ide of the world. This was the story as he
remembered it. "In the land of Guiana there is a golden city named
Manoa, but El Dorado in the Spanish language, which stands on the
shores of a vast inland lake whose waters are salt, which is called
Parima, and which is two hundred leagues in length. Juan Martinez was
the first white man to visit it, and he did so through no fault of his
own! When he was with the Spanish army at the port of Morequito, the
store of powder, of which he had charge, caught fire and was
destroyed. His commander, Diego Ordas, was so enraged that he
sentenced him to death; but being appealed to by the soldiery with
whom Martinez was a favourite, he commuted his punishment to
this--that he should be set in a canoe alone, without any victual,
only with his arms, and so turned loose on the great river. By the
grace of God he floated down stream and was captured by certain
Indians, who, never having seen a European before or anyone of that
colour, carried him into a land to be wondered at, and so from town to
town, until he came to the golden city of Manoa of which Inca was
emperor. Now the emperor, when he beheld him, knew him to be a
Christian, for not long since his brethren had been vanquished by the
Spaniards in Peru; therefore he had him lodged in his palace and
ordered that he should be respectfully entertained. There Martinez
lived for seven months, and all that while was not allowed to wander
beyond the city's walls lest he should discover the country's secrets,
for he had been brought thither blindfold and had been fifteen days in
the passage. When, years later, he came to die, he confessed to a
priest that he had entered Manoa at high noon and that then his
captors had uncovered his eyes, and that he had travelled all that day
till nightfall through its streets and all the next, from the rising
to the setting of the sun, of so great extent was it, until he arrived
at the palace. It was Martinez who had given to Manoa its name of El
Dorado, because its roadways were paved with gold, and there was so
great an abundance of that metal there that, before the emperor would
carouse with his captains, all those who were to pledge him were
stripped naked, and their bodies anointed with white balsam, over
which through hollow canes was blown by slaves the dust of fine gold,
so that when his guests sat down to drink with him, they glistened
yellow in the sun like gilded statues.

"When Martinez had obt