Without losing sight of the friendly cordillera which had guided their steps thus far, the Spaniards arrived at the village of a less pugnacious tribe of Indians, which they christened with the name of Nuestra Señora, or Our Lady, in commemoration of the Feast of the Assumption, which they, in spite of their wretched condition, celebrated with great pomp and rejoicings, in 1537. It is the same where they afterwards founded the city of San Juan de los Llanos.[57] Here the Spaniards heard again of regions abounding in gold and silver, situated farther on; and although they had become rather incredulous respecting such reports, they believed, on this occasion, what the Indians told them, in consequence of finding there some signs of a more advanced state of civilization, such as a temple, consecrated to the sun, and a convent of virgins similar to those which were afterwards found among the Muiscas and Peruvians. Without stopping even to rest his troop, Spira crossed the Ariari, perhaps higher up than Macatoa, and before its junction with the Guaviare. He then penetrated, by force of arms, into the country of the Guayupes and Canicamares, two powerful tribes, and shortly afterwards he discovered the head waters of the Papamene, where he stopped some days to rest his men, and to obtain guides among the Indians to conduct him to the country of riches. The dwellers of Papamene received Spira in a friendly manner, and established with his soldiers a system of exchanges and communication most acceptable on both sides; the strangers obtaining by these means the provisions they were in need of, and the Indians those trinkets of foreign manufacture so highly prized by them. But, tired at last of their troublesome guests, the aborigines persuaded them that a little further on they would find the country they were in quest of. To encourage them still more, five of the natives volunteered to act as guides, pledging themselves to lead them shortly to the heart of that happy country, from whence they would return loaded with riches. Instead of this, the wily Indians conducted them to a dismal labyrinth of swamps and quicksands, the abode of a ferocious and warlike nation, dexterous in battle and in the management of formidable lances of palm-wood, tipped with blades of human bone, very sharp and pointed. When once in the heart of this horrid wilderness, the guides disappeared one night, and left their friends to shift for themselves.
Not in the least disconcerted by the untoward contretemps, the stubborn leader of the band, instead of retracing his steps, prepared at once to make a thorough exploration of that region. To this end he detailed his lieutenant, Esteban Martin—a well tried and competent individual—with fifty infantry and twenty horsemen, to reconnoitre the position. Martin soon discovered the difficulties of the undertaking, and the dangers to which they all would be exposed if the Governor persisted in his project. After an ineffectual reconnoisance of five days’ duration, when men and horses were constantly in danger of being swallowed up by the treacherous ground, he returned to the camp, and again endeavored to dissuade the Governor from his foolhardy scheme; but Spira was deaf to the timely advice of his lieutenant. Ordering him to leave behind the horses, and to take the fifty men already allotted to the service, he enjoined Martin to resume the reconnoisance forthwith, by a different route.
The result of the foray was just as the lieutenant had foreseen. The Indians allowed them to penetrate unmolested into the interior of their stronghold, and then cut them up in detail. Although the Spaniards fought like lions on this occasion, very few of them were fortunate enough to reach headquarters, to apprise the stubborn Governor of his danger. It became now necessary to effect a retreat from that den of horrors which the Spaniards stigmatized with the appropriate name of Los Choques—the Onslaughts—in allusion to the repeated attacks which the enemy made upon them while endeavoring to accomplish their escape. Unfortunately for the invaders, as they were then very near the line of the equator, where it rains almost incessantly, they had to contend also against the inclemency of the weather, which brought on a multitude of diseases very fatal to men and horses; for they had neither the means nor the physical strength to counteract them. Thus many of these brave fellows became a prey to the distemper, among them several distinguished individuals, whose names are given by Oviedo in his “Historia de la Conquista,” such as Francisco Murcia de Rondon, who had acted as secretary to King Francis the First of France during his captivity in Spain.
The most difficult part of the undertaking remained yet to be accomplished, namely, that of retracing their steps to the sea-coast through a flooded and deserted country; for, with the previous experience of the natives, the villages were abandoned at the approach of the dreaded foreigners, and stripped of their provisions. So great was the destitution among the followers of Spira, that, on one occasion, a party of his men fell in with an infant, left forsaken by its mother in the hurry of the moment after a surprise; and, without the least compunction, they devoured it along with some edible roots found in the hut. When Spira heard of it he would have made an example of the cannibals on the spot; but considering that he was still in an enemy’s country, and that he could not very well spare the men—four in number—he commuted the sentence of death passed upon them to some other, though quite severe punishment. They all, however, got their deserts after a while; for, as the historiographer Oviedo tells us, every one of them died in the most distressing agony—although of various diseases—at the thought of the horrid crime they had committed.
