El Dorado

“ Over the summit rushed a mighty river, which touched no part of the mountainside, and fell with a great clamour as if a thousand bells were knocked together; so, though he did not find El Dorado, he was somewhat comforted by the marvel of this sight. Also, before he left he saw El Madre del Oro, the mother of gold, which proved that treasure lay not far underground. ”

“ Gold, wild cattle, and wilder mustangs are the returns of El Dorado. Cultivation is in its infancy.
The master departs with the dark-eyed bride. She timidly follows his every wish. Dolores has the education imparted by gentle Padre Francisco. It makes her capable of mentally expanding in the experiences of the first journey. The gentle refinement of her race completes her charms.
To the bride, the steamer, the sights of the bay, crowded with shipping, and the pageantry of the city are dazzling. The luxuries of city life are wonders. Relying on her husband, she glides into her new position. ”

“ The splendid capital of El-Dorado on which de Soto and his companions had gazed in awe-mingled wonder on that first memorable morning was now a wilderness of blackened and fire-wasted ruins. Day after day the legions of the Inca had flung themselves into its approaches, only to be beaten back with fearful slaughter by the little band of desperate heroes, now less than two hundred strong, who held their camp in the midst of the great square surrounded by the blackened ruins of the palaces and temples which they had first seen glowing with gay colours and shining with gold and silver. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With no feeling of self-abasement, leading officials, merchants, bankers, judges, officers, and professional men crowd the royal El Dorado. Here they relax the labors of the day with every distraction known to human dissipation.
Staggering out broken-hearted, in the dark midnight, dozens of ruined gamesters have wandered from these fatal doors into the plaza. The nearest alley gives a shelter; a pistol ball crashes into the half-crazed brain. ”

“ So far as I can see, Señor, and as many others think with me, this much-boasted city of El-Dorado hath been little better than a gold-baited death-trap to us. True we eat and drink from vessels of gold, yet we are dying of famine by inches. ”

“ The quest of "El Dorado" begins with the history of man, and in pursuit of the glittering phantom have "many souls of heroes gone down into Hades," only that others might step into their empty places in the ranks. ”

“ At these times I saw in him a true type of the old Spanish Conquestadores, who would baptize a cacique to save him from hell one day, and kill him and loot his treasure the next.
Don Alberto had, moreover, a firm belief in the existence of the fabled El Dorado, and of the city of Manoa, with its resplendent house of the sun, its hoards of silver and gold, and its gilded king. Thousands of adventurers had gone forth in search of these wonders, and thousands had perished in the attempt to find them. Señor Zamorra had sought El Dorado on the banks of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro ”

“ More than that; there is, among the lower classes, an attitude almost of deference towards the man in any way connected with the El Dorado across the sea, as if every breast harbored the vague hope that this favored of the gods might be moved to carry home on his return a pocketful of his admirers. ”

“ To the young generation of Americans who yearly visit its shores it is an El Dorado, and the very air breathes love as they glide in their light boats over its pellucid waters, adding to the picturesqueness of the scene, and supplying that need ever felt, no matter what the natural beauty, — the presence of man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Beside the gateway that has only just allowed the fabled El Dorado, the Gilded One, to pass through are two mortals who have come close to the land of their desires, but only to find the door shut and slaves beside it barring the way. Their strength is expended, their courage gone in the long race for material things. The panels of this fountain tell us in satirical language something we can profitably think over and realize if we will. ”

“ Whatever the origin, the legends of El Dorado have their node in the lands of the Chibcha—a circumstance not without its own poetic warrant, for from no other American people have jewelleries of cunningly wrought gold come in more abundance. ”

“ After all, an honourable out-going is the best El Dorado which any man can hope to find as reward for his long life's search. If he were to die for and with Strangeways, he would at least prove to him that he was not entirely worthless. ”

“ Nay, the thought had sometimes flashed unbidden across his mind that the "El Dorado" found might after all have been no other than the philosopher's stone. For he who has attained the power of producing gold at will may surely be said, without any stretch of metaphor, to have discovered a golden country. But at this period of his life the personal feelings of Carlos were so keen and absorbing that almost everything, consciously or unconsciously, was referred to them. ”

“ First, Raleigh says nothing about El Dorado (as every one is forced to confess) but what Spaniard on Spaniard had been saying for fifty years. Therefore the blame of credulity ought to rest with the Spaniards, from Philip von Huten, Orellano, and George of Spires, upward to Berreo. But it rests really with no one. For nothing, if we will examine the documents, is told of the riches of El Dorado which had not been found to be true, and seen by the eyes of men still living, in Peru and Mexico. Not one-fifth of America had been explored, and already two El Dorados had been found and conquered. ”

“ Will Para-combe tired, as well he may be, of wandering about savage America in search of El Dorado, blindly refuses to see that it is his chief end as man to continue wandering until El Dorado is found and the captain has glutted his heart with vengeance on the Spaniards ”

