d; but our surprise will
cease when we remember what a difficult and enormous wilderness South
America was, and how much of it has unexplored mysteries even to-day.

The first attempts to reach the Gilded Man were from the coast of
Venezuela. Charles I. of Spain, afterward Charles V., had pawned the
coast of that Spanish possession to the wealthy Bavarian family of the
Welsers, giving them the right to colonize and "discover" the interior.
In 1529, Ambrosius Dalfinger and Bartholomew Seyler landed at Coro,
Venezuela, with four hundred men. The tale of the Gilded Man was already
current among the Spaniards; and, allured by it, Dalfinger marched
inland to find it. He was a dreadful brute, and his expedition was
nothing less than absolute piracy. He penetrated as far as the Magdalena
River, in New Granada, scattering death and devastation wherever he
went. He found some gold; but his brutality toward the Indians was so
great, and in such a strong contrast to what they had been accustomed to
from the Spaniards, that the exasperated natives turned, and his march
amounted to a running fight of more than a year's duration. The trouble
was, the Welsers cared only to get treasure back for the money they had
paid out, and had none of the real Spanish spirit of colonizing and
christianizing. Dalfinger failed to find the Gilded Man, and died in
1530 from a wound received during his infamous expedition.

His successor in command of the Welser interests, Nicolas Federmann, was
not much better as a man and no more successful as a pioneer. In 1530 he
marched inland to discover the Dorado, but his course was due south from
Coro, so he never touched New Granada. After a fearful march through the
tropical forests he had to return empty-handed in 1531.

Here already begins to enter, chronologically, one of the curious
ramifications and variations of this prolific myth. At first a fact, in
thirty years a fable, now in three years more the Gilded Man began to be
a vagabond will-o'-the-wisp, flitting from one place to another, and
gradually becoming tangled up in many other myths. The first variation
came in the first attempt to discover the source of the Orinoco,--the
mighty river which it was supposed could flow only from a great lake. In
1530, Antonio Sedeno sailed from Spain with an expedition to explore the
Orinoco. He reached the Gulf of Paria and built a fort, intending thence
to push his exploration. While he was doing this, Diego de