813 



of view, the expeditions on the Oroonoko, and 

 in a western and southern direction on |the 

 eastern back of the Andes, before the tradition 

 of el Dorado was spread among the conquistado- 

 res. This tradition, as we have noticed above, 

 had it's origin in the kingdom of Quito, where 

 Luis Daza (1535) met with an Indian of New 

 Grenada, who had been sent by his prince (no 

 doubt the zippa of Bogota, or the zaque of 

 Tunja), to demand assistance from Atahualpa, 

 inca of Peru. This ambassador boasted, as is 

 usual, the wealth of his country; but what 

 particularly fixed the attention of the Spaniards, 

 who were assembled with Daza in the town of 

 Tacunja (Llactacunga), was the history of a 

 lord, "who, his body covered with powdered 

 gold, went into a lake amid the mountains*." 

 This lake may have been the Laguna de Totta, 

 a little to the east of Sogamozo (Iraca) and of 

 Tunja (Hunca, the town of Huncahua), where 

 two chiefs, ecclesiastical and secular, of the 

 empire of Cundinamarca, or Cundirumarca, re- 

 sided; but no historical remembrance being 

 attached to this mountain lake, I rather suppose, 

 that it was the sacred lake of Guatavita-f, on the 



* Herera, Dec. V, p. 179 and 245. Fray Pedro Simon, p. 

 327. Piedrahita, p. 75. Lettera di Fernando Oviedo al 

 Cardinale Bembo de' ^9 Gennajo 1543, in Ramusio coll., 

 torn, iiij p. 416. 



f Views of the Cordilleras, vol. ii, (or xiv), PI, 67. Herera, 

 Deer, geogr., p. 32. 



