Is It A Foreign Word That Denotes Gold Among The Nations Of The Orinoco, As The Words Sugar And Cotton Are In Our European Languages?

This would prove that these nations learned to know the precious metals among the foreign products which came to them from the Cordilleras,* or from the plains at the eastern back of the Andes.

(* In Peruvian or Quichua (lengua del Inca) gold is called cori, whence are derived chichicori, gold in powder, and corikoya, gold-ore.)

We arrive now at the period when the fable of El Dorado was fixed in the eastern part of Guiana, first at the pretended lake Cassipa (on the banks of the Paragua, a tributary stream of the Carony), and afterwards between the sources of the Rio Essequibo and the Rio Branco. This circumstance has had the greatest influence on the state of geography in those countries. Antonio de Berrio, son-in-law* (* Properly casado con una sobrina. Fray Pedro Simon pages 597 and 608. Harris Coll. volume 2 page 212. Laet page 652. Caulin page 175. Raleigh calls Quesada Cemenes de Casada. He also confounds the periods of the voyages of Ordaz (Ordace), Orellana (Oreliano), and Ursua. See Empire of Guiana pages 13 to 20.) and sole heir of the great Adelantado Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada, passed the Cordilleras to the east of Tunja,* (* No doubt between the Paramos of Chita and of Zoraca, taking the road of Chire and Pore. Berrio told Raleigh that he came from the Casanare to the Pato, from the Pato to the Meta, and from the Meta to the Baraguan (Orinoco). We must not confound this Rio Pato (a name connected no doubt with that of the ancient mission of Patuto) with the Rio Paute.) embarked on the Rio Casanare, and went down by this river, the Meta, and the Orinoco, to the island of Trinidad. We scarcely know this voyage except by the narrative of Raleigh; it appears to have preceded a few years the first foundation of Vieja Guayana, which was in the year 1591. A few years later (1595) Berrio caused his maese de campo, Domingo de Vera, to prepare in Europe an expedition of two thousand men to go up the Orinoco, and conquer El Dorado, which then began to be called the country of the Manoa, and even the Laguna de la gran Manoa. Rich landholders sold their farms, to take part in a crusade, to which twelve Observantin monks, and ten secular ecclesiastics were annexed. The tales related by one Martinez* (Juan Martin de Albujar?), who said he had been abandoned in the expedition of Diego de Ordaz, and led from town to town till he reached the capital of El Dorado, had inflamed the imagination of Berrio. (* I believe I can demonstrate that the fable of Juan Martinez, spread abroad by the narrative of Raleigh, was founded on the adventures of Juan Martin de Albujar, well known to the Spanish historians of the Conquest; and who, in the expedition of Pedro de Silva (1570), fell into the hands of the Caribs of the Lower Orinoco. This Albujar married an Indian woman and became a savage himself, as happens sometimes in our own days on the western limits of Canada and of the United States. After having long wandered with the Caribs, the desire of rejoining the Whites led him by the Rio Essequibo to the island of Trinidad. He made several excursions to Santa Fe de Bogota, and at length settled at Carora. (Simon page 591). I know not whether he died at Porto Rico; but it cannot be doubted that it was he who learned from the Carib traders the name of the Manoas [of Jurubesh]. As he lived on the banks of the Upper Carony and reappeared by the Rio Essequibo, he may have contributed also to place the lake Manoa at the isthmus of Rupunuwini. Raleigh makes his Juan Martinez embark below Morequito, a village at the east of that confluence of the Carony with the Orinoco. Thence he makes him dragged by the Caribs from town to town, till he finds at Manoa a relation of the inca Atabalipa (Atahualpa), whom he had known before at Caxamarca, and who had fled before the Spaniards. It appears that Raleigh had forgotten that the voyage of Ordaz (1531) was two years anterior to the death of Atahualpa and the entire destruction of the empire of Peru! He must have confounded the expedition of Ordaz with that of Silva (1570), in which Juan Martin de Albuzar partook. The latter, who related his tales at Santa Fe, at Venezuela, and perhaps at Porto Rico, must have combined what he had heard from the Caribs with what he had learned from the Spaniards respecting the town of the Omaguas seen by Huten; of the gilded man who sacrificed in a lake, and of the flight of the family of Atahualpa into the forests of Vilcabamba, and the eastern Cordillera of the Andes. Garcilasso volume 2 page 194.) It is difficult to distinguish what this conquistador had himself observed in going down the Orinoco from what he said he had collected in a pretended journal of Martinez, deposited at Porto Rico. It appears that in general at that period the same ideas prevailed respecting America as those which we have long entertained in regard to Africa; it was imagined that more civilization would be found towards the centre of the continent than on the coasts. Already Juan Gonzalez, whom Diego de Ordaz had sent in 1531 to explore the banks of the Orinoco, announced that "the farther you went up this river the more you saw the population increase." Berrio mentions the often-inundated province of Amapaja, between the confluence of the Meta and the Cuchivero, where he found many little idols of molten gold, similar to those which were fabricated at Cauchieto, east of Coro. He believed this gold to be a product of the granitic soil that covers the mountainous country between the Carichana, Uruana, and Cuchivero.

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