Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/37

Rh best men and found the path, but fell ill and was obliged to halt. Antonio de Lebrixa went on to the mountains with twenty-five men, and came back with the welcome intelligence that he had found there a fertile plain inhabited by men who lived in villages and went about clothed in cotton. Quesada hastened back to his camp at Latora, put the sick and weak upon the brigantines, and sent them back to Cartagena. In the beginning of the year 1537 Quesada, at the head of one hundred and sixty-six of his most effective men, stepped upon the plateau of Cundinamarca, the former home of the dorado. He had lost more than five hundred men by hunger, illness, and exposure.

The sight of the first villages on the plateau satisfied the Spaniards of the wealth of the country. The people imagined that the strangers were man-eating monsters and fled to the woods, but left behind them a quantity of provisions, which were very acceptable to the half-starved Spaniards, and some gold and emeralds. The Indians posted themselves on the defensive in a ravine near Zorocota. Quesada tried unsuccessfully to storm their strong barricade. In the evening, after both sides had returned, tired with fighting, to their camps, two of the Spaniards' horses broke loose and ran, chasing one another, over to the natives. The Indians, frightened by the strange beasts, fled into the woods. The Spaniards found the large village of Guacheta deserted, the inhabitants having taken refuge among the rocks overlooking it. In the midst of the place was an old man stripped and bound to a stake, as an offering of food to the whites. They unbound him, gave him a red cap, and