Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/98

84 of Venezuela was conveyed to the Welsers. They received the province from the Spanish Crown, not so much in the form of a leasehold as of a mortgage security for money loaned, and as commercial men their first object was to recover the advances they had made as quickly as possible from the revenues of the district. Whatever they might gain after that would be "good business." Their representatives acted in their interest as seen from this point of view.

The coast lands of Venezuela offered no hope of a profitable result; but golden reports came from the interior, and, clad in the alluring dress of the dorado legend, led the Germans on to those useless and destructive expeditions of which we have just described the last one. In pursuit of the gilded chieftain Dalfinger conducted his fatal campaign of desolation; after him Federmann pressed fruitlessly into New Granada; in the chase for the echo of the dorado in "Meta" Von Speyer sacrificed his fine troop and his own precious person; in the final effort to grasp the phantom were extinguished Von Hutten's young life and the last spark of the manhood and vigor of the colony. When we give close attention to the history of the German settlement in Venezuela, the importance of the part played in it by the dorado appeal's very clearly.

We have already shown that Von Hutten came back persuaded that he had really seen the home of the gilded chieftain in the country of the Omaguas. Henceforth, therefore, Omagua becomes nearly synonymous with the dorado, and the legend is localized near the Amazon, west of the Rio Negro and