44* OTHER EABLY EXPEDITIONS. 



had no doubt that these wandering Spaniards were men 

 unfortunately shipwrecked in the expedition of Ordaz. He 

 crossed the savannahs of San Juan de los Llanos, which 

 were said to abound in gold; and made a long stay at 

 an Indian village called Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, and 

 afterwards La Fragua, south-east of the Paramo de la 

 Suma Paz. I have been on the western back of this 

 group of mountains, at Fusagasuga, and there heard that 

 the plains by which they are skirted toward the east, still 

 enjoy some celebrity for wealth among the natives. Speier 

 found in the populous village of La Fragua a Casa del 

 Sol (temple of the sun), and a convent of virgins similar 

 to those of Peru and New Granada. Were these the con- 

 sequence of a migration of religious rites towards the east ? 

 or must we admit that the plains of San Juan were their 

 first cradle ? Tradition, indeed, records that Bochica, the 

 legislator of New Granada and high-priest of Iraca, had 

 gone up from the plains of the east to the table-land of 

 Bogota. But Bochica being at once the offspring and the 

 symbol of the sun, his history may contain allegories that 

 are merely astrological. Speier, pursuing his way toward 

 the south, and crossing the two branches of the Guaviare, 

 which are the Ariare and the Guayavero (Guayare or Cani- 

 camare), arrived on the banks of the great Eio Papamene 

 or Caqueta. The resistance he met with during a whole 

 year in the province de los Cheques, put an end, in 1537, to 

 this memorable expedition. Nicolas Federmann and Gero- 

 nimo de Ortal (1536), who went from Macarapana and the 

 mouth of the Eio Neveri, followed (1535) the traces of 

 Jorge de Espira. The former sought for gold in the Eio 

 Grande de la Magdalena ; the latter endeavoured to discover 

 a temple of the sun (Casa del Sol) on the banks of the 

 Meta. Ignorant of the idiom of the natives, they seemed 

 to see everywhere, at the foot of the Cordilleras, the reflexion 

 of the greatness of the temples of Iraca (Sogamozo), which 

 was then the centre of the civilization of Cundinamarca. 



I have now examined, in a geographical point of view, the 

 expeditions on the Orinoco, and in a western and southern 

 direction on the eastern back of the Andes, before the tradi- 

 tion of El Dorado was spread among the conquistadores. 

 This tradition, as we have noticed above, had its origin in 



