The Book of Buried Treasure / Being a True History of the Gold, Jewels, and Plate of Pirates, Galleons, etc., which are sought for to this day

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

His naked body was anointed with resinous gums and covered with gold dust so that he shone like a living statue of gold. This was the gilded man, El Dorado, whose fame traveled to the coast of the Caribbean. At the shore of the lake, he and his escort stepped upon a balsa, or raft made of rushes, and moved slowly out to the middle. There the gilded one plunged into the deep water and washed off his precious covering, while with shouts and music the assembled throng threw their offerings of gold and jewels into the lake. Then the worshipers returned to the village for dancing and feasting.[[1]] In the last decade of the fifteenth century, or while Columbus was making his voyages, the tribe of Guatavita was conquered by a stronger community of the Muysca race, and the new rulers, being of a thriftier mind, made an end of the extravagant ceremony of el dorado. It is therefore assumed that the gilded man had ceased to be, full thirty years before the Spaniards first heard of him at the coast.

Humboldt became interested in the legend during his South America travels and reported:

"I have examined from a geographical point of view the expeditions on the Orinoco, and in a western and southern direction in the eastern side of the Andes, before the tradition of El Dorado was spread among the conquerors. This tradition had its origin in the kingdom of Quito where Luiz Daza, in 1535, met with an Indian of New Granada who had been sent by his prince, the Zipa of Bogotá, or the Caique of Tunja, to demand assistance from Atahuahalpa, the last Inca of Peru. This ambassador boasted, as was usual, of the wealth of his country; but what particularly fixed the attention of the Spaniards who were assembled with Daza was the history of a lord who, his body covered with gold dust, went into a lake amid the mountains.

"As no historical remembrance attaches itself to any other mountain lake in this vicinity, I suppose the reference to be made to the sacred lake of Guatavita, in the plains of the Bogotá, into which the gilded lord was made to enter. On the banks of this lake I saw the remains of a staircase, hewn in the rock, and used for the ceremonies of ablution. The Indians told me that powder of gold and golden vessels were thrown into this lake as a sacrifice to the Adoratorio de Guatavita. Vestiges are still found of a breach made by the Spaniards in order to drain the lake.... The ambassador of Bogotá, whom Daza met in the kingdom of Quito, had spoken of a country situated towards the east."

The latter reference means that the legend had spread from coast to coast. On the Pacific, the conquistadores of Pizarro were for a time too busily engaged in looting the enormous treasures of the last Inca of Peru to pay much heed to the lure of golden legends beckoning them further inland. The first attempt to go in search of the gilded man and his kingdom was made, not by a Spaniard, but by a German, Ambrosius Dalfinger, who was in command of a colony of his countrymen settled on the shore of the Gulf of Venezuela, a large tract of that region having been leased by Spain to a German company. He pushed inland to the westward as far as the Rio Magdalena, treated the natives with horrible barbarity, and was driven back after losing most of his men.

A few years later, and the legend was magnified into a wondrous description of a golden city. In 1538, there marched from the Atlantic coast, Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada, surnamed El Conquistador, to find the El Dorado. At the head of six hundred and twenty-five foot-soldiers and eighty-five mailed horsemen, he made his perilous way up the Rio Magdalena, through fever-cursed swamps and tribes of hostile natives, enduring hardships almost incredible until at length he came to the lofty plateau of Bogotá, and the former home of the real gilded man. More than five hundred of his men had died on the journey of hunger, illness, and exposure. He found rich cities and great stores of gold and jewels, but failed to discover the El Dorado of his dreams.

Many stories were afloat of other treasures to be wrested from the Muysca chiefs, but Quesada, having no more than a handful of fighting men, feared to go campaigning until he had made his position secure. He therefore established a base and laid the foundations of the present city of Bogotá. One of his scouting parties brought back tidings of a tribe of very war-like women in the south who had much gold, and in this way was the myth of the Amazons linked with the El Dorado as early as 1538.

Now occurred as dramatic a coincidence as could be imagined. To Quesada there appeared a Spanish force commanded by Sebastian de Belalcazar, the conqueror of Quito, who had come all the way from the Pacific coast, after hearing from an Indian of New Granada the story of the gilded man. No sooner had this expedition arrived than it was reported to Quesada that white men with horses were coming from the east. This third company of pilgrims in quest of El Dorado proved to be Nicholas Federmann and his hard-bitted Germans from the colony in Venezuela who had followed the trail made by Dalfinger and then plunged into the wilderness beyond his furthest outpost.

Thus these three daring expeditions, Quesada from the north, Belalcazar from the south, and Federmann from the east, met face to face on the hitherto unknown plateau of Cundinamarca. None had been aware of the others' march in search of this goal, and each had believed himself to be the discoverer of this country. They were ready to fly at one another's throats, for there could be no amity when gold was the prize at stake. Curiously enough the three forces were evenly matched in fighting strength, each with about one hundred and sixty men. One might think that the two Spanish parties would have united to drive the Germans from the home of El Dorado, but greed stifled all natural ties and emotions.

A conflict was averted by the tact and sagacity of Quesada and the priests of the expeditions who acted as a committee of arbitration. It was finally agreed among the leaders that the several claims should be submitted to the Spanish Court, and Quesada, Belalcazar, and Federmann set out for Spain to appear in person, leaving their forces in possession of the disputed territory. The command of the Spanish troops was turned over to Hernan Perez de Quesada, the cruel and greedy brother of the leader, who fortified himself at Bogotá and proceeded to rob the Muysca people of the last ounce of gold that could be extorted by means of torture and all manner of unspeakable wickedness. In 1540 he tried to drain the lake of Guatavita, tempted by the stories of the vast treasures of gold and jewels that, for centuries, had been thrown into the water by the worshipers, but he recovered valuables only to the amount of four thousand ducats. It was the remains of his drainage tunnel which Humboldt found and made note of.