A whole year was spent in this disastrous retreat, which, more than any other feat of arms, proved the mettle of the bold conquerors. The remnants of what was a dashing phalanx—ninety men out of the four hundred that five years before had started in search of wealth and fame—reached Coro in February of 1539; and these, far from being discouraged by past misfortunes, only inflamed the ardor of other incautious adventurers to join them in a renewed search for El Dorado; for we find Felipe de Urre and Pedro de Limpias, two of Spirals followers, engaging in a similar expedition soon after the return of this ill-fated conquistador, who did not long survive the hardships of that fearful journey, for he died in Coro on the 12th of June, 1540. His successor, as Governor of the colony, Bishop de las Bastidas, whose mission as a prelate of the church should have been one of “peace on earth, and good-will to men,” far from discountenancing these reckless enterprises, became himself a most ardent votary of the “gilded king,” to whom he prepared to pay his respects through his lieutenant, the famous conquistador, Felipe de Urre, like Spira and Federmann, of German nationality. The exchequer of the colony being rather short of funds at the time, the Right Reverend sent an expedition under Pedro de Limpias, to the lake of Maracaibo, for the purpose of obtaining its equivalent in the shape of Indian captives, a species of merchandise which commanded a ready sale among the traders on the coast of Tierra Firme. The speculation succeeded so well that, by the month of June, 1541, the Commander-in-chief was ready to start at the head of one hundred and fifty men, well armed and equipped for a protracted campaign. Urre appointed as his chief of staff the ubiquitous Pedro de Limpias, a brave and crafty adventurer, long experienced in Indian forays, especially that of the unfortunate Jorge de Spira, and afterwards under Federmann, during his perilous journey over the icy Sierras of Cundinamarca.
The only pass through the northern cordillera then known to the colonists was that of Agua-Caliente, a little to the south of the present site of Puerto Cabello, and the same that Spira and Federmann sought some years before in their march through to the Llanos. This pass being situated some fifty leagues east of Coro, and no roads existing at that time, the little band of Felipe de Urre had to follow the coast-line intervening between both places, with no small inconvenience to men and beasts, from the burning sands and the quagmires they must have encountered.
The route being pretty well known already, Urre had no difficulty in finding the pass; and then following the line of march of his predecessors in their famous perambulations through the Llanos, he reached La Fragua, or Nuestra Señora, in safety, stopping there for a while until the return of the dry season, and to obtain further information respecting the mysterious land he was in quest of. His astonishment was great, however, when he heard that, a few days before, Hernan Perez de Quesada, with a large force from Cundinamarca, had passed through that place in quest of El Dorado. Fearing that the Spaniard might get ahead of him in this coveted conquest, Urre left his winter quarters sooner than he had calculated, and reached the country of Papamene. From thence he might have gained easy access to the populous and well-stocked country of the Guayupes, but for his obstinacy in keeping the track of Quesada in his march southward. Although warned in time of the dangers of this route by a friendly Indian, who offered to conduct him instead to the rich domain of Macatoa in a south-easterly direction, the stubborn German still persisted in his purpose, with no better luck than his rival; who barely escaped with his life, and the loss of the greater portion of his followers, to the high table-land of Papayan, after two years of wanderings and vicissitudes through the most dismal solitudes and tangled forests.
Compelled by the approaching rainy season to seek also the proximity of the mountains, and with most of his force in a deplorable condition, Urre hastened to establish his winter quarters on a spur of the Andes, which stretches far into the low lands, and was named by them the Punta, or Cape of Los Pardaos. But here an unexpected misfortune awaited them; for the district being scarcely inhabited, they could find no provisions during their long wintry captivity; subsisting, like Spira and his men, on reptiles and the like. The greatest luxury they enjoyed at times was a ball of corn-meal, well seasoned with a species of red-ants, and roasted on the embers. The game was easily secured by placing the moist paste near the mouth of the ant-nest, which soon attracted the insects, and when well covered with them, they were kneaded together, the same operation being repeated several times, until the roll contained more insects than paste. Reduced, in consequence, to the condition of walking skeletons, and most of them covered with the most loathsome tumors and ulcers, the forlorn wanderers could hardly extricate themselves from that theatre of their misfortunes, when the subsidence of the waters allowed them to seek their old quarters at La Fragua, to recruit before engaging in new adventures.
Although the force had dwindled down to less than half the number of those originally brought from Coro, Felipe de Urre determined to resume his explorations with only forty men, which was all that could be got together, after leaving a sufficient number at La Fragua for the protection of the sick. Remembering the advice given him by the Indian guide of Papamene to look for the country of the Omeguas in a different direction from that taken by Quesada in his perilous pilgrimage, Urre set out in quest of Macatoa—situated on the right bank of the great river Guaviare—as the most convenient centre for future operations against the warlike Omeguas.
Whether it was indifference on the part of the Indians, or a preconcerted plan to bring their common enemy to speedy destruction at the hands of the Omeguas, the most powerful nation among them, the fact is, that the invaders found no difficulty in penetrating as far as Macatoa by the help of Indian guides and assistance. In like manner the lord of Macatoa, on being informed of the purpose which had brought the strangers thus far, received them with every demonstration of friendship, giving up to them the most commodious residences in the town, and assisting them with provisions and attendants in abundance. The same courtesies were extended to them at their departure, although the Cacique warned his guests of the perils they would encounter if they persisted in attacking the Omeguas with so small a force. In order to expedite their march, the Cacique sent messengers ahead to apprise the lord of the next tribe, his ally—situated some nine days’ journey from Macatoa—of their coming, and recommending them strongly to his care and attention. On arriving there, so captivated were the inhabitants with the novelty of the strangers and their attire, especially with the horses, that they became even more obsequious than the people of Macatoa, and, like these, warned the leader of that squad of adventurers not to engage in so desperate a combat with the Omeguas, representing likewise to Felipe de Urre that these people possessed also domestic quadrupeds of large size—probably llamas—which they could use like horses if they chose. In addition to these facts the Spaniards were reassured of the immense wealth in gold and silver everywhere to be found among that populous nation, which news so excited their avarice that, disregarding all the chances against the success of their enterprise, they hastened towards the goal of their expectations.