Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 38 of 332 - First - Home
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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 38 of 332
Words from 19636 to 20180
of 174507