4. The Disastrous Expeditions to Find a Fictional City
Some explorers focused on the narrative of the Muisca people about chiefs who dropped golden gifts into Lake Guatavita for the water god. So they set out to drain the lake, and managed to lower its level enough to allow them to recover hundreds of golden artifacts from around its edges. However, whatever treasures had been tossed into the deeper waters remained beyond their reach. Other than the partial success at Lake Guatavita, the only results of the search for the fictional El Dorado were numerous lives wasted in fruitless treasure hunts.
One of the more jinxed searches was carried out by the English courtier and adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh, who conducted two expeditions in Guiana in search of El Dorado. In the second one, in 1617, an aged Raleigh grew too feeble to endure the rigors of the search. So he set up a base camp in Trinidad, and sent his son, Watt, up the Orinoco River to find the City of Gold. The attempt to locate the fictional city ended in utter disaster, and in the death of Raleigh’s son in a battle against the Spaniards. Things did not end much better for Raleigh himself: upon his return to England, King James I had him beheaded because he had defied his orders to avoid conflict with the Spanish.
