Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The
Natives, In Order To Get Rid Of Their Troublesome Guests, Continually
Described Dorado As Easy To Be Reached, And Situate At No Considerable
Distance.
It was like a phantom that seemed to flee before the
Spaniards, and to call on them unceasingly.
It is in the nature of
man, wandering on the earth, to figure to himself happiness beyond the
region which he knows. El Dorado, similar to Atlas and the islands of
the Hesperides, disappeared by degrees from the domain of geography,
and entered that of mythological fictions.
I shall not here relate the numerous enterprises which were undertaken
for the conquest of this imaginary country. Unquestionably we are
indebted to them in great part for our knowledge of the interior of
America; they have been useful to geography, as errors and daring
hypotheses are often to the search of truth: but in the discussion on
which we are employed, it is incumbent on me to rest only upon those
facts which have had the most direct influence on the construction of
ancient and modern maps. Hernan Perez de Quesada, after the departure
of his brother the Adelantado for Europe, sought anew (1539) but this
time in the mountainous land north-east of Bogota, the temple of the
sun (Casa del Sol), of which Geronimo de Ortal had heard spoken in
1536 on the banks of the Meta. The worship of the sun introduced by
Bochica, and the celebrity of the sanctuary of Iraca, or Sogamozo,
gave rise to those confused reports of temples and idols of massy
gold; but on the mountains as in the plains, the traveller believed
himself to be always at a distance from them, because the reality
never corresponded with the chimerical dreams of the imagination.
Francisco de Orellana, after having vainly sought El Dorado with
Pizarro in the Provincia de los Canelos, and on the auriferous banks
of the Napo, went down (1540) the great river of the Amazon. He found
there, between the mouths of the Javari and the Rio de la Trinidad
(Yupura?) a province rich in gold, called Machiparo (Muchifaro), in
the vicinity of that of the Aomaguas, or Omaguas. These notions
contributed to carry El Dorado toward the south-east, for the names
Omaguas (Om-aguas, Aguas), Dit-Aguas, and Papamene, designated the
same country - that which Jorge de Espira had discovered in his
expedition to the Caqueta. The Omaguas, the Manaos or Manoas, and the
Guaypes (Uaupes or Guayupes) live in the plains on the north of the
Amazon. They are three powerful nations, the latter of which,
stretching toward the west along the banks of the Guape or Uaupe, had
been already mentioned in the voyages of Quesada and Huten. These two
conquistadores, alike celebrated in the history of America, reached by
different roads the llanos of San Juan, then called Valle de Nuestra
Senora. Hernan Perez de Quesada (1541) passed the Cordilleras of
Cundirumarca, probably between the Paramos of Chingasa and Suma Paz;
while Felipe de Huten, accompanied by Pedro de Limpias (the same who
had carried to Venezuela the first news of Dorado from the land of
Bogota), directed his course from north to south, by the road which
Speier had taken to the eastern side of the mountains. Huten left
Coro, the principal seat of the German factory or company of Welser,
when Henry Remboldt was its director. After having traversed (1541)
the plains of Casanare, the Meta, and the Caguan, he arrived at the
banks of the Upper Guaviare (Guayuare), a river which was long
believed to be the source of the Orinoco, and the mouth of which I saw
in passing by San Fernando de Atabapo to the Rio Negro. Not far from
the right bank of the Guaviare, Huten entered Macatoa, the city of the
Guapes. The people there were clothed, the fields appeared well
cultivated; everything denoted a degree of civilization unknown in the
hot region of America which extends to the east of the Cordilleras.
Speier, in his expedition to the Rio Caqueta and the province of
Papamene, had probably crossed the Guaviare far above Macatoa, before
the junction of the two branches of this river, the Ariari and the
Guayavero. Huten was told that on advancing more to the south-east he
would enter the territory of the great nation of the Omaguas, the
priest-king of which was called Quareca, and which possessed numerous
herds of llamas. These traces of cultivation - these ancient
resemblances to the table-land of Quito - appear to me very remarkable.
It has already been said above that Orellana saw llamas at the
dwelling of an Indian chief on the banks of the Amazon, and that Ordaz
had heard mention made of them in the plains of Meta.
I pause where ends the domain of geography and shall not follow Huten
in the description either of that town of immense extent, which he saw
from afar; or of the battle of the Omaguas, where thirty-nine
Spaniards (the names of fourteen are recorded in the annals of the
time) fought against fifteen thousand Indians. These false reports
contributed greatly to embellish the fable of El Dorado. The name of
the town of the Omaguas is not found in the narrative of Huten; but
the Manoas, from whom Father Fritz received, in the seventeenth
century, plates of beaten gold, in his mission of Yurim-Aguas, are
neighbours of the Omaguas. The name of Manoa subsequently passed from
the country of the Amazons to an imaginary town, placed in El Dorado
de la Parima. The celebrity attached to those countries between the
Caqueta (Papamene) and the Guaupe (one of the tributary streams of the
Rio Negro) excited Pedro de Ursua, in 1560, to that fatal expedition,
which ended by the revolt of the tyrant Aguirre. Ursua, in going down
the Caqueta to enter the river of the Amazons, heard of the province
of Caricuri. This denomination clearly indicates the country of gold;
for I find that this metal is called caricuri in the Tamanac, and
carucuru in the Caribbee.
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