ELDORADO (from the Spanish El Do rado, the Gilded Man), the region of undis covered treasure in South America. In the article DABA1BA we have traced the famous Eldorado myth back to those stories which, at the beginning of the 16th century, were cur rent among the Indians of Darien about (a temple lined with gold,' and have shown why the Spanish explorers failed to recognize in distant Cuzco, with its temple of the sun-god, the real basis of such accounts. The name Eldo rado, however, with which the ever-receding or shifting territory, the subject of all those stories, has been stamped, was at first not the name of a place but of a person; and the name-giving addition to the myth is localized very precisely in the table-land of Bogota, as follows: Lalce Guatavita (north of the. present capital of Co lombia and nearly two miles above sea-level) was regarded by Indian tribes dwelling in that neighborhood in the 15th century as a holy place, and pilgrims who resorted to it often cast their offenngs of gold and emeralds into its waters. Whenever a new chief of Guatavita wis chosen, nobles and priests of his tribe bore him to the lake, as Mr. Bandelier (in work mentioned be low) has written (upon a barrow hung with discs of gold. His naked body was anointed with resinous gtuns and covered all over with gold-dust.) The chief plunged into the lake; spectators made the usual offerings of gold and jewels; and, on the conclusion of this ceremony of consecration, the new ruler and his subjects went down to dance and feast in Guatavitit village. The Chibchas (q.v.) conquered Guata vita about the end of the 15th century, and under their general government this extraordi nary local custom had been discontinued for a number of years before the first Spanish settle ments were made on the Caribbean coast — there was no longer an independent Guatavita chief to signify his acceptance of the local religious beliefs in a fashion so dramatic; but native folk-lore continued for a century, at least, to malce much of this glittering symbolic figure and the sacred lake. In 1529, Dalfinger,
governor of the German colony in Venezuela, set out from his little capital of Coro, and probably reached the edge of the high plain of Bogota by way of the Magdalena River; there the resistance of the Indians obliged him to turn back. Four years later the report of the vast treasure secured by the conquerors of Peru (Atahualpa's (ransom' alone was officially valued at 3,933,000 ducats of gold and 672,670 ducats of silver) appeared to justify ventures undertaken in reliance upon the wildest Eldo rado tales. It is also true that a fresh outbreak of the gold-fever affected the Spanish colonists everywhere in America, more or less, but especially thoke in the agricultural settlements; and that leaders of those colonies, in order to retain their men, were obliged to make fresh efforts to find treasure. In Santa Marta, an expedition was organized to ascend the Mag dalena River to the highlands; at Coro, Georg von Speyer organized a campaign for the ex ploration of the Meta plain, far inland. The former expedition under command of Quesada in 1537 reached the old home of the gilded chief ; and although Guataviti either hid its gold or was actually poor (40 years having passed since it had ceased to be a place of pil grimage), the treasure collected in this neigh borhood, principally at the villages of Tunja and Iraca, was officially valued at 246,676 pesos in gold, or about $1,200,000, besides 1,815 em eralds. Von Speyer went astray among the trib utaries of the upper Orinoco, but his heutenant, the German, Nicolaus Federmann, leading a company from Coro, reached the Bogota high lands in time to meet there not only Quesada but the conqueror of Ecuador Benakazar, who came up from the south, having also heard the story of the Gilded Man. Each of these leaders considered himself the discoverer of the country, and they proceeded together to Spain, to submit their claims to the Spanish court, leaving their forces to hold the Eldorado which had been despoiled by the Chibchas, ransacked by them selves.