most
frightful roads. Hunger, the swamps, the woods, the precipices, the
heat, the rains, destroyed almost all. When those who survived thought
themselves four or five days' journey from the capital city and hoped
to reach the end of all their troubles, and the object of their
desires, the Indian disappeared in the night.
"This event dismayed the Spaniards. They knew not where they were. By
degrees they all perished but Santos to whom it occurred to disguise
himself as an Indian. He threw off his clothes, covered his whole body
with red paint, and introduced himself among them by his knowledge of
many of their languages. He was a long time among them, until at
length he fell within the power of the Portugese established on the
banks of the Rio Negro. They embarked him on the river Amazon and
after a very long detention, sent him back to his country."
In this very brief survey of the growth and results of the El Dorado
legend, there is no room even to mention many of the most dramatic and
disastrous expeditions which it inspired through the sixteenth century.
It was, in truth, the greatest lost treasure story that the world has
ever known. The age of those splendid adventurers has vanished,
exploration has proved that the golden city hidden in Guiana was a
myth, but now and again investigation has harked back to the source of
the tradition of the gilded man, at the mountain lake of Guatavita on
the lofty tableland of Bogota. Hernan de Quesada, first to try to
drain the lake, was followed a few years later by Antonio de Sepulveda
who recovered treasure from the bottom to the amount of more than one
hundred thousand dollars, besides a magnificent emerald which was sold
at Madrid.
Professor Liborio Zerda, of the University of Colombia at Bogota, has
published his results of an exhaustive study of the legend and the
evidence to show that the ceremonies of the gilded man were once
performed at Guatavita. He describes a group of figures beaten out of
raw gold which was recovered from the lake and is now in the museum of
that city. It represents the chief and attendants upon a _balsa_, or
raft, and is considered to be a striking confirmation of the tradition.
"Undoubtedly this piece represents the religious ceremony which Zamora
has described," writes Professor Zerda, "with the caique of Guatavita
surrounded by Indian priests, on the raft which was taken on the day of
the ceremony to the middle of the lake. It may be, as some persons
believe, that Siecha lagune, and not the present Guatavita, was the
place of the _dorado_ ceremony, and consequently the ancient Guatavita.
But everything seems to indicate that there was really once a _dorado_
at Bogota."
Zamora, who wrote in the seventeenth century, recorded that the Indians
believed the spirit of the lake had built a magnificent palace beneath
the water where she dwelt and demanded offerings of gold and jewels,
which belief spread over all the nation of the Muysca and also among
strangers "who all, stricken by this wonderful occurrence, came to
offer their gifts by many different routes, of which even to-day some
signs remain. In the center of the lake they threw their offerings
with ridiculous and vain ceremonies."
In 1823, Captain Charles Stuart Cochran of the English navy was
traveling in Colombia and he became keenly interested in the lake of
Guatavita and the chances of recovering the lost treasure by means of a
drainage project. He delved into the old Spanish records, assembled
the traditions that were still alive among the Indians and was
convinced that a fabulous accumulation of gold awaited the enterprise
of modern engineers. One of the ancient accounts, so he discovered,
related that to escape the cruel persecution of the Spanish conquerors
the wealthy natives threw their gold into the lake, and that the last
caique cast therein the burdens of fifty men laden with gold dust and
nuggets.
Captain Cochran did not succeed in finding the funds needed to
undertake the tempting task, but his information was preserved, and
made some stir in England and France. It was reserved for twentieth
century treasure seekers to attack the sacred lake of Guatavita, and to
capitalize the venture as a joint stock company with headquarters in
London and a glittering prospectus offering investors an opportunity of
obtaining shares in a prospective hoard of gold and jewels worth
something like a billion dollars. A concession was obtained from the
government of Colombia, and work begun in 1903.
As an engineering problem, draining the lake seemed practicable and
comparatively inexpensive. It is a deep, transparent pool, hardly more
than a thousand feet wide, almost circular, and set like a jewel in a
cup-like depression near the top of a cone-shaped peak, several hundred
feet above the nearby plateau. The tunnel therefore had only to pierce
the hill-side to enter the lake and let the water flow out to the plain
below. It was estimated that the shaft had to be driven a distance of
eleven hundred feet.
A small village of huts was built to shelter the engineers and
laborers, and rock drilling machinery set up not far from the still
visible remains of one of the shafts dug by the Spanish treasure
seekers of the fifteenth century. No serious obstacles were
encountered until the tunnel had tapped the bottom of the lake and the
water began to run off through carefully regulated sluices. Then, as
the surface lowered, and the submerged mud was exposed to the air, it
solidified in a cement-like substance which was almost impossible to
penetrate. The treasure must have sunk many feet deep in this mud
during four or five centuries, and the workmen found it so baffling
that operations were suspended. The promoters of the enterprise found
this unexpected obstacle so much more than they had bargained for that
they had to abandon it for lack of resources. In their turn they had
been thwarted by the spirit of the gilded man, and the treasure of El
Dorado is still beyond the grasp of its eager pursuers.
[1] The performance of these ceremonies is vouched for by Lucas
Fernandez Piedrahita, Bishop of Panama; Pedro Simon, and other early
Spanish historians, translated and quoted by A. F. Bandelier in his
work, "The Gilded Man (El Dorado)." This version agrees with that
described in the volume written by the modern historian, Dr. Liborio
Zerda, professor of the University of Colombia, _El Dorado, Estudio
Historico, Ethnografico, Y Arqueologico_.
[2] Translated by A. F. Bandelier.
[3] Oviedo, or Oviedo y Valdez, royal histriographer, who witnessed the
first return of Columbus to Spain in 1493. He was later a treasury
officer at Darien, governor of Cartagena, and _alcaide_ of the fort at
Santo Domingo. He wrote the first general account of the discoveries
in America, and it has remained a standard authority. His principal
work is _Historia natural y general de las Indias_ in fifty books.
[4] For the convenience of the reader the spelling has been modernized
in this and the following extracts from Hakluyt.
[5] Martinez was the gunner or officer "who had charge of the
munitions."
[6] Commonly spelled Huascar and Atalualpa.
[7] "Her father loved me, oft invited me,
Still questioned me the story of my life
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have pass'd.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days
To the very moment that he bade me tell it:
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving incidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach
Of being taken by the insolent foe,
And sold to slavery,'of my redemption thence,
And portance in my travel's history:
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose head touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak,--such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline."
--Shakespeare. (_The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice_.)
[8] The date of the first English edition of Sir John Mandeville's book
of travels was 1499. According to his own account he discovered this
and other wonders in the kingdom of Ethiopia. The book was widely
read, very popular in several languages, and was one of the earliest
printed books, being published in Germany about 1475. Recent
investigations have shown that almost the whole of the matter was
cribbed from other authors, and that as a genuine explorer, Sir John
Mandeville was the Dr. Frederick Cook of his age.
[9] Cayley's _Life of Raleigh_.
[10] Translation of J. A. Van Heuvel in his "_El Dorado_. Being a
Narrative of the Circumstances which gave rise to reports in the
Sixteenth Century of the Existence of a Rich and Splendid City in South
America." (1844.)