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 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.
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