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THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
92
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Public Library
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BY GERMAN
DATE DUE
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COPYRIGHT 1942 BY GERMAN ARCXNIEGAS
FEINTED IN U. 8* A, BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS
PUBLISHED IN MAY 1942
PUBLISHED ON THE SAME DAY IN THE DOMINION OP CANADA
BY ,THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
TO
AURORA ANGUEYRA, my mother
GABRIELA VIEIRA, my wife
AURORA ARCINIEGAS, my daughter
JUL 1 5 194!
Contents
I: EUROPE., OR THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 9
II: TALE OF Two CAPITALISTS AND A
LAWYER 31
III: SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 55
IV: FROM COURT-ROOM TO CAPTAIN OF
MUTINEERS 77
V; MUD, CHIGGERS, AND THE INDIAN
WOMAN 107
VI; THE INDIAN KINGS 129
VII: MEETING OF THE GERMAN, THE ANDA-
LUSIAN, AND THE DONKEY-BOY 151
VIII: PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 173
IX: THE RETURN 203
X; ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN
AMERICA 233
XI: SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 257
XII: QUESADA AND MANKIND 275
BIBLIOGRAPHY 297
I
Europe, or the Paradise of the !Mad
From northern parts, and also from France and Italy, came
piles of books on politics and affairs of state, aphorisms,
speeches, commentaries on Cornelius, Tacitus, or on the Repub
lics of Plato and Aristotle. This harmful merchandise was re
ceived by a venerable censor, whose candid and prudent mind
was mirrored in his face; he, when such cargoes arrived, said,
"O books, perilous even to the faithful, in whom truth and re
ligion serve convenience! How many tyrannies have you intro
duced into the world, and how many kingdoms and republics
have been lost through your counsels! , , "
SAAVEDRA FAJABDO
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE
OF THE MAD
IN the great overturn of history which occurred at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, Spain spilled and
spread not only throughout America, but across the
whole face of Europe. On this side of the Atlantic, un
der the banners of those daring adventurers who sallied
forth to conquest; on the European side, in the cause of
Charles V.
Both Spain and Europe appear to have been completely
mad. The armies those Spanish tercios which were to
win eternal fame carried even in victory a certain air of
the barbarian. The culture Humanism was struggling to
emerge, and kept breaking its head against the hard fa
naticism of crusaders who had not so long before triumphed
over the Arabs, The men* those who left for America were
almost always the same footloose vagabonds who had been
tramping up and down Europe, now at the sack of Rome,
now going as far as Vienna to fight against Suleiman the
Magnificent. This was the very moment when Europeans
finally asserted their dominance over that ancient continent
by pushing the Turks back across the Bosporus and the
Moors down out of Spain, But there is no government,, how
ever strong, which can order and control a chaotic life that
seethes with a passion for military enterprise and meta
physical reform*
In the caravels that set out from Gddiz for the Indies
went bandits, saints, robbers, intellectuals, capitalists in a
11
12 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
word, men; men who, tried in the crucible of a contradictory
struggle, would some of them take the road that is usually
called saintly, while others would head for the laurel
wreaths of heroism. But in the last analysis the passions
which set the pattern for the movement were the same as
those that give colour and motive force to all life. Chance
set one man up on the pedestal of fame and buried another
in the mud of infamy. Aguirre was to emerge as a tyrant,
Cort&s to stand forth as a god. Yet the substance out of
which both were made was the same that mortal clay
common to all mankind.
"And I remember," says the historian Oviedo, "that the
Catholic monarchs commanded their judges and justices
throughout all Castile that men sentenced to death, or to
the cutting off of hand or foot, or to other vile and bodily
punishment, should be exiled to the Indies in perpetuity
or for a limited period, depending on the nature of their
offence, in place of the aforesaid death or punishment
which would thus be commuted/
Many great men came out of this. History, old moralist
and concealer that she is, thereafter sought out honourable
genealogies for them, or tailored them to measure, for it is
not good that heroes should emerge out of the mire of
misery*
In Spain the family, like the nascent state, like society
that seethed and bubbled, was a cross-word puzzle. Jimenez
de Quesada, the founder of Santa F^ de Bogotd and dis
coverer of the New Kingdom of Granada, was not called
Quesada but Jimenez. This warning seems to me useful, for
since I believe that whatever I write here is, from the his-
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 13
torical point of view, open to contradiction, I am tempted
to the sin of saying once and for all that in this matter of
the Americas die fictional approach is more valuable than
the historical.
Throughout the whole conquest of America one never
knows who is who. Names are always being changed about,
One never knows where men were born, who their parents
were, or what were their original names. * Sebastidn de
Belalcdzar, for example, was named Sebastidn Moyano,
but historians waste reams of paper saying some that he
was called Belalcdzar, and others, Benalc&zar. As a matter
of fact he was probably not a Moyano at all but a Garcia.
Let the reader go to Quito, Popay&n, or Call, however, and
tell residents that the founder of their city was named
Garcia Moyano, and they will laugh in his face, if they do
not stone him to death.
Among the conquerors, Andres L6pez, who founded
Ibagu6, is set down in history as Andres Galarza. And Pe-
droso, that mighty conquistador who crossed the central
cordillera of the New Kingdom while fighting the Panches,
is called Francisco Niifiez. As for the historians, the great
Oviedo is not Oviedo but Hernandez, G6mara is L6pez,
Ocariz is F16rez, Piedrahita is Fernandez, to cite only four
among those men who wrote our first chronicles, And as
no one calls them Herndndez, L6pez, F16rez, or Fernandez,
it would seem to put even the first line of their daring his
tories in some doubt,
Cervantes himself was to recognize this problem of trans
position when, talking of the moment when the ingenious
* Even the locale of this story partakes of this confusion in names, for
the New Kingdom of Granada, having passed through a series of shifts
of both name and frontiers, is now Colombia. TRANSLATOR.
14 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
gentleman was seeking a proper name for himself, he said
he "determined at length to call himself Don Quixote,
whence some of the authors of this most true history have
concluded that his name was certainly Quixada, and not
Quesada as others would have it."
