400
THE "GOLDEN KING."
the M a r a n o n to establish themselves on the Rio N e g r o . A taste for the marvellous, and a wish t o invest the descriptions o f the N e w C o n t i n e n t with s o m e o f t h e c o l o u r i n g o f classic antiquity, n o d o u b t c o n t r i b u t e d t o give great i m p o r t ance t o the first narratives o f Orellana. I n p e r u s i n g t h e works o f V e s p u c c i , F e r n a n d o C o l u m b u s , Geraldini, O v i e d o , and Pietro Martyr, we recognize this tendency o f the writers o f the sixteenth c e n t u r y t o find a m o n g the newly discovered nations all that t h e G r e e k s have related t o us o f the first age o f the world, and o f the manners o f the barbarous S c y thians and Africans. B u t if O v i e d o , in addressing his letters to cardinal B e m b o , t h o u g h t fit t o flatter t h e taste o f a man so familiar with the study o f antiquity, Sir W a l t e r Raleigh had a less poetic aim. He s o u g h t t o fix the attention o f Queen Elizabeth o n the great empire o f G u i a n a , the c o n quest o f which he p r o p o s e d . H e gave a description o f the rising o f that gilded king (el dorado),* whose chamberlains, furnished with l o n g tubes, blew p o w d e r e d g o l d every m o r n ing over his b o d y , after having r u b b e d it over with aromatic oils : b u t nothing could be better adapted to strike the imagination o f queen Elizabeth, than the warlike republic o f women without husbands, who resisted the Castilian h e r o e s . Such were the motives which prompted exaggeration on the part o f those writers who have given most reputation to the A m a z o n s o f A m e r i c a ; b u t these motives d o n o t , I think, suffice for entirely rejecting a tradition, w h i c h is spread a m o n g various nations having no c o m m u n i c a t i o n s o n e with another. Thirty years after L a C o n d a m i n e visited Q u i t o , a P o r t u guese astronomer, Ribeiro, w h o has traversed the A m a z o n , and the tributary streams which run into that river o n t h e northern side, has confirmed on the spot all that the learned Frenchman had advanced. He found the same traditions a m o n g the Indians; and he collected them with the g r e a t e r impartiality as he did not himself believe; that the A m a z o n s the nephritic colic and epilepsy, from their fathers, who received them from the women without husbands." * The term el dorado, which signifies the gilded, was not originally the name of the country. The territory subsequently distinguished by that appellation was at first known as the country of " e l Rey Dorado" (the Gilded King).