sca and also among
strangers "who all, stricken by this wonderful occurrence, came to
offer their gifts by many different routes, of which even to-day some
signs remain. In the center of the lake they threw their offerings
with ridiculous and vain ceremonies."

In 1823, Captain Charles Stuart Cochran of the English navy was
traveling in Colombia and he became keenly interested in the lake of
Guatavita and the chances of recovering the lost treasure by means of a
drainage project. He delved into the old Spanish records, assembled
the traditions that were still alive among the Indians and was
convinced that a fabulous accumulation of gold awaited the enterprise
of modern engineers. One of the ancient accounts, so he discovered,
related that to escape the cruel persecution of the Spanish conquerors
the wealthy natives threw their gold into the lake, and that the last
caique cast therein the burdens of fifty men laden with gold dust and
nuggets.

Captain Cochran did not succeed in finding the funds needed to
undertake the tempting task, but his information was preserved, and
made some stir in England and France. It was reserved for twentieth
century treasure seekers to attack the sacred lake of Guatavita, and to
capitalize the venture as a joint stock company with headquarters in
London and a glittering prospectus offering investors an opportunity of
obtaining shares in a prospective hoard of gold and jewels worth
something like a billion dollars. A concession was obtained from the
government of Colombia, and work begun in 1903.

As an engineering problem, draining the lake seemed practicable and
comparatively inexpensive. It is a deep, transparent pool, hardly more
than a thousand feet wide, almost circular, and set like a jewel in a
cup-like depression near the top of a cone-shaped peak, several hundred
feet above the nearby plateau. The tunnel therefore had only to pierce
the hill-side to enter the lake and let the water flow out to the plain
below. It was estimated that the shaft had to be driven a distance of
eleven hundred feet.

A small village of huts was built to shelter the engineers and
laborers, and rock drilling machinery set up not far from the still
visible remains of one of the shafts dug by the Spanish treasure
seekers of the fifteenth century. No serious obstacles were
encountered until the tunnel had tapped the bottom of the lake and the
water began to run off through carefully regulated slu