The Gold Industry in Guiana. 77 
and knives, but on account of the softness of the 
metal, which would not keep an edge, it had gone out 
of use. 
Early in the sixteenth century arose the story of El 
Dorado, the gilded king, who lived far in the interior of 
Guiana. Every morning he was anointed all over with 
a kind of balsam, and afterwards gilded with gold dust. 
How the gold dust was obtained may be seen from the 
following extract from a Spanish letter :- — " Being asked 
how they got the same gold, they told us they went to 
a certain down or plain, and pulled or digged up the 
grass by the roots ; which done, they took the earth, 
putting it in great baskets, which they carried to wash 
at the river, and that which came in powder they kept 
for their drunken feasts, and that which was in pieces 
they wrought into eagles."* From these reports of El 
Dorado there was something like a rush of the Spaniards 
to the Orinoco. RALEIGH well describes an encounter 
with a gold prospering party of that time. When his 
party was almost starving they spied four canoes coming 
down the river. The rowers put on all their strength 
to catch them, in hopes of getting cassava bread, while 
the Indian paddlers pulled for the shore, two of the 
canoes succeeded in getting into a creek, while the 
others were captured. The Indians having got into the 
bush, search was made for them, and RALEIGH found, in 
creeping through the bushes, " an Indian basket hidden, 
which was the refiner's basket, for he found in it quick- 
silver, saltpetre, and divers things for the trial of metals, 
and also the dust of such ore as had been refined. "f He 
heard afterwards from an Indian chief, that there were 
* Hakluyt's Voyages. t Discoverie of Guiana. 
