Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/75

Rh A version of the dorado legend lay at the bottom of his motives in this undertaking. Gonzalo Diaz de Pineda had, about 1539, gone to the village of Quixos, situated southeast of Quito, in the woods of the Upper Rio Napo (called by the chroniclers of the time Rio de la Canela), and had there found the cinnamon tree (Nectandra Cinnamomoides of the order Lauraceæ). He also heard there of the Indians— Cofanes, Jibaros, Huambayos, etc.— and further, "that there were wealthy regions, in which the people went round adorned with gold, and where there were no mountains or woods." This was a reference to the plain, a confused echo of Meta, and gave a new stimulus to the anticipation that the spices of the Orient, then monopolized by the Portuguese, might be found in America.

Gonzalo Pizarro determined, without making any closer inquiry—a trait of the times as well as of his own personality—to follow up this story. He left Quito with 220 men on foot and on horse, and proceeded toward Zumaco, beyond the Sierra, to press thence into the thick woods which encompass all the tributaries of the Amazon east of the Andes. It would lead us too far away to follow him on his march, which is known as the "Journey to the Cinnamon Country." It was an impotent groping around in a tropical wilderness, where, surrounded by an overwhelming profusion of impenetrable vegetation, man had to give up every other purpose