Actually, of course, the great leaders of the American
conquest sprang to life in America Cort6s in Cuba, Pizarro
in Panama, and Don Pedro de Heredia in Santa Marta,
They were born with their beards full-grown and their
bodies covered with scars. Their youth has been lost amid
the fantastic conjectures with which elegant biographers
and indefatigable historians have tried to ennoble it. As a
matter of cold fact, the real mother of Pizarro, for instance,
was that straying sow which suckled him when he, a baby,
was abandoned in the doorway of a Trujillo church*
Going back to Quesada, I think the transposition in his
name has a very simple explanation. What happened was
that through an excess of caution children in Spain were
not given their father s name but their mother s, or the
name of a clan or a city. Moreover, let the reader note,
though he be accused of Freudian tendencies, that only the
eldest son dared use his father s name, and that even in this
case the public, low-minded and malicious, went on calling
Tbim by his second name, which was his mother s. An aber
ration similar to that found among the natives of certain
American tribes which admit into their dynasties no suc
cession except that of the king s sister, for this maternal line
gives the sole certainty that the royal heirs will be of royal
blood*
The amusing thing is that only Pizarro, so definitely a
bastard, went down in history bearing the name of his
probable father, Captain Gonzalo Pizarro, instead of the
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 15
name of his mother, Francisca Gonzdlez of the outskirts of
Huertas de las Animas.
In short, and to linger on this small point no longer, the
truth is that in Spanish genealogies the fact of paternity,
which was to grow more important as time went on, is not
painted in very vivid colours. Each one chose the name that
pleased him, and thus in the same family, among brothers
and sisters, one became known as Jimenez, another as
P6rez, while Andrea and Magdalena called themselves by
the family name, Quesada, which was the name of a town.
But in this matter of families there is something more*
When a plant puts out a great many leaves and gives very
little fruit the country people say it is "going off into mere
vice." Something similar seems to have happened to those
genealogical trees which were transplanted to America.
Some of them had their roots buried deep in the layers of
the centuries and were enriched with the finest fertilizer
known the blood of Moors. This blood gives both honour
and fecundity. A family that had killed many Moors would
always stand in the first rank, Among the Quesadas there
was a great deal of this. The very name commemorates a
battle which an ancestor, mayor of the town of Quesada,
waged against the Moorish, quarter.
There was not a better-planted tree in the whole genea
logical forest. The founders of the family were pure Goths,
Then they mixed with the Moors of Toledo, though keep
ing their Christian prerogatives, and became Mozarabs.
The noblest, and most Gothic, of the family was a princess
named Palomela, who had two blue doves (palomas] on
16 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
a silver field for her coat o arms. An author who thought
this matter of trees important, like Don Juan Fl6rez de
Ocariz, for example, would hang coats of arms on all the
branches, finding Quesadas always to have been com
mandants, always with an illustrious lineage, and no hig
gling about it.
Coming down to the threshold of the conquest, we find
Don Luis Jimenez and his wife Isabel de Rivera to have had
seven children, Gonzalo Jimenez, Herndn P&rez, Francisco
Jim6nez, Jer6nimo Jimenez, Melchor Quesada, Andrea
and Magdalena Jimenez de Quesada. With so fertile a
background one might expect a whole fistful of competing
shoots. But the tree, planted with so much care, was trans
planted to America, and there it "went off into mere vice/
or trailed away through the invisible branches of bastardy.
Taking Quesadas to America was like taking aguacates or
chirimoyos to Spain. However carefully they were fer
tilized, however much infidel blood was shed about their
roots, they did not flourish. Especially in the male line*
There is no doubt that the conquerors won, among many
other kinds of riches in the New World, real treasures in
the Indian women. If genealogists would only list the
grafts in family trees they would find them passing on a
great many fine things to history* But there were certain
difficulties, due to social instability, which prevented the
collection of such data, and so the trees exhausted them
selves and succumbed*
When Quesada came into the world at the end of the
fifteenth century, the fabulous continent, he continent
possessed by madness, was not America but Europe, Nor
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE OP THE MAD 17
is this the first time that an historian seeking common
sense and practical wisdom in the lives of men has had
to turn his eyes toward this side of the Atlantic. To the
fifteenth century, it was not the discovery and conquest
of America which were so impressive, but the events in
European history which were occurring at the same time.
Spain, properly enough, played a role which, in the Old
World and in those days, was of the first importance. Span
ish cardinals stormed St Peter s seat, and luxury and loose
living overflowed. Spanish soldiers invaded Rome, and
Catalans and Aragonese seemed to Rome and Naples like
missionaries of a new barbarism. There was a Spanish queen
who lost her head. There was a Spanish king who bought
the crown of Germany for eight hundred thousand florins.
And the world apparently demanded of Erasmus that he
eulogize this folly,
The infancy of Quesada, born in Moorish territory, cov
ered the period when the monarchs were humiliating Moor
ish settlements and decreeing a merciless persecution of
the Jews* What the Germans were to do in the twentieth
century in the name of an Aryan fantasy the Spanish mon
archs did in identical terms during the fifteenth and six
teenth centuries in tibe name of Catholicism. For the Span
ish world the edict of 1492 against the Jews had more
importance than the so-called discovery of America which
occurred in the same year, and it even produced for it
greater riches. That edict contains such charming bits as
this:
With the approval and advice of certain prelates and
grandees of our Kingdoms and other persons of knowledge
and understanding, and after long deliberation, we have
agreed to expel from our Kingdoms all Jews, men and
18 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
women, and they shall never return to them nor to any part
of them; and to this effect we order this letter of ours to be
issued, wherein we decree that all Jews, male and female,
of whatever age, who live and dwell and are in our said
Kingdoms and Dominions, the native-born and non-native
alike, who have come by whatever manner and for what
ever cause, or are in them, shall, before the end of the
month of July of the present year, leave all our said King
doms and Dominions with their sons and daughters and
servants, male and female, and attendants, old and young,
of whatever age; and that they shall not dare to return to
or to be in any part, either to live in or to traverse it, in
any manner whatsoever: under penalty if they fail to
comply and are found in the vicinity of our Kingdoms and
Dominions or come into them in any way whatsoever of
death and confiscation of all their goods for our govern**
ment and exchequer; and they shall incur these penalties
by this same act and decree without further process, sen
tence, or declaration. . , . And likewise we give leave and
licence to said Jews, male and female, to take out of our
Kingdoms and Dominions, by land or sea, their goods and
chattels provided they do not take gold nor silver nor
coined money nor other things forbidden by tine laws of
our Realm, but merchandise and such effects as are not
contraband, or bills of exchange."
