Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.3 — 05 - Chapter 3.25, Part 5

We have now examined a White Sea,* (* That of D'Anville and La Cruz, and of the greater part of the modern maps.

) which the principal of the Rio Branco is made to traverse; and another,* (* The lake of Surville, which takes the place of lake Amucu.

) which is placed on the east of this river, and communicates with it by the Cano Pirara.

A

third lake* (* The lake which Surville calls Laguna tenida hasta ahora or La una Parime.

) is figured on the west of the Rio Branco, respecting which I found recently some curious details in the manuscript journal of the surgeon Hortsmann.

"At the distance of two days' journey below the confluence of the Mahu (Tacutu) with the Rio Parima (Uraricuera) a lake is found on top of a mountain.

This lake is stocked with the same fish as the Rio Parima; but the waters of the former are black, and those of the latter white."

May not Surville, from a vague notion of this basin, have imagined, in his map prefixed to Father Caulin's work, an Alpine lake of ten leagues in length, near which, towards the east, rise at the same time the Orinoco, and the Rio Idapa, a tributary stream of the Rio Negro?

However vague may be the account of the surgeon of Hildesheim, it is impossible to admit that the mountain, which has a lake at its summit, is to the north of the parallel of 2 degrees 30 minutes: and this latitude coincides nearly with that of the Cerro Unturan.

Hence it follows that the Alpine lake of Hortsmann, which has escaped the attention of D'Anville, and which is perhaps situate amid a group of mountains, lies north-east of the portage from the Idapa to the Mavaca, and south-east of the Orinoco, where it goes up above Esmeralda.

Most of the historians who have treated of the first ages of the conquest seem persuaded that the name provincias or pais del Dorado denoted originally every region abounding in gold.

Forgetting the precise etymology of the word El Dorado (the gilded), they have not perceived that this tradition is a local fable, as were almost all the ancient fables of the Greeks, the Hindoos, and the Persians.

The history of the gilded man belongs originally to the Andes of New Grenada, and particularly to the plains in the vicinity of their eastern side: we see it progressively advance, as I observed above, three hundred leagues toward the east-north-east, from the sources of the Caqueta to those of the Rio Branco and the Essequibo.

Gold was sought in different parts of South America before 1536, without the word El Dorado having been ever pronounced, and without the belief of the existence of any other centre of civilization and wealth, than the empire of the Inca of Cuzco.

Countries which now do not furnish commerce with the smallest quantities of the precious metals, the coast of Paria, Terra Firma (Castillo del Oro), the mountains of Santa Marta, and the isthmus of Darien, then enjoyed the same celebrity which has been more recently acquired by the auriferous lands of Sonora, Choco, and Brazil.

Diego de Ordaz (1531) and Alonzo de Herrera (1535) directed their journeys of discovery along the banks of the Lower Orinoco.

The former is the famous Conquistador of Mexico, who boasted that he had taken sulphur out of the crater of the Peak of Popocatepetl, and whom the emperor Charles V permitted to wear a burning volcano on his armorial bearings.

Ordaz, named Adelantado of all the country which he could conquer between Brazil and the coast of Venezuela, which was then called the country of the German Company of Welsers (Belzares) of Augsburg, began his expedition by the mouth of the Maranon.

He there saw, in the hands of the natives, "emeralds as big as a man's fist."

They were, no doubt, pieces of that saussurite jade, or compact feldspar, which we brought home from the Orinoco, and which La Condamine found in abundance at the mouth of the Rio Topayos.

The Indians related to Diego de Ordaz that on going up during a certain number of suns toward the west, he would find a large rock (pena) of green stone; but before they reached this pretended mountain of emerald (rocks of euphotide?

) a shipwreck put an end to all farther discovery.

The Spaniards saved themselves with difficulty in two small vessels.

They hastened to get out of the mouth of the Amazon; and the currents, which in those parts run with violence to the north-west, led Ordaz to the coast of Paria where, in the territory of the cacique Yuripari (Uriapari, Viapari), Sedeno had constructed the Casa fuerte de Paria.

This post being very near the mouth of the Orinoco, the Mexican Conquistador resolved to attempt an expedition on this great river.

