e got only as far as the Salto Coroni,--that is,
failed to achieve anything like as great a feat as even Ordaz,--but
returned to England with glowing accounts of a great inland lake and
rich nations. He had mixed up the legend of the Dorado with reports of
the Incas of Peru,--which proves that the Spanish were not the only
people to swallow fables. Indeed, the English and other explorers were
fully as credulous and fully as anxious to get to the fabled gold.

The myth of the great lake, the lake of Parime,[18] gradually absorbed
the myth of the Gilded Man. The historic tradition became merged and
lost in the geographic fable. Only in the eastern forests of Peru did
the Dorado re-appear in the beginning of the last century, but as a
distorted and groundless tale. But Lake Parime remained on the maps and
in geographical descriptions. It is a curious coincidence that where the
golden tribes of Meta were once believed to exist, the gold fields of
Guiana (now a bone of contention between England and Venezuela) have
recently been discovered. It is certain that Meta was only a myth, but
even the myth was useful.

The fable of the lake of Parime--long believed in as a great lake with
whole ranges of mountains of silver behind it--was fully exploded by
Humboldt in the beginning of the present century. He showed that there
was neither a great lake nor were there mountains of silver. The broad
savannas of the Orinoco, when overflowed in the rainy season, had been
taken for a lake, and the silver background was simply the shimmer of
the sunlight on peaks of micaceous rock.

With Humboldt finally perished the most remarkable fairy tale in
history. No other myth or legend in either North or South America ever
exercised such a powerful influence on the course of geographical
discovery; none ever called out such surpassing human endeavor, and none
so well illustrated the matchless tenacity of purpose and the
self-sacrifice inherent in the Spanish character. It is a new lesson to
most of us, but a true and proved one, that this southern nation, more
impulsive and impetuous than those of the north, was also more patient
and more enduring.

The myth died, but it had not existed in vain. Before it had been
disproved, it had brought about the exploration of the Amazon, the
Orinoco, all Brazil north of the Amazon, all Venezuela, all New Granada,
and eastern Ecuador. If we look at the map a moment, we shall see what
this means,--that the