From then on, the persecution of the Jews became the
most dramatic event in Spanish life, especially in the cities
which had just become die objects of the Reconquest In
popular speech and in royal papers alike the Jews were
called marranos (which means both pigs and outcasts) and
it is interesting to note how the marranos, persecuted in
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 19
Spain, kept arriving in other countries. At convenient mo
ments the Spanish Popes issued bulls against the outcasts.
Benedetto Croce, in his penetrating study of Spain s influ
ence on Italian life during the Renaissance, presents many
very curious details; for example:
"The migration into Italy of the Jews and the marranos,
persecuted in Spain, where they were burning them alive,
increased* Sixtus IV in 1483 and Innocent VIII in 1487 pub
lished bulls against both Jews and marranos. In 1492 the
great Spanish persecution broke out against them, and Jews
arrived from Spain fainting, filthy, pallid, with sunken eyes,
like walking corpses, and set up shops in our cities. At Na
ples, writes a chronicler in August of that year, ships loaded
with Jews began to arrive, some coming from Italy, and
others from Spain, all expelled by His Majesty the Spanish
king/ In Rome, he wrote in June 1493, de prime parte mar-
rani steterunt in maxime quantitate extra portam Appiam
aput caput bovis, ibi tentoria tendentes, intraveruntque in
urbem secreto mode.* In Ferrara, in July, there was talk of
certain marranos expelled by the king of Spain/ Among
these Jews were learned men of great worth, like that Judas
Abrabanel who was afterward called Leone Ebreo/
The year 1492 is famous for the discovery of the New
World, but to Spain and other countries it was important
for other things, Granada was recaptured in that year, the
edict was issued against the Jews, and under the name
of Alexander VI a Spaniard was made Pope. That same
year the same Alexander VI entrusted the crosier of the
bishopric of Valencia, and with it the richest archdiocese
in Spain, to his bastard son Caesar. We are, as we shall see
in greater detail later, in the midst of a period when pro-
20 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
fessional careers developed in Europe with extraordinary
rapidity. Madness lay, we repeat, not in the new continent
but in the old. Caesar Borgia was only seventeen years old
when he was crowned with the red hat of a cardinal. What
a sublime and stimulating example for the ambitious Span
ish adventurers who were setting forth to conquer the In
dies!
But let us go on with the role Spain was playing in the
European scene, for that gives an excellent picture of the
kind of world it was in which the ardour of religious fanatics
headed by the Catholic monarchs met and combated the
licence of the Italian Renaissance, The Spanish family of
the Borgias reflected the character of those days. For the
second time let us quote the words of Benedetto Crocc:
"Bullfights, like games played on horseback with reecl
swords, had not been seen in Rome since the days of Calix-
tus. Under Innocent VIII and using the conquest of Gra
nada as a pretext, *plures Prelati Hispanic nationis . ,
tauros donarunt publice occidendos! Caesar Borgia had
his countrymen s own passion for bullfights, In Rome on
July 24, 1500, which was St. John s Day, on foot behind the
Basilica of St. Peter, with a short sword and a mukta, he
played and killed five bulls, cutting the head off one of
them. Another time, detained in Cesena, he presented the
town with the death of a fighting bull as a spectacle. Ha
and his Spanish entourage celebrated the marriage of his
sister, Lucretia Borgia, to Alphonso d Este in 1502 with a
bullfight, She had various Spanish ladies at her side, in
cluding Angela Borgia, Catalina, Juana Rodriguez; on car-
tain occasions she appeared dressed in the Spanish man
ner/
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 21
It is a curious fact that, whereas the political life of
Europe was geared to the impulses of youth, the his
tory of America was made by men of mature judgment,
Charles V and Jimenez de Quesada were born within a few
months of each other. But while Jimenez de Quesada was
to wait thirty-six years before he began the conquest of the
New Kingdom of Granada, Charles V won the crown of
Germany at nineteen. And while Caesar Borgia captured
a cardinal s seat at seventeen, Columbus did not become
an admiral until almost the end of his life.
When Jimenez de Quesada, like many another Andalu-
sian, came of age the panorama spread before him could
not have been more alluring. On one side of the ocean King
Charles I of Spain was being crowned emperor of Ger
many under the name of Charles V; on the other side
Hernia Cortes was completing the conquest of Mexico*
But between those two events, which the youth of Spain
watched with such amazement, there was a substantial
difference. The conquest of Mexico fits neatly into the logic
and the drama of history it was the result of a daring war
in which the military forces directed by Cortes moved in
accordance with the combinations dictated by his diplo
matic skill The purchase of the German crown, on the
other hand, resulted from an agreement between bankers
and inexperienced youths. In Cuba, the rivalry between
Governor Diego Veldzquez and Cort&s was a war between
men full-grown. In Germany, the seven great electors were
to place the crown on the brow of the lad who would pay
them the most attractive sum of money.
This is the way the plot developed. When Emperor
Maximilian died, the German crown was sought by three
lads for whom history was reserving sgjicious habitations
22 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
in the near future. One was Charles I, king of Spain, who
was nineteen years old; another, Francis I of France, who
was twenty-five; die third, Henry VIII of England, who was
twenty-eight. Charles had been king of Spain since he was
sixteen, Francis king of France since he was twenty-one,
Henry king of England from the time he was eighteen.
Initiated into governing, all of them dowered with robust
personalities, all equally greedy, they fixed their eyes on a
crown and what a crown 1 at the age when most lads are
going to the taverns to talk to their sweethearts or to plot
small local insurrections.