He sojourned first at Carao (Caroa, Carora), a large Indian village, which appears to me to have been a little to the east of the confluence of the Carony; he then went up the Cabruta (Cabuta, Cabritu), and to the mouth of the Meta (Metacuyu), where he found great difficulty in passing his boats through the Raudal of Cariven.

The Aruacas, whom Ordaz employed as guides, advised him to go up the Meta; where, on advancing towards the west, they asserted he would find men clothed, and gold in abundance.

Ordaz pursued in preference the navigation of the Orinoco, but the cataracts of Tabaje (perhaps even those of the Atures) compelled him to terminate his discoveries.

It is worthy of remark that in this voyage, far anterior to that of Orellana, and consequently the greatest which the Spaniards had then performed on a river of the New World, the name of the Orinoco was for the first time heard.

Ordaz, the leader of the expedition, affirms that the river, from its mouth as far as the confluence of the Meta, is called Uriaparia, but that above this confluence it bears the name of Orinucu.

This word (formed analogously with the words Tamanacu, Otomacu, Sinarucu) is, in fact, of the Tamanac tongue; and, as the Tamanacs dwell south-east of Encaramada, it is natural that the conquistadores heard the actual name of the river only on drawing near the Rio Meta.

* (* Gili volume 3 page 381. The following are the most ancient names of the Orinoco, known to the natives near its mouth, and which historians give us altered by the double fault of pronunciation and orthography; Yuyapari, Yjupari, Huriaparia, Urapari, Viapari, Rio de Paria.

The Tamanac word Orinucu was disfigured by the Dutch pilots into Worinoque.

The Otomacs say Joga-apurura (great river); the Cabres and Guaypunabis, Paragua, Bazagua Parava, three words signifying great water, river, sea.

That part of the Orinoco between the Apure and the Guaviare is often denoted by the name of Baraguan.

A famous strait, which we have described above, bears also this name, which is no doubt a corruption of the word Paragua.

Great rivers in every zone are called by the dwellers on their banks the river, without any particular denominations.

If other names be added, they change in every province.

Thus the Rio Turiva, near the Encaramada, has five names in the different parts of its course.

The Upper Orinoco, or Paragua, is called by the Maquiritares (near Esmeralda) Maraguaca, on account of the lofty mountains of this name near Duida.

Gili volume 1 pages 22 and 364. Caulin page 75. In most of the names of the rivers of America we recognize the root water.

Thus yacu in the Peruvian, and veni in the Maypure tongues, signify water and river.

In the Lule dialect I find fo, water; foyavolto, a river; foysi, a lake; as in Persian, ab is water; abi frat, the river Euphrates; abdan, a lake.

The root water is preserved in the derivatives.

) On this last tributary stream Diego de Ordaz received from the natives the first idea of civilized nations who inhabited the table-lands of the Andes of New Granada; of a very powerful prince with one eye (Indio tuerto), and of animals less than stags, but fit for riding like Spanish horses.

Ordaz had no idea that these animals were llamas (ovejas del Peru).

Must we admit that llamas, which were used in the Andes to draw the plough and as beasts of burden, but not for riding, were already common on the north and east of Quito?

I find that Orellana saw these animals at the river Amazon, above the confluence of the Rio Negro, consequently in a climate very different from that of the table-land of the Andes.

The table of an army of Omaguas mounted on llamas served to embellish the account given by the fellow-travellers of Felipe de Urre of their adventurous expedition to the Upper Caqueta.

We cannot be sufficiently attentive to these traditions, which seem to prove that the domestic animals of Quito and Peru had already begun to descend the Cordilleras, and spread themselves by degrees in the eastern regions of South America.

Herrera, the treasurer of the expedition of Ordaz, was sent in 1553, by the governor Geronimo de Ortal, to pursue the discovery of the Orinoco and the Meta.

He lost nearly thirteen months between Punta Barina and the confluence of the Carony in constructing flat-bottomed boats, and making the preparations indispensable for a long voyage.

We cannot read without astonishment the narrative of those daring enterprises, in which three or four hundred horses were embarked to be put ashore whenever cavalry could act on one of the banks.

We find in the expedition of Herrera the same stations which we already knew; the fortress of Paria, the Indian village of Uriaparia (no doubt below Imataca, on a point where the inundations of the delta prevented the Spaniards from being able to procure firewood), Caroa, in the province of Carora; the rivers Caranaca (Caura?

