istening the rock.
. . . . . . . . . .
A chief was there, who stripped of vesture,
Covered with golden dust from crown to toe,
Sailed with offerings to the gods upon a lake
Borne by the waves upon a fragile raft,
The dark flood to brighten with golden light."[2]

Another and more imaginative version of the story was told to Oviedo[3]
by divers Spaniards whom he met in San Domingo. They had heard from
Indians in Quito that the great lord, El Dorado, always went about
covered with powdered gold, because he thought this kind of garment
more beautiful and distinguished than any decorations of beaten gold.
The lesser chiefs were in the habit of adorning themselves likewise,
but were not so lavish as the king who put on his gold dust every
morning and washed it off at night. He first anointed himself with a
fragrant liquid gum, to which the gold dust adhered so evenly that he
resembled a brilliant piece of artfully hammered gold metal.

For more than half a century, the mad quest continued, and always there
came tragedy and disaster. The German colony of Venezuela was wiped
out because of these futile expeditions into the interior. Gonzalo
Pizarro, brother of the great Francisco, set out to find the city of
legend, and returned after two years, in such dreadful plight that the
survivors of the party looked more like wild animals than men, "so that
one could no longer recognize them." Pedro de Urzua started from
Bogota to find a "golden city of the sun," and his expedition founded
the town of Pampluna. In 1560 the same leader was appointed "governor
of Omagua and El Dorado," and he set out to find his domain by way of
the Amazon. Urzua was murdered by Lope de Aguirre who treacherously
conspired against him, and Aguirre descended the great river and
finally reached Venezuela after one of the maddest piratical cruises
ever recorded. Guimilla, in a "History of the Oronoke," says:

"I find it (El Dorado) related with such an exact description of the
country, as the missionaries of my province and myself have recognized,
that I cannot doubt it. I have seen in the jurisdiction of Varinas, in
the mountains of Pedrarca, in 1721, the brass halberd which Urzua took
with him in his expedition. I have been acquainted with Don Joseph
Cabarte who directed for thirty years the missions of Agrico and the
Oronoke, the countries traversed by Urzua, and he appeared to be fully
persuaded that that was