As I said, the victory would go to the one who most suc
cessfully wheedled the electors. It was a question of money
and skill The bankers would have the last word, The fate
of Germany hung on something similar to a stock mar
ket transaction. Maximilian had already spent six hundred
thousand florins buying the goodwill of the electors in fa
vour of his grandson King Charles of Spain, But, in Wynd-
ham Lewis s good-humoured phrase, "the sound business
sense of the electors asserted itself/* With Maximilian dead,
the electors declared the deal ended, and again offered
the crown for public sale.
The incidents of this struggle could not be more in
structive. King Francis said he was prepared to spend three
million florins for the crown, and he offered one of the
electors according to the biographer of Charles V, Wynd-
ham Lewis, it was an ecclesiastical elector, the archbishop
of Mainz a hundred and twenty thousand florins and the
legateship of Germany for life. The elector of Brandenburg
and the archbishop of Cologne were also bribed by Francis,
For his part, Henry of England, or his chaplain, Wolsay,
sent Pace so that he might have a stake in the auction, Chap*
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 23
lain Wolsey, the head of Henry s Cabinet, was a man of no
small ambition. Twice he had presented himself as candi
date for the Papacy. Leo X made him a cardinal, and he
manipulated half of European politics. Nevertheless., Pace
yielded before the munificence of Charles and Francis, and
advised the discreet retiring of Henry s candidacy advice
which Wolsey heeded like the good Englishman he was.
Charles bought the crown for eight hundred and fifty-
two thousand florins, "The archbishop of Mainz," as Lewis
tells it, "expressed himself after some discussion as willing
to accept Charles s offer of seventy-two thousand florins,
and the other electors came into line/ The bargain was
made by the house of Fugger, which had lent King Charles
five hundred thousand florins. From now on we shall see
Charles shoulder to shoulder with those old bankers who
had been gaining positions of increasing power from the
time when Andreas Fugger, called by his contemporaries
"the rich Fugger," was knighted in 1452. For it must not
be forgotten that money creates gentlemen, or as the Span
iard will say, "Poderoso caballero es Don Dinero"
While these lads were thus haggling over the German
crown, Herndn Cortes, already thirty-five years old, trained
in the hard life of Cuba, was shutting himself up in Mexico
with a few hundred men, was struggling against armies of
thousands of Indians, was being crowned with victory and
experiencing the hardship of defeat, until he gained for
Spain a wide and wonderful land, an empire so complete
and so well defined that it would be known in the chronicles
by no less a name than New Spain.
These are the two examples that shone before Lawyer
Jimenez de Quesada in his youth while he was litigating
against his own father in the affair of some cloth dyers. It
24 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
could not have entered his imagination that twenty years
later he would be taking part in a scene similar to that of
Charles, Francis, and Henry disputing over a new kingdom.
There is a curious analogy between the case of Germany
and that of the New Kingdom of Granada, Just as the three
kings of Spain, England, and France met by appointment
in 1519 to see who would lay hands on the German crown,
so the three adventurers Jim6nez de Quesada, Sebastidn
de Belalc&zar, and Nicholas Federmann were to meet un
expectedly face to face in 1539 on the summit of the Andes
to dispute the conquest of the New Kingdom of Gra
nada.
The difference lies in the fact that those who ware to
contend for the Kingdom would be not three youths buy
ing the goodwill of bishops and electors, but three soldiers,
three stout captains who would stake their lives on the
most daring expedition that history records, Behind each
conqueror there would be no court pomp, but armies num
bering fewer than two hundred survivors each 9 armies
ravaged by hunger and fatigue, armies in which each sol
dier would have the individual prowess of a bandit and be
capable of feats of the greatest daring. The captains them
selves would be men whose titles had been won in un
known lands where neither the authority of the king nor the
rule of law prevailed. Belalcfear and Quesada were muti
neers who incited troops to rebel behind the governors
back and made themselves masters of their men and their
destinies. Nicholas Federmann was, by one of those ironies
so common to America, merely a man who worked fa the
name of German bankers*
But the valley of the Rhine is one thing, and the high
uplands of America another. And in deciding title to the
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 25
New Kingdom, victory would go to the lawyer Quesada,
while the Aryan Nicholas Federmann, backed by the Ger
man bankers, stood shivering with cold in the midst of his
tattered troops.
The great tragic novel through which Spain, that Spain
which Jimenez de Quesada had before his eyes, was moving
in the sixteenth century took perfect shape in the figure of
Dona Juana the Mad, who wandered back and forth across
the rear of the stage like a silent and melancholy shadow.
Undoubtedly it was within the very body of Europe that
madness lay.
A strange and opportune fate had placed Dona Juana like
the pivot of a pair of scales between her parents, the Cath
olic monarchs Isabel and Ferdinand, in whose reign the
conquest of America began, and her son Charles V, whose
reign crowned that high emprise which was so full of con
tradictions and absurdities.
Jimenez de Quesada would have been barely seven years
old when the funeral cortege accompanying the remains
of Philip the Handsome arrived in Granada. Three months
earlier had this king died in Burgos. His wife, Dona Juana,
had not left the sick man s bedside for a moment. The jeal
ousies which had tormented her when Philip, well built and
charming, had won the name "the Handsome" woke again
as the much-loved body began to be consumed by the
flames of fever. Juana, touching her husband s body with
mingled longing and terror, felt the fever turn to frost. The
king s hands, so soon to stiffen in death, she crossed on his
manly breast. Like a sleep-walker she put an ear to the wind
to listen to the music of the spheres while the king s soul
26 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
was taking leave of its mortal lodging. Not a tear misted
her eyes. No word escaped her lips.
