THE COSQUISTAD011ES. 47 



decide whether these traditions expressed an historical fact, 

 or merely indicated, as we have already observed in another 

 place, that the first Lama, who was the offspring and symbol 

 of the sun, must necessarily have come from the countries 

 of the East. Be it as it may, it is not less certain that the 

 celebrity which the expeditions of Ordaz, Herrera, and Speier 

 had already given to the Orinoco, the Meta, and the province 

 of Papamene, situate between the sources of the Guaviare 

 and Caqueta, contributed to fix the fable of El Dorado near 

 to the eastern back of the Cordilleras. 



The junction of three bodies of troops on the table-land 

 of New Granada, spread through all that part of America 

 occupied by the Spaniards the news of an immensely rich 

 and populous country, which remained to be conquered. 

 Sebastian de Belalcazar marched from Quito by way of 

 Popayan (1536) to Bogota; Nicholas Federmann, coming 

 from Venezuela, arrived from the east by the plains of 

 Meta. These two captains found, already settled on the 

 table-land of Cundirumarca, the famous Adelantado Gonzalo 

 Ximenez de Queseda, one of whose descendants I saw near 

 Zipaquira, with bare feet, attending cattle. The fortuitous 

 meeting of the three conquistadores, one of the most extra- 

 ordinary and dramatic events of the history of the conquest, 

 took place in 1538. Belalcazar' s narratives inflamed the 

 imagination of warriors eager for adventurous enterprises ; 

 and the notions communicated to Luis Daza by the Indian 

 ot Tacunga were compared with the confused ideas which 

 Ordaz had collected on the Meta respecting the treasures of 

 a great king with one eye (Indio tuerto), and a people 

 clothed, who rode upon llamas. An old soldier, Pedro de 

 Limpias, who had accompanied Federmann to the table-land 

 of Bogota, carried the first news of El Dorado to Coro, 

 where the remembrance of the expedition of Speier (1535 

 1537) to the Rio Papamene was still fresh. It was from 

 this same town of Coro that Felipe von Huten (Urre, Utre) 

 undertook his celebrated voyage to the province of the 

 Omaguas, while Pizarro, Orellana, and Hernan Perez de 

 Quesada, brother of the Adelantado, sought for the gold 

 country at the Rio Napo, along the river of the Amazons, and 

 on the eastern chain of the Andes of New Grenada. The 

 natives, in order to get rid ol their troublesome guests, con 



