the world. This was the story as he remembered it. "In the land of Guiana there is a golden city named Manoa, but El Dorado in the Spanish language, which stands on the shores of a vast inland lake whose waters are salt, which is called Parima, and which is two hundred leagues in length. Juan Martinez was the first white man to visit it, and he did so through no fault of his own! When he was with the Spanish army at the port of Morequito, the store of powder, of which he had charge, caught fire and was destroyed. His commander, Diego Ordas, was so enraged that he sentenced him to death; but being appealed to by the soldiery with whom Martinez was a favourite, he commuted his punishment to this—that he should be set in a canoe alone, without any victual, only with his arms, and so turned loose on the great river. By the grace of God he floated down stream and was captured by certain Indians, who, never having seen a European before or anyone of that colour, carried him into a land to be wondered at, and so from town to town, until he came to the golden city of Manoa of which Inca was emperor. Now the emperor, when he beheld him, knew him to be a Christian, for not long since his brethren had been vanquished by the Spaniards in Peru; therefore he had him lodged in his palace and ordered that he should be respectfully[61] entertained. There Martinez lived for seven months, and all that while was not allowed to wander beyond the city's walls lest he should discover the country's secrets, for he had been brought thither blindfold and had been fifteen days in the passage. When, years later, he came to die, he confessed to a priest that he had entered Manoa at high noon and that then his captors had uncovered his eyes, and that he had travelled all that day till nightfall through its streets and all the next, from the rising to the setting of the sun, of so great extent was it, until he arrived at the palace. It was Martinez who had given to Manoa its name of El Dorado, because its roadways were paved with gold, and there was so great an abundance of that metal there that, before the emperor would carouse with his captains, all those who were to pledge him were stripped naked, and their bodies anointed with white balsam, over which through hollow canes was blown by slaves the dust of fine gold, so that when his guests sat down to drink with him, they glistened yellow in the sun like gilded statues. [61] "When Martinez had obtained his freedom and returned to Trinidad, and told his story, many other adventurers set out in quest of Manoa; but none so much as saw it save only Pedro de Urra. He, after incredible labours, at length arrived at a mountain peak whence,
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