Amid the murmuring of friars and the light of torches she
moved behind the catafalque to the monastery of Mira-
Bores, where she spent ninety days in jealous vigil. Near
Christmas time Juana had the coffin placed in a splendid
coach. Four stately horses drew it. Night, and the convent
patios echoed to the clatter of horses* hoofs, the ringing of
bells, the prayers, and the murmurings. A train of servants
carried torches. The mad queen began the march to Gra
nada. She did not want the sun to light her locks, nor to
see her face in a clear mirror. A widow, she said, who had
lost the sun of her soul ought never to show herself in the
light of day. The country children, preparing villandcos of
rejoicing because the Infant Jesus was born, looked out
half-opened windows at the army of shadows lit by resin
torches and moving along the road like a train of crape and
sparks against the blue enamel of the night,
When the cortege neared Torquemuda, the queen culled
a halt in the patio of what she thought was a monastery*
Then she saw a nun appear, and Dona Juana trembled with
horror. At once she made the cortege leave the place and
go out into the open fields. The wind shook the torches,
then put them out with a tragic sputtering that crowned
with stars the disordered head of madness. Only when the
casket was opened and she could touch Philip s corpse did
the queen grow more tranquil
The country people carried this tale about, scarcely dar
ing to tell it. In the cities there were moments of stupor
and amazement. The queen retired from the world. From
now on her figure, gripped by death, was never to leave
the cloisters, But all Spain is crossed with arched corridors
EUROPE, OH THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 27
where simple people would see the shade of Dona Juana
pass while her son Charles, king of Spain and emperor of
Germany^ also bowed his head by day and hid his eyes to
rest them amid the eternal mysteries.
On March 14, 1525, the victory which the armies of
Charles V had won over the French became known to
Madrid. Francis himself had fallen into the hands of the
Spaniards. Never had die soldiers of King Charles dreamed
of a more extraordinary triumph , The messenger, strik
ing clamour from the very paving stones with the shod
hoofs of his flying horse, took a month to carry the account
of the victory from Pavia to Madrid. His passing awoke
paeans of enthusiasm. When he reached the king s palace
he made a profound reverence. Then, his voice still ringing
with excitement, he gave Charles the news and placed cer
tain documents in his hands. The king looked the messenger
up and down from head to foot, took him all in, and re
tired to pray. In the palace the victory went muffled with
a mute, more like the echoes of a church organ than the
clarion call of a war trumpet.
There was one thing in those days which might have
tormented a Spaniard if he had ever entertained any doubt
about it, That was the constant shock suffered by a nation
which still lived in the intellectual world of the Middle
Ages, and yet was battered night and morning by the ar
dent wave of the Renaissance which reached it from Italy,
by the biting wave of the Reformation which came to it
from Germany, by the ironic and subtle wave of Human-
28 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
ism which flowed from the Low Countries. All Europe was
in the grip of a feverish desire to change its values, to revise
its intellectual life ? and only Spain with Charles V who
retired to pray in the midst of his victories and was to
end his life in a monastery Spain with its Catholic king,
its mad queen, remained silent and alone, tightening the
screws of die Inquisition. This was the country of Domingo
de Guzmdn and Ignacio de Loyola. In the universities men
thought more about prayer than about study. For the true
Spaniard the moral struggle did not exist, nor the nightly
anguish of placing in the balances of conscience the tradi
tional truth on one side and on the other the possibility of
denying it. The Spaniard was master of the absolute truth,
and his mission was reduced to clubbing the infidels* The
news which came to him from other countries merely fired
his desire to combat heresies, to maltreat the lukewarm, to
burn the Jews,
The same year in which the contradictory spirit of Co
lumbus touched American soil there was born in Valencia
a man who was to adorn his life with the finest qualities of
the spirit Luis Vives, the comrade of Erasmus, passionate
friend of the truth, philosopher of education. Like Colum
bus, Luis Vives felt in his bones that intelligence could
not light its peaceful lamps on Spanish soil Once they
offered him a chair in the University of Alcald, but Vlve$
who spent his life in the Low Countries or in England
talking with the authors of In Praise of Folly and Utopia*
shunned the Spain of Domingo da Guzmdn. He refused
to occupy the chair which was offered him, "To have es
tablished himself in his own country," says his biographer*
"would have rendered less service to letters, and would
have meant running the same risks as did Juan de Ver-
EUROPE, OR THE PARADISE OF THE MAD 29
gara, Bernardino Tovar, Pedro de Lerma, Luis de la Ca-
dena, Alonso de Virus, and so many others of his renas
cent countrymen who fell victim to the implacable madness
of the Inquisition."
It was in that very Alcald that Diego L6pez de Zuniga,
the theologian from Extremadura, was professor, Under the
protection of Cardinal Cisneros he had had a part in creat
ing the polyglot Bible which was to shed lustre on Spain
for so many centuries. Well, then when Erasmus pub
lished his New Testament, praised by Leo X and the most
learned doctors in Christendom, Zuniga called him "igno
rant of the sacred Scriptures, unlearned in grammatical art,
stupid, untaught, unbalanced, a calumniator who babbles
in delirium, brutalized by his country s fats and beer/
This was the atmosphere of the universities of Spain, the
air which anyone breathed who, like Jimenez de Quesada,
was studying canonical law to qualify for his degree. The
conquerors who left for America would there have to con
cern themselves more with human things than with divine.
Those who stayed in Spain heading the armies of the
Church would be ardent defenders of the faith. The very
year in which Jim6nez de Quesada gave life and form to
the New Kingdom of Granada, Ignacio de Loyola was to
found the Company of Jesus. And while St. Francis of Bor
gia years later was occupying San Ignacio s post as head of
the Company, his relative Don Juan de Borja would ad
minister the affairs of men from the Presidency of the Royal
Audiencia in Santa F6 de Bogotl
Contrary to what is usually said, Spain was doing the real
work of propagating the faith not in America, but in Spain
itself,
And in what a fashion!
n
. 7a\t of 7wo Capitalists
and a Lawyer
The publication on June 2, 1537, of a bull of Pope Paul III
concerning the natives of America came as something of a sur
prise to all Christendom, to whom it was addressed. . . , From
the bull, Europe learned that those strange chocolate-skinned
figures with their high cheekbones and queer slanting eyes were
rational beings, capable of receiving all the Sacraments and hav
ing equal rights before God with any hidalgo of Spain or lord
mayor of London, . . .
D, B, WYNDHAM LEWIS
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS
AND A LAWYER
~r T seems to me clearly demonstrated that there was a cer-
itain commercial ambition in the conquest of America
which shows itself in the lives of those who undertook
it, or, to be more precise, in the lives of those who bought
governorships in order to grow rich. Obviously the Welsers,
or Federmann or Ehinger (whom the Spaniards called Al-
finger), who represented the German bank in Venezuela,
did not come to America as evangelists. But neither did the
Spaniards.
