El Dora'do

El Dora'do ('the Golden or Gilded Land') originally existed but vaguely in the imaginations of the Spanish conquerors of America, whose insatiable avarice, feeding greedily on the marvellous accounts readily supplied by the natives—who were only anxious to get rid of their robber-guests—loved to dream of richer rewards than those of Mexico and Peru. But after Orellana's voyage down the Amazon, in 1540, the report was greatly embellished, and the locality of the fabulous region placed near the head-springs of the Orinoco. Many a soldier of fortune perished in the search, many a brave troop of adventurers brought but a fraction of their number back, before the vast Lake of Parime, with Manoa, the city of gold, on its northern shore, was reluctantly relegated to the atlas of the poets. The most famous expeditions were those of Philip von Hutten (1541-46) and Sir Walter Raleigh; the last was that of Antonio Santos, so late as 1780. See Nery, Le Pays des Amazones (Paris, 1885), and Von Langege, El Dorado (1888).