person
with gold dust, thus originating the idea of a gilded humanity, that people came to think of the country as gilded.
The high priest. El Dorado, the lord of this magnif- icence— for chief and country generally bore the same name — was every day annointed with perfumed gum and bathed in gold-dust, so that his whole body glit- tered like the sun. His moving was as the moving of a golden statue, and his breathing was as of subli- mated diamonds. Incredible it would ever seem, were not the truth verified by many witnesses, how long, and earnestly, and honestly men pretending to sanity sought this myth. Beginning with Sebastian de Belalcdzar in 1535, and Gonzalo Pizarro in 1539, the valley of Dorado was the object of search by various expeditions fitted out from Peru, Quito, Bra- zil, New Grenada, and the Bio de la Plata, the in- fatuation continuing down to as late a period, in one instance at least, as 1775.
Comino- to more definite statements, we know that a Spaniard named Martinez reported that having been adrift at sea he was thrown on the coast of Guiana, and taken to Manoa, the capital of the king of that region, who was an ally of the incas of Peru, that the roof and walls of the city, wherein he had resided seven months, were covered with the precious metals. Orellana, a lieutenant of Pizarro, who visited the val- ley of the Amazonas, 1540-1, spoke of a region where gold and silver abounded to a fabulous extent. He reported to have been in Manoa, and to have seen the immense treasures. Van Hutten, who commanded an expedition from Coro, on the coast of Venezuela, 1541-5, thought that he had caught a ghmpse of the golden city, in search of which he had started. Several expeditions undertaken to reach the mythical region failed, notably one in 1560 under Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada from Bogota. The fable has occupied men's minds, among others leading to results that of Sir Walter Baleigh, who undertook to find
