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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In Mexico
the sacrificers painted their bodies and wore a kind of cape, with
hanging sleeves of tanned human skin.
On the banks of the Caura, and in other wild parts of Guiana, where
painting the body is used instead of tattooing, the nations anoint
themselves with turtle-fat, and stick spangles of mica with a metallic
lustre, white as silver and red as copper, on their skin, so that at a
distance they seem to wear laced clothes. The fable of the gilded man
is, perhaps, founded on a similar custom; and, as there were two
sovereign princes in New Granada, the lama of Iraca and the secular
chief or zaque of Tunja, we cannot be surprised that the same ceremony
was attributed sometimes to the prince and sometimes to the
high-priest. It is more extraordinary that, as early as the year 1535,
the country of El Dorado was sought for on the east of the Andes.
Robertson is mistaken in admitting that Orellana received the first
notions of it (1540) on the banks of the Amazon. The history of Fray
Piedro Simon, founded on the memoirs of Queseda, the conqueror of
Cundirumarca, proves directly the contrary; and Gonzalo Diaz de
Pineda, as early as 1536, sought for the gilded man beyond the plains
of the province of Quixos. The ambassador of Bogota, whom Daza met
with in the kingdom of Quito, had spoken of a country situate toward
the east.
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