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El DoradoEl Dorado was the legend of about the kingdom of a fabulously rich Indian ruler, the Gilded Man (El Dorado). It was said that each day he smearing himself with aromatic oils, then covered himself with gold dust. When he bathed, the gold dust was said to have washed off, leaving a vast amount of gold dust lying at the bottom of his pool. The entire kingdom was said to be rich and well looked after. The first telling of this story was from a Spaniard called Luφs Daza, in 1535. He claimed to have heard the story from local Indians, describing the King of a nearby territory in New Granada (now Colombia). Similar stories soon began also appearing all over Peru and Colombia. Since the Spanish conquistadors had recently conquered to rich kingdoms in the New World (the Aztecs and the Incas), it was no wonder that they were interested in conquering a third kingdom. The first search for El Dorado took the conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his lieutenant, Francisco de Orellana, across the Andes and into the Amazon Basin. They failed to find any trace of the rich kingdom. However, the rumours of gold were a strong attraction to the Spaniards and Portuguese – with many expeditions setting out over the next few centuries. Even the Englishman, Sir Walter Raleigh, tried to find El Dorado from the English territories in Guyana, but also failed although he did manage to bring back rocks which experts said indicated a rich lode of gold ore. Although the kingdom of El Dorado was never found, the area of the Amazon Basin where it was supposed to be located (the Guyana Highlands) has recently been discovered to have a rich deposit of gold ore, and is now being mined. Some researchers believe that the centre for the legends may have been Lake Guatavita, a small lake in the Colombian highlands where there is evidence of an Indian civilisation having mined and used quantities of gold.
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