Many Lost Their Lives in a Quest to Find This Fake City
Those who stuck with the original version of the Muisca story, about tribal chiefs who dropped golden gifts into a lake, had some success. They set out to drain Lake Guatavita, and lowered its level enough to recover hundreds of golden artifacts from around the lake’s edges. However, whatever treasures had been tossed into the deeper waters remained beyond their reach. Other than that partial success, the only results of the search for El Dorado were numerous lives wasted in fruitless treasure hunts.
One jinxed search was carried out by the English courtier, Sir Walter Raleigh, who conducted two expeditions in Guiana in search of El Dorado. In the second expedition, in 1617, Raleigh was too enfeebled by age to endure the rigors of the search. So he set up base camp in Trinidad, and sent his son, Watt, up the Orinoco River to find El Dorado. It ended in disaster, and the death of Raleigh’s son in a battle against the Spaniards. Things did not end much better for Raleigh. When he returned to England, King James I ordered him beheaded for defying his orders to avoid conflict with the Spanish.
