826 



the expedition of Diego de Ordaz, and led from 



town to town till he reached the capital of Do- 

 rado, had inflamed the imagination of Berrio. 



It is difficult to distinguish what this conquis- 

 tador had himself observed in going down the 

 Oroonoko from what he said he had collected 

 in a pretended journal of Martinez, deposited at 

 Portorico. It appears, that in general at that 

 period the same ideas prevailed respecting Ame- 

 rica, as those which we have long entertained in 

 regard to Africa; it was imagined, that more 

 civilization would be found toward the cen- 

 tre of the continent, than on the coasts. Already 

 Juan Gonzalez, whom Diego de Ordaz had sent 

 in 1531, to explore the banks of the Oroonoko> 

 announced, that " the farther you went up this 

 river, the more you saw the population increas- 

 ed*." Berrio mentions the often inundated pro- 

 vince of Amapaja, between the confluence of 

 the Meta and the Cuchivero, where he found 

 many little idols of molten gold, similar to 

 those which were fabricated at Cauchieto, east 

 of Coro. He believed this gold to be a pro- 

 learned from the Spaniards respecting the town of the Oraa- 

 guas seen by Huten, of the gilded man who sacrificed in 

 a lake, and of the flight of the family of Atahualpa into the 

 forests of Vilcabamba_, and the eastern Cordillera of the 

 Andes. (Garcilasso, vol. ii, p. 194.) 



* " Mientras mas se subia el Rio Viapari (Orinoco), may- 

 ores, se hallaban las poblaciones." Hereto, Dec. IV, p. 220, 