) and Caxavana (Cuchivero?

); the village of Cabritu (Cabruta), and the Raudal near the mouth of the Meta (probably the Raudal of Cariven and the Piedra de la Paciencia).

As the Rio Meta, on account of the proximity of its sources and of its tributary streams to the auriferous Cordilleras of new Grenada (Cundinamarca), enjoyed great celebrity, Herrera attempted to go up this river.

He there found nations more civilized than those of the Orinoco, but that fed on the flesh of mute dogs.

Herrera was killed in battle by an arrow poisoned with the juice of curare (yierva); and when dying named Alvaro de Ordaz his lieutenant, who led the remains of the expedition (1535) to the fortress of Paria, after having lost the few horses which had resisted a campaign of eighteen months.

Confused reports which were circulated of the wealth of the inhabitants of the Meta, and the other tributary streams that descend from the eastern side of the Cordilleras of New Grenada, engaged successively Geronimo de Ortal, Nicolas Federmann, and Jorge de Espira (George von Speier), in 1535 and 1536, to undertake expeditions by land towards the south and south-west.

From the promontory of Paria, as far as Cabo de la Vela, little figures of molten gold had been found in the hands of the natives, as early as the years 1498 and 1500. The principal markets for these amulets, which the women used as ornaments, were the villages of Curiana (Coro) and Cauchieto (Near the Rio la Hacha).

The metal employed by the founders of Cauchieto came from a mountainous country more to the south.

It may be conceived that the expeditions of Ordaz and Herrera served to increase the desire of drawing nearer to those auriferous countries.

George von Speier left Coro (1535), and penetrated by the mountains of Merida to the banks of the Apure and the Meta.

He passed these two rivers near their sources, where they have but little breadth.

The Indians told him that, farther on, white men wandered about the plains.

Speier, who imagined that he was not far from the banks of the Amazon, had no doubt that these wandering Spaniards were men unfortunately shipwrecked in the expedition of Ordaz.

He crossed the savannahs of San Juan de los Llanos, which were said to abound in gold; and made a long stay at an Indian village called Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, and afterwards La Fragua, south-east of the Paramo de la Suma Paz.

I have been on the western back of this group of mountains, at Fusagasuga, and there heard that the plains by which they are skirted toward the east still enjoy some celebrity for wealth among the natives.

Speier found in the populous village of La Fragua a Casa del Sol (temple of the sun), and a convent of virgins similar to those of Peru and New Granada.

Were these the consequence of a migration of religious rites towards the east?

or must we admit that the plains of San Juan were their first cradle?

Tradition, indeed, records that Bochica, the legislator of New Granada and high-priest of Iraca, had gone up from the plains of the east to the table-land of Bogota.

But Bochica being at once the offspring and the symbol of the sun, his history may contain allegories that are merely astrological.

Speier, pursuing his way toward the south, and crossing the two branches of the Guaviare, which are the Ariare and the Guayavero (Guayare or Canicamare), arrived on the banks of the great Rio Papamene or Caqueta.

The resistance he met with during a whole year in the province de los Choques, put an end, in 1537, to this memorable expedition.

Nicolas Federmann and Geronimo de Ortal (1536), who went from Macarapana and the mouth of the Rio Neveri, followed (1535) the traces of Jorge de Espira.

The former sought for gold in the Rio Grande de la Magdalena; the latter endeavoured to discover a temple of the sun (Casa del Sol) on the banks of the Meta.

Ignorant of the idiom of the natives, they seemed to see everywhere, at the foot of the Cordilleras, the reflexion of the greatness of the temples of Iraca (Sogamozo), which was then the centre of the civilization of Cundinamarca.

I have now examined, in a geographical point of view, the expeditions on the Orinoco, and in a western and southern direction on the eastern back of the Andes, before the tradition of El Dorado was spread among the conquistadores.

This tradition, as we have noticed above, had its origin in the kingdom of Quito, where Luis Daza (1535) met with an Indian of New Grenada who had been sent by his prince (no doubt the zippa of Bogota, or the zaque of Tunja), to demand assistance from Atahualpa, inca of Peru.

