ne of
his favorite country homes.

CHAPTER VI

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT

1796-1859

One of the stories that mankind has always liked to believe is that of
the existence of a marvellous country whose climate was perfect, whose
people were happy, whose king was wise and good, and where wealth
abounded. The old travellers of the Middle Ages dreamed of finding
this land somewhere in the far East. Many books were written about it,
and many tales told by knight and palmer of its rivers of gold, mines
of precious stones, and treasure vaults of inexhaustible riches. But,
although from time to time some famous traveller like Marco Polo or
Sir John Mandeville described the great wealth of Ormus or Cathay, yet
no one ever found the real country of his imagination, and the dream
passed down from generation to generation unfulfilled. The Spaniards
called this country _El Dorado_, and perhaps their vision of it was
the wildest of all, for not only were they to find inexhaustible
riches, but trees whose fruit would heal disease, magic wells which
yielded happiness, and fountains of immortal youth. Thus dreamed the
Spaniard of the fifteenth century, and when Columbus found the new
world it was believed that it included El Dorado. Leader after leader
mustered his knights and soldiers and sought the golden country. They
traversed forests, climbed mountains, forded rivers, and waded through
swamps and morasses; they suffered hunger, thirst, and fever, and the
savage hostility of the Indians; they died by hundreds and were buried
in unmarked graves, and expedition after expedition returned to Spain
to report the fruitlessness of their search. But the hope was not
given up. New seekers started on the quest, and it seemed that the
ships of Spain could hardly hold her eager adventurers.

In a strange way this dream of El Dorado was realized. Two soldiers
of fortune, bolder, hardier, luckier than the rest, actually found not
one country but two, which were in part at least like the golden world
they sought. High upon the table-land of Mexico and guarded by its
snow-capped mountains they found the kingdom of the Aztecs, with their
vast wealth of gold and silver. Safe behind the barrier of the Andes
lay the land of the Incas, whose riches were, like those of Ophir
or Cathay, not to be measured. Both of these countries possessed a
strange and characteristic civilization. In fact, even to this day,
scholars are puzzled to know the source