Concerning El Dorado, Raleigh had given credence to no more than was believed in his time by the Spanish of every port from San Marta on the Caribbean to Quito on the Pacific. The old chronicles are full of it. One instance, chosen almost at random from many of the same kind is quoted by De Pons in his History of Caraccas.[[10]]
"When the wild Indian appeared before the Spanish governor of Guiana, Don Manuel Centurion of Angostura, he was assailed with questions which he answered with as much perspicuity and precision as could be expected from one whose most intelligible language consisted in signs. He, however, succeeded in making them understand that there was on the border of Lake Parima a city whose inhabitants were civilized and regularly disciplined to war. He boasted a great deal of the beauty of its buildings, the neatness of its streets, the regularity of its squares, and the riches of its people. According to him, the roofs of its principal houses were either of gold or silver. The high-priest, instead of pontifical robes, rubbed his whole body with the fat of the turtle; then they blew upon it some gold dust, so as to cover his whole body with it. In this attire, he performed the religious ceremonies. The Indian sketched on a table with a bit of charcoal the city of which he had given a description.
"His ingenuity seduced the governor. He asked him to serve as a guide to some Spaniards he wished to send on this discovery, to which the Indian consented. Sixty Spaniards offered themselves for the undertaking, and among others Don Antonio Santos. They set off and traveled nearly five hundred leagues to the south, through the most frightful roads. Hunger, the swamps, the woods, the precipices, the heat, the rains, destroyed almost all. When those who survived thought themselves four or five days' journey from the capital city and hoped to reach the end of all their troubles, and the object of their desires, the Indian disappeared in the night.
"This event dismayed the Spaniards. They knew not where they were. By degrees they all perished but Santos to whom it occurred to disguise himself as an Indian. He threw off his clothes, covered his whole body with red paint, and introduced himself among them by his knowledge of many of their languages. He was a long time among them, until at length he fell within the power of the Portugese established on the banks of the Rio Negro. They embarked him on the river Amazon and after a very long detention, sent him back to his country."
In this very brief survey of the growth and results of the El Dorado legend, there is no room even to mention many of the most dramatic and disastrous expeditions which it inspired through the sixteenth century. It was, in truth, the greatest lost treasure story that the world has ever known. The age of those splendid adventurers has vanished, exploration has proved that the golden city hidden in Guiana was a myth, but now and again investigation has harked back to the source of the tradition of the gilded man, at the mountain lake of Guatavita on the lofty tableland of Bogotá. Hernan de Quesada, first to try to drain the lake, was followed a few years later by Antonio de Sepulveda who recovered treasure from the bottom to the amount of more than one hundred thousand dollars, besides a magnificent emerald which was sold at Madrid.
Professor Liborio Zerda, of the University of Colombia at Bogotá, has published his results of an exhaustive study of the legend and the evidence to show that the ceremonies of the gilded man were once performed at Guatavita. He describes a group of figures beaten out of raw gold which was recovered from the lake and is now in the museum of that city. It represents the chief and attendants upon a balsa, or raft, and is considered to be a striking confirmation of the tradition.
"Undoubtedly this piece represents the religious ceremony which Zamora has described," writes Professor Zerda, "with the caique of Guatavita surrounded by Indian priests, on the raft which was taken on the day of the ceremony to the middle of the lake. It may be, as some persons believe, that Siecha lagune, and not the present Guatavita, was the place of the dorado ceremony, and consequently the ancient Guatavita. But everything seems to indicate that there was really once a dorado at Bogotá."
Zamora, who wrote in the seventeenth century, recorded that the Indians believed the spirit of the lake had built a magnificent palace beneath the water where she dwelt and demanded offerings of gold and jewels, which belief spread over all the nation of the Muysca and also among strangers "who all, stricken by this wonderful occurrence, came to offer their gifts by many different routes, of which even to-day some signs remain. In the center of the lake they threw their offerings with ridiculous and vain ceremonies."
In 1823, Captain Charles Stuart Cochran of the English navy was traveling in Colombia and he became keenly interested in the lake of Guatavita and the chances of recovering the lost treasure by means of a drainage project. He delved into the old Spanish records, assembled the traditions that were still alive among the Indians and was convinced that a fabulous accumulation of gold awaited the enterprise of modern engineers. One of the ancient accounts, so he discovered, related that to escape the cruel persecution of the Spanish conquerors the wealthy natives threw their gold into the lake, and that the last caique cast therein the burdens of fifty men laden with gold dust and nuggets.
Captain Cochran did not succeed in finding the funds needed to undertake the tempting task, but his information was preserved, and made some stir in England and France. It was reserved for twentieth century treasure seekers to attack the sacred lake of Guatavita, and to capitalize the venture as a joint stock company with headquarters in London and a glittering prospectus offering investors an opportunity of obtaining shares in a prospective hoard of gold and jewels worth something like a billion dollars. A concession was obtained from the government of Colombia, and work begun in 1903.