If the spirit of the conquest takes shape in any one family,
it is that of Ferndndez de Lugo. The Canaries were a per
fect example of the way in which governors moved. It can
almost be said that the whole of Spanish colonial law came
into being in the course of their conquest. From the year
1400 on, long before Columbus reached America, men who
lived on the slave trade had made forays into the Canaries
on the pretext of converting the infidels to Christianity.
Naturally, none of these man-hunters ever thought that the
islanders would really turn Christian; it was as infidels that
they captured and enslaved them, always handing over a
fifth of the profits to the Crown in exchange for the Crown s
action in legalizing the trade. This labour on the part of
Spain, judged so especially healthy for the interests of the
faith, was from that time on authorized by the Papacy. The
king and queen, who really gained very little from the sale
of ten or twenty slaves in Cddiz, who had little interest in
33
34 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
it, and who really did have religious scruples that some
times drove them to tine verge of madness, occasionally ob
jected to the procedure* But whatever doubts they may
have had were not such as would keep them from renewing
the contracts for Canary conquests and accepting the bene
fits therefrom.
The year that Columbus left on his first voyage to the
unknown world Alonso Fern&ndez de Lugo, whom we must
consider as the founder of this particular dynasty of slave
traders, contracted with the Catholic monarchs for the con
quest of the Island of La Palma, "which is in the power of
infidel Canary Islanders," and stipulated in the contract
that all the fifth part of the booty in terms of captives and
livestock which ordinarily belonged to the king should go
to Fenuindex: de Lugo until he had reimbursed himself for
the costs of the expedition.
So the first Ferndndez de Lugo formed his company, It
was, as would later be said with much propriety, the house
of "Alonso de Lugo and Company, Commercial Society for
the Conquest of the Island of La Palma." What this society,
considered as a mirror of commercial enterprise, accom
plished is shown very clearly in the claim which the pro
moter s associates made before the Spanish courts for the
two-thirds that belonged to them as participating rights
in a hundred and forty captives.
The matter was this; on a certain day Fern&ndaz de Lugo
invented the charge that an uprising was being prepared
against his government, and in accord with this hypothesis
he waked the so-called conspirators at dawn and took a
hundred and forty of them captive* According to the com
pany s rules, Don Alonso had to share this booty with his
associates; but spurred on by the hunger and thirst which
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 35
such campaigns produce, he coveted for himself not only
his proper thirty or forty, but the whole hundred and forty
slaves captured in the purge. Such is the natural atmos
phere of conquest. And such the real business which lit the
house lamps in the home of the first Ferndndez de Lugo.
The son and grandson of Ferndndez de Lugo saw this
business of conquest enormously expanded by the vision of
America, What had been, for the Catholic monarchs and
the first Ferndndez de Lugo, a modest opening in which
good business would be counted in terms of "some two hun
dred slaves" was now to develop into the most fabulous
market for infidel flesh that had ever crept in under ban
ners bearing the name of Christ.
Living, as Quesada did, the common life of the time in
Spain amicl brawls between friars and soldiers, inquisitors
and elegant ladies, the arguments of intellectuals, the jeal
ousy of courtiers, books of chivalry, stories of Moors, news
from America, wars in Italy, and tall tales of Europe he
heard word cried through the streets of a new expedition
to Santa Marta. This time the man who was promoting it
and ordering its affairs was Don Pedro Ferndndez de Lugo,
governor of the Canaries and son of that Don Alonso who
had been the first governor there. He would take fifteen
hundred foot-soldiers and two hundred horsemen, gun
ners and carabineers, cross-bowmen, shield-bearers, well-
caparisoned horses and mares, supplies and ships stores.
Eighteen ships were to leave Sanlticar first, to be followed
by others which would join them in Tenerife. The lands of
America would be divided among the Spaniards who ac
companied him. Ferndndez de Lugo would do all this in
36 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
splendid style, at his own expense, without the king s hav
ing to spend a single centavo. Each one was to help with
whatever he could. But FernAndez do Lugo was rich, and
had plenty of money behind him. The ships would he his,
and the greater part of the arms. He would furnish the sup
plies. It meant something to have a fortune In the sixteenth
century.
Going to the Indies how many times must one repeat
it? was primarily considered as going to the fountainhead
of riches. This was why even the bankers of Germany em
barked in caravels. Don Pedro Ferndndez de Lugo was
wealthy his own expedition said as much and he knew
very well just how Spaniards became rich. He knew it be
cause he was governor of the Canaries* becatise it was his
father who had conquered those islands for the Crown,
and because the Canaries had filled his money bags many
times over.
The way in which the plan for this expedition, now al
most ready to start for Santa Marta, was first conceived is
as natural as it is instructive. One afternoon Don Pedro was
thinking, as usual, that the governorship of the Canaries
would end with him, and that it would be a good idea to
look for other conquests in order to make more money and
to install his son properly, Governorships are good, he told
himself, when they carry with them the first flush of con-
quest gold later they languish, and fall into mere routine
administrative labours. Don Pedro was reasoning thus
when one Francisco* Lorenzo, a soldier who had been with
Rodrigo de Bastidas in the first entry into Santa Marta, ar
rived in the Canaries and stumbled into his house, Just
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 37
when Don Pedro and his son were searching the horizons
for another prize, Lorenzo painted them a tempting picture
of Santa Marta, where the gold of the Taironas sparkled,
where there were pearls to be had for the fishing, and where
there were, or should be, fabulous riches to be had in the
continent which lay at the city s back, and which was still
to be explored.
Thus was born this high emprise amid financial calcula
tions and fantastic plans, and lit by the red glare of greed.
