![]() Raleigh returned to England, where King James ordered him beheaded for, among other things, disobeying orders to avoid conflict with the Spanish. "The man goes into his cabin on the ship and kills himself," says Klingelhofer. He says Walter Raleigh was furious at the survivor who informed him of Watt's death and accused the survivor of letting his son be killed. The expedition was a disaster, and Watt Raleigh was killed in a battle with Spaniards.Įric Klingelhofer, an archaeologist at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, is trying to find the site or Raleigh's base camp on Trinidad. But Walter Raleigh, then an old man, stayed behind at a base camp on the island of Trinidad. During his second trip in 1617, he sent his son, Watt Raleigh, with an expedition up the Orinoco River. Raleigh's QuestĮnglish courtier Sir Walter Raleigh made two trips to Guiana to search for El Dorado. But the presumed fabulous treasure in the deeper water was beyond their reach. ![]() They lowered its level enough to find hundreds of pieces of gold along the lake's edge. The Spaniards didn't find El Dorado, but they did find Lake Guatavita and tried to drain it in 1545. But the Spaniards and other Europeans had found so much gold among the natives along the continent's northern coast that they believed there had to be a place of great wealth somewhere in the interior. The Spaniards started calling this golden chief El Dorado, "the gilded one." The ceremony of the gilded man supposedly ended in the late 15th century when El Dorado and his subjects were conquered by another tribe. Accounts of the ceremony vary, but they consistently say the new ruler was covered with gold dust, and that gold and precious jewels were thrown into the lake to appease a god that lived underwater. When a new chieftain rose to power, his rule began with a ceremony at Lake Guatavita. When Spanish explorers reached South America in the early 16th century, they heard stories about a tribe of natives high in the Andes mountains in what is now Colombia. And like all enduring legends, the tale of El Dorado contains some scraps of truth. The origins of El Dorado lie deep in South America. "El Dorado shifted geographical locations until finally it simply meant a source of untold riches somewhere in the Americas," says Jim Griffith, a folklorist in Tucson, Arizona.īut this place of immeasurable riches hasn't been found. Their searches for this treasure wasted countless lives, drove at least one man to suicide, and put another man under the executioner's ax. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans believed that somewhere in the New World there was a place of immense wealth known as El Dorado. Through the centuries, this passion gave rise to the enduring tale of a city of gold. To possess any amount of gold seems to ignite an insatiable desire to obtain more. ![]() The lust for gold spans all eras, races, and nationalities.
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