

THE FABLED EL DORADO. 181 



of Murcielago, towards the sources of tho Erevato and the 

 Ventuari. 



It was across these mountains, which are inhabited 

 by Indians of gentle character, employed in agriculture,* 

 that, at the time of the expedition for settling boundaries, 

 General Iturriaga took some horned cattle for the supply 

 of the new town of San Fernando de Atabapo. The in- 

 habitants of Encaramada then showed the Spanish soldiers 

 the way by the Rio Manapiari,f which falls into the Ven- 

 tuari. By descending these two rivers, the Orinoco and the 

 A tabapo may be reached without passing the great cataracts, 

 which present almost insurmountable obstacles to the con- 

 veyance of cattle. The spirit of enterprise which had so 

 eminently distinguished the Castilians at the period of the 

 discovery of America, was again roused for a time in the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, when Ferdinand VI was 

 desirous of knowing the true limits of his vast possessions ; 

 and in the forests of Gruiana, that land of fiction and 

 fabulous tradition, the wily Indians revived the chimerical 

 idea of the wealth of El Dorado, which had so much occu- 

 pied the imagination of the first conquerors. 



Amidst the mountains of Encaramada, which, like most 

 coarse-grained granite rocks, are destitute of metallic veins, 

 we cannot help inquiring whence came those grains of gold 

 which Juan Martinez J and Raleigh profess to have seen in 

 such abundance in the hands of the Indians of the Orinoco. 

 From what I observed in that part of America, I am led to 

 think that gold, like tin,|| is sometimes disseminated in an 



* The Mapoyes, Parecag, Javaranas, and Curacicanas, who possess 

 fine plantations (conucos) in the savannahs by which these forests are 

 bounded. 



f Between Encarmada and the Rio Manapiare, Don Miguel Sanchez, 

 chief of this little expedition, crossed the Rio Guainaima, which flows 

 into the Cuchivero. Sanchez died, from the fatigue of this journey, on 

 the borders of the Ventuari. 



J The companion of Diego Ordaz. 



|| Thus tin is found in granite of recent formation, at Geyer ; in hya- 

 lomicte or yraisen, at Zinnwald ; and in syenitic porphyry, at Altenberg, 

 in Saxony, as well as near Naila, in the Fichtelgebirge. I have also seen, 

 in the Upper Palatinate, micaceous iron, and black earthy cobalt, far from 

 any kind of vein* disseminated in a granite destitute of mica, aa magnetic 

 iron-sand is in roicanie rocks 