"Let Your Grace stay here," said Alonso Luis to his father,
"warming the governor s seat in the Canaries, while I swear
to get you the one in Santa Marta from the court by mak
ing the merits of my grandfather shine all over again. And
do you go on getting ships together as fast as possible, and
talking with people, because we will be making the ac
quaintance of Terra Firma in a few months, and then well
start piling up the gold/
And Alonso Luis went off to the capital, And he talked of
how his grandfather had conquered the islands of La Palma
and Tenerife, and of how he had beaten the Moors in the
battle of Tagaos and the African black men in the battle
of Bezebriche, And of how he had been made governor of
the Canaries for the space of two lifetimes, with his son to
succeed him,
"My grandfather/ said Don Alonso, "cut a handsome
figure in the battle of Tagaos, breaking the enemies lines
with his soldiers as a ship s prow cuts through embattled
waves in a sea of infidels. Then he rose up out of the tumult,
leaving hundreds of dead on the field. Eight hundred Arab
horsemen and four hundred foot-soldiers,"
Then he painted a picture of the riches of his father, who
was preparing the expedition at his own expense. He talked
38 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
with armourers and merchants, with soldiers and men of
broad ambition, inflaming all of them with the desire for
conquest. And thus he set the stage for going forth to get
a governorship in Terra Firma.
In the very name of Santa Marta lay both mystery and
prestige. When Ferndndez de Lugo paid so large a sum for
the governorship, it must have been because that governor
ship was worth it. A Sevillian, L6pez de G6mara made a
picture of Santa Marta which, though some years later than
when Ferndndez de Lugo entered it, corresponds fairly
well to what the men who went out with the governor could
assume the governorship would include,
"There is in Santa Marta/* says L6pez de G6mara> "much
gold and copper, which they gild with a certain pressed and
pounded grass; they rub the copper with it., and dry it in
the fire; the more grass they use, the more colour it takes,
and it is so fine that at first it deceived the Spaniards* There
are amber, jasper, chalcedony, sapphire, emeralds, and
pearls; the land is fertile, and irrigated; corn, yucca roots,
yams, and garlic flourish there. The yucca root, which in
Cuba, Haiti, and other islands is deadly when raw, is
healthful here; they eat it raw, roasted, boiled, with meat
or as a vegetable, and however eaten its flavour is good*
They pride themselves on having their houses well fur
nished with dyed or painted mats of palm or rush, and cot
ton hangings set with gold and baroque pearls, at which
our Spaniards marvelled greatly; on the corners of the bed
they hang strings of sea-snail shells so that they may sound.
These sea-snails are big and of many kinds, more shining
and fine than mother of pearl The men go naked, but some
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 39
of them cover their private parts with something like gourds
or pipes of gold; the women wear aprons about their waists;
the ladies wear headdresses of great plumes. . . . They
look very well in these, and taller than they are, and there
fore are said to be comely and beautiful; the Indian women
are no smaller than ours, but since they do not wear clogs a
palm or a palm and a half thick, as ours do ? nor even any
shoes at all, they look very small. . . ."
The chronicle also speaks of certain shameless and libidi
nous ways of the Indian women, and vices of the Indian
men, which were a matter of common knowledge among
those Spaniards familiar with America, and which excited
the curiosity of the soldiers. Honour and the modesty
proper to this book forbid me to go further with the words
of the affable chronicler and Sevillian priest.
The son of Ferndndez de Lugo completed this business
of the governorship for his father at the court of Charles V
and Queen Juana, The king conceded him magnificent
privileges. His jurisdiction was to extend from the gover
norship of Venezuela and Cabo de la Vela, which were
under tibe charge of the Welsers or of agents of those Ger
man bankers, up to that of Cartagena, which was in the
hands of the noseless Pedro de Heredia. The monarchs were
interested, to be sure, in serving God. They wanted these
discoveries made without men dead, or Indians robbed, or
slaves taken. The Indians were not to be ordered to work in
the mines against their will. Each time the conqueror set
out on a new voyage of discovery he was to take with the
troops two men of the Church, The first thing to be done
when they came in sigjht of the Indians was to read two or
40 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
three times, in a high and intelligible voice, the catechism
prepared by Francisco de los Cobos in which they were to
be asked if they accepted the true religion of Christ, if they
believed in God and in the Holy Trinity, if they surren
dered themselves to the Holy Ghost and to Jesus Christ His
only Son, who was born of the Virgin Mary,
Obviously all this would be agreed to by the aspirants for
a governorship. Alonso Ferndndez left the palace and the
capital full of plans and ambitions. To hell with this idea
of converting the Indians and going easy with theml On the
other side of the Atlantic there was only one sure thing
booty in the form of slaves and gold. It is easy enough,, he
told himself, to handle this matter of the catechism. He
laughed, imagining the faces of the poor Caribs when, in
the most pure and sweet Castilian, the snivelling friar
would ask them, "Do you believe in the Holy Ghost and in
Jesus Christ His only Son, who was born of the Virgin
Mary?" "But," repeated Don Alonso to himself, "all this
shall be done/ 7 It would be done, and if he returned some
day to Spain it would be with his pockets bursting with gold
and his saddle bags dripping pearl necklaces.
It will not be the author of this book who tells how the
soldiers for this expedition were recruited, Many people
will assume that Don Alonso went to the universities and
the monasteries to pick an intellectual here, a saint there,
and that the great families would contribute the finest of
their line so that only well4>red people directly inspired by
the fear of God should reach America. Better, in this matter,
to yield the floor to one who knows more about it because
he lived in the midst of this business of governorships, one
who knew the expedition from the inside, that wise and
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 41
sensitive chronicler, Hernandez de Oviedo, governor of
Cartagena, Let us hear him:
"Sent out from the court, he came to Seville with less
money than he would have liked. Nevertheless, with a
drummer on the one hand, and a friar or two and a few
priests who later joined him under pretext of converting
the Indians, they went about promising riches and turning
the heads of ignorant people. The captain knew how to
handle bills of exchange, and to buy old and worn-out
boats which, whether they reached America, or succumbed
to God s will and mercy, or to the force of doubled shot,
would in no case be fit to return and to render unto Castile
an account of their cargo.
"On the other hand, a youth whom he made his secre
tary (and who did not know what a secret was), and other
smooth-tongued subordinates, whom the captain judged to
be the most cunning, were charged with talking to their
poor comrades and persuading them to one of two things:
the one was that they should lend the captain money in
return for the vain hopes he held out to diem, and for a
receipt which looked to him who received it like a bill of
exchange; and so the poor comrade gave the little money
he had, and, if the snare worked well enough, sold his cape
and his smock, and remained like Quixote in his shirt
sleeves; for it seemed to him that, besides the fact that he
was going to a hot country, he would arrive well clothed in
the fortune that awaited him, and which they had prom
ised, . . ."
