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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Forgetting The
Precise Etymology Of The Word El Dorado (The Gilded), They Have Not
Perceived That This Tradition Is A Local Fable, As Were Almost All The
Ancient Fables Of The Greeks, The Hindoos, And The Persians.
The
history of the gilded man belongs originally to the Andes of New
Grenada, and particularly to the plains in the vicinity of their
eastern side:
We see it progressively advance, as I observed above,
three hundred leagues toward the east-north-east, from the sources of
the Caqueta to those of the Rio Branco and the Essequibo. Gold was
sought in different parts of South America before 1536, without the
word El Dorado having been ever pronounced, and without the belief of
the existence of any other centre of civilization and wealth, than the
empire of the Inca of Cuzco. Countries which now do not furnish
commerce with the smallest quantities of the precious metals, the
coast of Paria, Terra Firma (Castillo del Oro), the mountains of Santa
Marta, and the isthmus of Darien, then enjoyed the same celebrity
which has been more recently acquired by the auriferous lands of
Sonora, Choco, and Brazil.
Diego de Ordaz (1531) and Alonzo de Herrera (1535) directed their
journeys of discovery along the banks of the Lower Orinoco. The former
is the famous Conquistador of Mexico, who boasted that he had taken
sulphur out of the crater of the Peak of Popocatepetl, and whom the
emperor Charles V permitted to wear a burning volcano on his armorial
bearings.
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