The dignified and well-balanced story as told in Robertson’s America (book vi.) is not without use to-day, and his judgment upon authorities (note cxxv.) is usually sound. He has of course fallen behind that sufficiency which Dr. Smyth found in him, when he gave his Lectures on Modern History (lecture xxi.). The latter writer reflected an opinion not yet outgrown when he says that “Pizarro was, after all, a vulgar conqueror, and is from the first detested, though he seizes upon our respect, and retains it in defiance of ourselves, from the powerful and decisive nature of his courage and of his understanding.”
The latest English summarized view of the Conquest will be found in R. G. Watson’s Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period (London, 1884). The author lived in South America about twenty years ago, in various parts, as a diplomatic agent of the English government.
[THE]
AMAZON AND ELDORADO.
BY THE EDITOR.
IN 1528, in order to follow up the explorations of Ojeda and others on the coast of Venezuela the Emperor had agreed with the great German mercantile house of the Velsers to protect a colony to be sent by them to found cities and to mine on this northern coast.[1567] This was the origin of the expedition led by Ambrosio de Alfinger to find a fabulous golden city, of which reports of one kind and another pervaded the Spanish settlements along the coast. It was in 1530 that Alfinger started inland. This march produced the usual story of perfidy and cruelty practised upon the natives, and of attack and misery experienced by the invaders. Alfinger died on the way, and after two years (in 1532) what was left of his followers found their way back to the coast.
Meanwhile an expedition inland had started under Diego Ordaz in 1531, by way of the Orinoco; but it had failed, its leader being made the victim of a mutiny. One of his officers, Martinez, being expelled from the force for misbehavior, wandered away until he fell into the hands of people who blindfolded him and led him a great way to a city, where the bandage was removed from his eyes. Here they led him for a day and night through its streets till they came to the palace of Inga their Emperor, with whom being handsomely entertained he stayed eight months, when, being allowed to return, he came down the Orinoco to Trinidad, and thence to Porto Rico, where, when dying, he told this tale of Manoa, as he called the city. He was the first, the story goes, to apply the name of Eldorado to the alluring kingdom in the depths of the continent. This is the pretended story as Raleigh sixty years later learned from a manuscript which Berreo the Governor of Trinidad showed to him.[1568]
Again, the Germans made another attempt to penetrate the country and its mystery. George of Spires, under the imperial sanction, coming from Spain with four hundred men, started inland from Coro in 1534. He succeeded in penetrating about fifteen hundred miles, and returned with the survivors in 1538.