“ This the barbarian thought a more magnificent and costly attire than could be afforded by any other potentate in the world, and hence the Spaniards called him El Dorado, or the Gilded One. A history of all the expeditions which were undertaken for the conquest of his kingdom would form a volume not less interesting than extraordinary." R. Southey, History of Brazil, volume 1, chapter 12. The most tragical and thrilling of the stories of the seekers after El Dorado is that which Mr. ”

“ This attire was naturally considered sumptuous, and, in connection with the abundance of precious metals afforded by the country, may have given rise to the title of El Dorado. The legend, in either case, is a worthy companion to Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth.
No geographical fiction ever caused such an expenditure of blood and treasure as this. The Spaniards alone lost, in their attempts to discover the city of Manoa, more lives and money than in effecting any of their permanent conquests. ”

“ It represents, as a whole, mankind's pursuit of the unattainable. The legend of El Dorado is that there once lived in South America a prince, "The Gilded One," who had so much gold that daily he had his body covered with gold dust. Many Spanish explorers spent fruitless years in search of the fabulously rich country of this prince. The idea of the fountain is that the Gilded One, representing the unattainable, the advantages of wealth and power which deluded men and women seek without value given to the world in return, has just disappeared through the gateway, the gates closing after him. ”

“ In an awakening age of enterprise, when chivalry had not passed away, nor the credulity of the Middle Ages, the reports of this Cipango inflamed the imagination of Europe, and to reach it became at once the desire and the problem of adventurers and merchants. But how could this El Dorado be reached? Not by sailing round Africa; for to sail South, in popular estimation, was to encounter torrid suns with ever increasing heat, and suffocating vapors, and unknown dangers. The scientific world had lost the knowledge of what even the ancients knew. ”

“ The population consisted chiefly of about four hundred dare-devil spirits who had started to wander westwards in search of the El Dorado and had finally settled there, too tired, too disgusted to go any farther, and lacking money enough to return to their homes. ”

“ In quick and ready sympathy; in alertness to see; in watchfulness to note the needs of the hour; in the constant, instinctive attitude of mind which spontaneously saw and felt every opportunity to give—whether it were service or sympathy, silence or speech, presence or absence—in short every attribute of character defining utter selflessness, rounded and molded the strong individuality of YERMAH, THE DORADO.
When the recluse began to mingle freely with the Brotherhood, he was quickly made aware of all that was transpiring, not only in the pueblo of Cholula, but also among outside colonies. ”

“ So far as I could make out El Dorado was about twenty miles from Kuboos. As we proceeded the track improved. The guide now calmly informed me that we had passed the worst of it. Therefore all the trouble and expense of hiring the pack-oxen and their owners was unnecessary. Here evaporated another illusion; these people had developed business instincts; the serpent of guile had found its way even to the Richtersveld paradise. I scribbled a note asking Andries to follow on our spoor with the wagon. This note I sent back by one of the camp followers. ”

“ We have thus given a brief survey of the position and resources, of the territory surrounding the new El Dorado. One observation we may be permitted to hazard. Perhaps there is no more striking illustration of the wisdom of that Providence which presides over the management of our affairs, than in the fact that emigration was first led to the eastern coast, rather than to the slopes or plains of the west. ”

“ Bright El Dorado, land of gold,
We have so sought for thee,
There's not a spot in all the globe
Where such a land can be. ”

“ "There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts." ”

“ There were high-born gentlemen of Spain among them, haughty gallants who had lorded it with the proudest in Seville and Cordova and Madrid, who would once have run a man through the body rather than yield him an inch of the footway, who had feasted and drunk and danced and diced and made love till only a remnant of their fair estates was left to them, and that they had staked on one last throw with Destiny—life, and honour, and every hope they had against a share of the fairy gold of El-Dorado, long dreamed of and never found. ”

“ Directly from the records we have the final facts in the afterlife of one of La Salle's murderers. In the true story of El Dorado that is to say, The Gilded Man there is settled definitely a matter that has undergone indeterminate dispute through three hundred years. ”

“ Of this fascinating myth we have very little popular knowledge, except that a corruption of its name is in everybody's mouth. We speak of a rich region as "an Eldorado," or "the Eldorado" oftener than by any other metaphor; but it is a blunder quite unworthy of scholars. It is simply saying "an the," "the the." The word is Dorado; and it does not mean "the golden," as we seem to fancy, but "the gilded man," being a contraction of the Spanish el hombre dorado. ”

“ That his father, the visionary explorer of Guiana, who twenty years ago had set out on his last mad search for El Dorado, the fabled city of the Incas, and who for many years had been given up for dead, had returned at length with gold, successful from his quest—or, at the least, that his mother had relented and wanted him back. Speedily his hope turned to agonising suspense. Perhaps he was coming to tell him that his mother in England was dead. Then he laughed hysterically, remembering that Mr. Wrath was not the [16] sort of man to regard any death as serious, unless it were his own. ”