By the middle of the 16th century, the Spaniards, with the meticulousness of an asphalt roller, pounded the territory of Mexico and Peru in search of gold and jewelry. To please the monarch and replenish their own pockets, it was necessary to find new "gold-bearing" territories. And here one of the conquistadors named Sebastian de Belalcazar, an associate of Pizarro, the discoverer of the Incas, an old Indian told that somewhere in the north of the country there is a fabulous land, where gold is apparently invisible, and these treasures are owned by kind hearts and extremely naive people. Presumably, the Indian had the gift of an amazing storyteller, because his descriptions awakened the imagination of an energetic Spaniard. The stern conqueror, dying with delight, listened to the blood-stirring details of how the candidate for the leader was washed in sacred waters, after which his body was covered with a layer of pure gold. At the same time, the process of ablution is accompanied by golden waterfalls - they literally sleep on gold, eat, drink and even, excuse me, go to the outhouse.
Attraction of the coveted metal
Struck by this story, the conqueror immediately set out on another campaign. At the beginning of 1536, he reached the wanted lands - the country of the Muisca, one of the Chibcha Indian tribes. This tribe really had an easy attitude towards gold. Muisca, on their scale of values, gave precious metals last place after food and weapons. True, it turned out that there was not so much gold in their possessions at that time, especially considering that Belalcazar was not the first to achieve his goal - the first was another representative of the Spanish crown, Gonzalo de Caseda. The Spaniards found a common language, coming to a common opinion - the treasures of the Muisca are no longer the same as before, and if they have survived somewhere, then, most likely, at the bottom of the sacred Lake Guatavita. This lake was a place for performing religious rituals, and there, like into a sacred hole,the Muisca dumped their gold reserves.
Over the years, the surface of Guatavita was tried to somehow "move apart" in order to extract the coveted metal from it. But every time something got in the way: either excessive depth, or too thick layer of silt, or imperfection of the machines that pump water. And in 1965, the Colombian government declared Lake Guatavita a national reserve and banned all kinds of work.
So the secret of the secret country has not yet been revealed. Since then, everyone who is captivated by this dream has to be content with the confessions of the Spaniard Martinez, who in the middle of the 16th century lived in Eldorado for seven months and described in detail the customs of the royal court and the rulers of the country.
What did Martinez say?
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We can say that Martinez was the main creator of the myth of El Dorado.
Although, do we have the right to call a story that a person saw with his own eyes a myth? And Martinez saw a lot of interesting things. He said that he was caught by the Guyans (as the local people were called at that time) and taken to a country "worthy of surprise." The final destination of the trip was their capital Manoa, where he lived for seven months in the palace of the local ruler. And there was so much gold in this palace that Martinez was speechless.
He walked the streets of the amazing city, stroked the walls, examined the decorations and could not marvel at the abundance that was there. The good Guyans eventually released the Spaniard and loaded up with as much precious metal as he could carry. But on the way home, hostile Indians attacked him and took away all the gold, except “two calabash -