This ambassador boasted, as is usual, the wealth of his country; but what particularly fixed the attention of the Spaniards who were assembled with Daza in the town of Tacunga (Llactacunga), was the history of a lord who, his body covered with powdered gold, went into a lake amid the mountains.

This lake may have been the Laguna de Totta, a little to the east of Sogamozo (Iraca) and of Tunja (Hunca, the town of Huncahua), where two chiefs, ecclesiastical and secular, of the empire of Cundinamarca, or Cundirumarca, resided; but no historical remembrance being attached to this mountain lake, I rather suppose that it was the sacred lake of Guatavita, on the east of the mines of rock-salt of Zipaquira, into which the gilded lord was made to enter.

I saw on its banks the remains of a staircase hewn in the rock, and serving for the ceremonies of ablution.

The Indians said 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 which was made by the Spaniards for the purpose of draining the lake.

The temple of the sun at Sogamozo being pretty near the northern coasts of Terra Firma, the notions of the gilded man were soon applied to a high-priest of the sect of Bochica, or Indacanzas, who every morning, before he performed his sacrifice, caused powder of gold to be stuck upon his hands and face, after they had been smeared with grease.

Other accounts, preserved in a letter of Oviedo addressed to the celebrated cardinal Bembo, say that Gonzalo Pizarro, when he discovered the province of cinnamon-trees, "sought at the same time a great prince, noised in those countries, who was always covered with powdered gold, so that from head to foot he resembled an image of gold fashioned by the hand of a skilful workman (a una figura d'oro lavorato di mano d'un buonissimo orefice).

The powdered gold is fixed to the body by means of an odoriferous resin; but, as this kind of garment would be uneasy to him while he slept, the prince washes himself every evening, and is gilded anew in the morning, which proves that the empire of El Dorado is infinitely rich in mines."

It seems probable that there was something in the ceremonies of the worship introduced by Bochica which gave rise to a tradition so generally spread.

The strangest customs are found in the New World.

In Mexico the sacrificers painted their bodies and wore a kind of cape, with hanging sleeves of tanned human skin.

On the banks of the Caura, and in other wild parts of Guiana, where painting the body is used instead of tattooing, the nations anoint themselves with turtle-fat, and stick spangles of mica with a metallic lustre, white as silver and red as copper, on their skin, so that at a distance they seem to wear laced clothes.

The fable of the gilded man is, perhaps, founded on a similar custom; and, as there were two sovereign princes in New Granada, the lama of Iraca and the secular chief or zaque of Tunja, we cannot be surprised that the same ceremony was attributed sometimes to the prince and sometimes to the high-priest.

It is more extraordinary that, as early as the year 1535, the country of El Dorado was sought for on the east of the Andes.

Robertson is mistaken in admitting that Orellana received the first notions of it (1540) on the banks of the Amazon.

The history of Fray Piedro Simon, founded on the memoirs of Queseda, the conqueror of Cundirumarca, proves directly the contrary; and Gonzalo Diaz de Pineda, as early as 1536, sought for the gilded man beyond the plains of the province of Quixos.

The ambassador of Bogota, whom Daza met with in the kingdom of Quito, had spoken of a country situate toward the east.

Was this because the table-land of New Granada is not on the north, but on the north-east of Quito?

We may venture to say that the tradition of a naked man covered with powdered gold must have belonged originally to a hot region, and not to the cold table-lands of Cundirumarca, where I often saw the thermometer sink below four or five degrees; however, on account of the extraordinary configuration of the country, the climate differs greatly at Guatavita, Tunja, Iraca, and on the banks of the Sogamozo.

Sometimes, also, religious ceremonies are preserved which took rise in another zone; and the Muyscas, according to ancient traditions, made Bochica, their first legislator and the founder of their worship, arrive from the plains situate to the east of the Cordilleras.

I shall not decide whether these traditions expressed an historical fact, or merely indicated, as we have already observed in another place, that the first Lama, who was the offspring and symbol of the sun, must necessarily have come from the countries of the East.

Be it as it may, it is not less certain that the celebrity which the expeditions of Ordaz, Herrera, and Speier had already given to the Orinoco, the Meta, and the province of Papamene, situate between the sources of the Guaviare and Caqueta, contributed to fix the fable of El Dorado near to the eastern back of the Cordilleras.