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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Speier Found In The
Populous Village Of La Fragua A Casa Del Sol (Temple Of The Sun), And
A Convent Of Virgins Similar To Those Of Peru And New Granada.
Were
these the consequence of a migration of religious rites towards the
east?
Or must we admit that the plains of San Juan were their first
cradle? Tradition, indeed, records that Bochica, the legislator of New
Granada and high-priest of Iraca, had gone up from the plains of the
east to the table-land of Bogota. But Bochica being at once the
offspring and the symbol of the sun, his history may contain
allegories that are merely astrological. Speier, pursuing his way
toward the south, and crossing the two branches of the Guaviare, which
are the Ariare and the Guayavero (Guayare or Canicamare), arrived on
the banks of the great Rio Papamene or Caqueta. The resistance he met
with during a whole year in the province de los Choques, put an end,
in 1537, to this memorable expedition. Nicolas Federmann and Geronimo
de Ortal (1536), who went from Macarapana and the mouth of the Rio
Neveri, followed (1535) the traces of Jorge de Espira. The former
sought for gold in the Rio Grande de la Magdalena; the latter
endeavoured to discover a temple of the sun (Casa del Sol) on the
banks of the Meta. Ignorant of the idiom of the natives, they seemed
to see everywhere, at the foot of the Cordilleras, the reflexion of
the greatness of the temples of Iraca (Sogamozo), which was then the
centre of the civilization of Cundinamarca.
I have now examined, in a geographical point of view, the expeditions
on the Orinoco, and in a western and southern direction on the eastern
back of the Andes, before the tradition of El Dorado was spread among
the conquistadores. This tradition, as we have noticed above, had its
origin in the kingdom of Quito, where Luis Daza (1535) met with an
Indian of New Grenada who had been sent by his prince (no doubt the
zippa of Bogota, or the zaque of Tunja), to demand assistance from
Atahualpa, inca of Peru. This ambassador boasted, as is usual, the
wealth of his country; but what particularly fixed the attention of
the Spaniards who were assembled with Daza in the town of Tacunga
(Llactacunga), was the history of a lord who, his body covered with
powdered gold, went into a lake amid the mountains. This lake may have
been the Laguna de Totta, a little to the east of Sogamozo (Iraca) and
of Tunja (Hunca, the town of Huncahua), where two chiefs,
ecclesiastical and secular, of the empire of Cundinamarca, or
Cundirumarca, resided; but no historical remembrance being attached to
this mountain lake, I rather suppose that it was the sacred lake of
Guatavita, on the east of the mines of rock-salt of Zipaquira, into
which the gilded lord was made to enter. I saw on its banks the
remains of a staircase hewn in the rock, and serving for the
ceremonies of ablution.
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