Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/73

Rh the religious ceremony which Zamora has described, with the cacique of Guatavitá 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 Puatavità, was the place of the dorado ceremony and consequently the ancient Guatavitá. But everything seems to indicate that there was really once a dorado at Bogotá."

We refer to this fact in order to clear up as fully as possible the question of the historical probability of the dorado, and to prepare the way for further discussion of the subject. The personal dorado has vanished, but his elusive shade still floats before us. The valiant figures of the conquest, knights who were little inferior in bravery and adventurous spirit to those of the Round Table, went in pursuit of him. Their career, begun with violence, ended usually in crime, and the generation which called forth and bore the great figures of Cortés, Pizarro, Quesada, and Georg von Speyer expired in the iniquities of Carvajal and the revolting monster Lope de Aguirre. We specify the last in order to mark with his end the close of the second period of the search for the dorado, for in him all the passions of the conquest blazed up again into a lurid flame.

Our narrative must this time be a chronological one, beginning in the year 1535, when Sebastian de Belalcazar, freed through negotiations from the threatening presence of Alvarado, who had landed from Guatemala, was at liberty to give his mind to establishing and further extending Spanish rule in Quito. It was on an expedition which the Spaniards