Centuries ago, upon the fall of Cuzco, Cahazaxa, one of the greatest nobles in the kingdom, escorted by an army of priests and soldiers, conveyed the Greater Treasure across the mountains, and hid it in the forest that extends across the whole valley of the Upper Amazon and its tributaries. The Spaniards got wind of this, and some years afterwards, in the year 1541, an expedition led by the redoubtable Orellano, a lieutenant of Gonzalo Pizarro, crossed the eastern chain of the Andes in search of El Dorado, or that country which was then but vaguely known as the Land of the Gilded King.
This "Gilded King" was Cahazaxa himself, who, at the time of Orellano's famed expedition, had been for some months dead. But the little civilised colony that he had established in the wilderness survived, and continued to survive until the middle of the last century, when I myself beheld the last of it.
Now, in the narration of historical and other facts, I have the greatest regard for a certain principle, established by the Greeks: the habit of reserving for its proper place each item of information, whether it be of primary or secondary importance. On that account, I ask you, therefore, for the space of a chapter or so, to bear in mind the famous name of Orellano and his search for the Land of the Gilded King--an affair to which I must soon refer again. I set down now only that which the inca himself told me, together with such historical facts as were known to me at the time.
Cahazaxa was dead; and he was buried in a cavern, high amidst the cloud-wrapped mountains, where his soul might rest in peace the nearer to the God he worshipped--the life-giving and almighty Sun, who, as he held, in the very dawn of the ages had sent Manco Copac and Mama Oello Huaco to earth, to make the Incas of Peru glorious and great.
Orellano, the Spaniard, failed to find the Treasure. Undergoing the most terrible privations, he and his gallant followers pierced the forest, and, making one of the most remarkable journeys in the whole history of exploration, descended into the main stream of the great River of Mystery--as I call the Amazon--and, finally, after eight months of hardship and of peril, came within sight of the Atlantic.
The courage of these men is much to be commended. The modern explorer has at his service breech-loading magazine rifles, invaluable geographical and scientific knowledge, and an adequate supply of suitable food and drugs. But these bold Spaniards of the sixteenth century had nothing, save their own stout hearts and strong Toledo blades. Enough has been written concerning their greed, their bigotry and cruelty. The story might be told again and again of their indomitable bravery. Orellano knew not whither he was going. When he decided to shoot the rapids, taking his life in his hands, he might as well have thrown dice with Death. How can we do aught but honour the land that has produced such sons as Cortez and Pizarro, Orellano, Vasco Nunez, and Alonzo de Ojeda?
But, for the present, we are more concerned with Cahazaxa, a hero no less than these doughty Spaniards. He and his followers hid themselves in the wilderness, and there both Orellano and Pizarro himself failed to find them; and in this there is little to wonder at, when we consider the immensity of the great Forest of the Amazon.
They built for themselves a massive temple after the fashion of the sacred palaces of Quito and Cuzco, dedicated to the Sun; and in course of time they constructed roads and bridges across the rivers, founding for themselves a colony where the civilisation of the incas lived for a century or more after their own country across the mountains had fallen under the dominion of the hated Spaniard.
This was the land of the Gilded King, the country of El Dorado. Word of its existence came to Quito, from the lips of savage aborigines prone naturally to exaggeration; but, though party after party of avaricious, bold adventurers crossed the mountains, the Peruvian settlement remained undisturbed. The secret of the "Big Fish" was never discovered either by the Spaniards or the Portuguese, who in the next century came up the great river from the east, traversing the country that is now called Brazil.
I did not learn all this from the inca priest himself; but so much of it as he could not tell me I knew already from what I had read of those golden days when the New World was a land of Mystery and Romance, and men thought and talked of doubloons instead of dollars.