es, covered his whole body
with red paint, and introduced himself among them by his knowledge of
many of their languages. He was a long time among them, until at
length he fell within the power of the Portugese established on the
banks of the Rio Negro. They embarked him on the river Amazon and
after a very long detention, sent him back to his country."

In this very brief survey of the growth and results of the El Dorado
legend, there is no room even to mention many of the most dramatic and
disastrous expeditions which it inspired through the sixteenth century.
It was, in truth, the greatest lost treasure story that the world has
ever known. The age of those splendid adventurers has vanished,
exploration has proved that the golden city hidden in Guiana was a
myth, but now and again investigation has harked back to the source of
the tradition of the gilded man, at the mountain lake of Guatavita on
the lofty tableland of Bogota. Hernan de Quesada, first to try to
drain the lake, was followed a few years later by Antonio de Sepulveda
who recovered treasure from the bottom to the amount of more than one
hundred thousand dollars, besides a magnificent emerald which was sold
at Madrid.

Professor Liborio Zerda, of the University of Colombia at Bogota, has
published his results of an exhaustive study of the legend and the
evidence to show that the ceremonies of the gilded man were once
performed at Guatavita. He describes a group of figures beaten out of
raw gold which was recovered from the lake and is now in the museum of
that city. It represents the chief and attendants upon a _balsa_, or
raft, and is considered to be a striking confirmation of the tradition.

"Undoubtedly this piece represents the religious ceremony which Zamora
has described," writes Professor Zerda, "with the caique of Guatavita
surrounded by Indian priests, on the raft which was taken on the day of
the ceremony to the middle of the lake. It may be, as some persons
believe, that Siecha lagune, and not the present Guatavita, was the
place of the _dorado_ ceremony, and consequently the ancient Guatavita.
But everything seems to indicate that there was really once a _dorado_
at Bogota."

Zamora, who wrote in the seventeenth century, recorded that the Indians
believed the spirit of the lake had built a magnificent palace beneath
the water where she dwelt and demanded offerings of gold and jewels,
which belief spread over all the nation of the Muy