48 THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN. 



tinually described Dorado as easy to be reached, and s 

 at no considerable distance. It was like a phantom that 

 seemed to flee before the Spaniards, and to call on them 

 unceasingly. It is in the nature of man, wandering on the 

 earth, to figure to himself happiness beyond the region which 

 he knows. El Dorado, similar to Atlas and the islands of 

 the Hesperides, disappeared by degrees from the domain of 

 geography, and entered that of mythological fictions. 



I shall not here relate the numerous enterprises which 

 were undertaken for the conquest of this imaginary country. 

 Unquestionably we are indebted to them in great part for 

 our knowledge of the interior of America ; they have been 

 useful to geography, as errors and daring hypotheses are often 

 to the search of truth : but in the discussion on which we 

 are employed, it is incumbent on me to rest only upon those 

 facts which have had the most direct influence on the con- 

 struction of ancient and modern maps. Hernan Perez de 

 Quesada, after the departure of his brother the Adelantado 

 for Europe, sought anew (1539) but this time in the moun- 

 tainous land north-east of Bogota, the temple of the sun 

 (Casa del Sol), of which Greronimo de Ortal had heard 

 spoken in 1536 on the bank-, of the Meta. The worship of 

 the sun introduced by Bochica, and the celebrity of the 

 sanctuary of Iraca, or Sogamozo, gave rise to those confused 

 reports of temples and idols of massy gold ; but on the 

 mountains as in the plains, the traveller believed himself to 

 be always at a distance from them, because the reality never 

 corresponded with the chimerical dreams of the imagination. 

 Francisco de Orellana, after having vainly sought El Dorado 

 with Pizarro in the Provincia de los Canelos, and on the 

 auriferous banks of the Napo, went down ( 1 540) the great 

 river of the Amazon. He found there, between the mouths 

 of the Javari and the Eio de la Trinidad (Tupura ?) a pro- 

 vince rich in gold, called Machiparo (Muchifaro), in the 

 vicinity of that of the Aomaguas, or Oinaguas. These 

 notions contributed to carry El Dorado toward the south- 

 east, for the names Omaguas (Om-aguas, Aguas), Dit-Aguas, 

 and Papamene, designated the same country that which 

 Jorge de Espira had discovered in his expedition to the 

 Oaquota. The Omaguas, the Manaos or Manoas, and the 

 ' (Uaupes or Guayupes) live in the plains on the 



