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Book of Buried Treasure

<h3> CHAPTER XIII </h3> <h4> THE QUEST OF EL DORADO </h4> 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 Bogotá, 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 Fé de Bogotá, 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 Bogotá, 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 Bogotá, 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 Bogotá, 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 Bogotá, 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 Bogotá. 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 Bogotá 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 Bogotá 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 Fé de Bogotá 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 Fé, 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 Fé 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 Bogotá 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 Bogotá 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 Bogotá 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 Cæsar, 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. <hr> <center> <ANTIMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-348.jpg" ALT="Sir Walter Raleigh." BORDER="2" WIDTH="474" HEIGHT="807"> <H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 474px"> Sir Walter Raleigh. </h4> </center> <hr> "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 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 Bogotá. 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 Bogotá, 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 Bogotá." 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 Valdéz, 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.) <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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