So Don Alonso went about recruiting people for his en
terprise, And among the dreamers, the despairing, the vag
abonds, and the bullies who listened to him was the son of
42 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Gonzalo Jim&icz, also called Gonzalo. This Gonzalo, whom,
as I have said, we must call Quesada, must have been born
in Cordova, in a house which did not belong to his father s
family but to his mother s, near the little chapel of Fuente-
santa. He studied law, perhaps in Salamanca. And now,
when he had his degree and could follow in his father s foot
steps that father to whom the legal profession had al
ready given a certain eminence he got into a bad piece of
litigation, and found himself arguing against his father.
What had happened was that the court had started crim
inal proceedings against the dyers of the city for the scan
dalous falsifications which they had made in their dyes.
Quesada undertook the defence, and lost the case. Not only
did this impair his professional reputation, but it also in
jured his mother s family, which was in the thick of the
affair with the dyers.
Quesada was living under the pressure of these misad
ventures. Surely in his defeat he must have sought consola
tion in the love of some gentle woman who would caress
his jet-black beard, close his eyes with a kiss, and comfort
his spirit with a song of hope, He did not let himself be
downed; in public the stream of his genius, which was gay,
vivid, happy, ran as freely as ever. He grew sad only when
he was alone or when he opened his heart to the maid who
comforted him. Behind his charming mask, however, his
spirit went into deep and silent mourning. That is an es
sential of being a good Spaniard.
But one must not let oneself drown in vain sorrows. You,
Gonzalo Jim6nez, are strong and courageous* Some day you
will be a leader of men. This passing reverse must not be
the door that closes the future against a man of will and
courage. On the other side of the sea lie the Indies, Go to
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 43
the Indies and found a kingdom, build a city like Granada
which shall be famous:
To the loveliest of the cities
I would give the name "Granada*
In remembrance of the sadness
That I suffered on the journey.
When on her, my gracious lady,
My thoughts ever went on turning
Hoio she had? my faithful mistress
Weeping, said farewell to me
When I had to leave Granada
For some miscreant deed of mine. . , .
And on a November day in 1535, with the air sharp and
brilliant, the ships of Ferndndez de Lugo cast off from the
port of Tenerife. The wind filled the grey and bellying
sails. The rigging creaked like trees that bend beneath the
shaggy hand of the hurricane. The streamers splashed the
clean blue of the sky with brilliant colour, and the women
on the beach carried in their eyes the last long memory of
those caresses which hours earlier they had been lavishing
on the virile figures of the soldiers, on their curling and
twisted beards.
The governor and the head of the expedition was, as I
have said before, Don Pedro Fernandez de Lugo. As his
chief magistrate and second in command went the lawyer
Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada.
* <*
Seldom have the ships that set sail on the voyage to
America gathered between their decks so many daring men
44 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
as those that Don Pedro Ferndndez de Lugo commanded,
The most shameless, the most greedy of them all was the
son of Don Pedro, that Alonso Luis de Lugo, captain and
friend of the soldiers, who had few morals, and a glittering
future in Spain and America. Don Pedro himself cut but an
opaque figure alongside his son. If his personality did not
diminish in comparison, certainly the audacity of Alonso
the impetuous loomed large.
The trip lasted two long months, Two months which
everyone spent in spinning fantastic yarns about the things
to be expected in Terra Firma and in elaborating plots
which already included conspiring against the Indians. The
sea breeze, the Caribbean sun, the physical impression of
separation from Spain which the ship created when site cast
off from the peninsula with her prow set toward the un
known, all wiped out as with a sponge of gold the admoni
tions of the Catholic king and the mad queen as to how
the Indians must be treated.
When the first soldiers saw land, when everyone was
straining to define the misty profile of the coast that kept
surging up and then losing itself amid the tossing waves
and the fiery brilliance of the horizon, all hearts swelled
with excitement. A shout rose to the masthead and spread
from ship to ship. The captains, in this moment of impor
tance and command, gave their first orders and donned
their finest clothes. The soldiers gathered their equipment
and cast a last look at the litter of straw in which they had
passed so many nights, a glance like that dogs give when
they round the corner of their own house*
The ships came closer and drew into line so as to present
an orderly spectacle as they entered the bay* When they
passed through the natural door of this marine entrance
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 45
they felt the breeze temper and thin, as if announcing that
the troops would find better shelter here. The mast blos
somed with flags and pennons. Friends, America is in sightl
When the first group of the curious waiting on shore and
the simple outlines of thatched huts came in view, the guns
belched a military salute to the sound of a march. Governor
Ferndndez de Lugo looked over his troops, his armada, the
richness of his expedition, with eyes of pride and faith.
Alonso Luis ? his son, searched the horizon for the scene of
his future enterprises. Jimenez de Quesada, he who
. . . had to leave Granada
For some miscreant deed . . .
stood more firm and poised, more silent, and more able.
The troops disembarked in good order, says the historian
Restrepo Tirado, the soldiers in new uniforms, the officials
covered with gold and silver braid, displaying precious
stones and brilliant plumes, ostentatious in shining helmets
and gleaming breast-plates. The few inhabitants* of the
city awaited them in cotton garments, coarsely knitted
stockings, and rope sandals.
Don Pedro, Don Alonso Luis, and the lawyer are now on
Terra Firma. That is to say, they are in a poor settlement
where the provisions are scarce, the troops sick, and the
near-by Indians fierce and cannibal. The flour and grain
they brought from Spain begin to deteriorate from heat and
humidity. Fevers paralyse the soldiers or kill them. There
* The town had been founded by Rodrigo de Bastidas ten years earlier.
These inhabitants must have been all that were left of his men, and of
those of Garcia de Lerma who came after. When Ferndndez de Lugo s
ships arrived the settlement was in the last stages of decay. TRAHSLATOR.
46 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
is an epidemic of dysentery. The governor visits the sick,
directs the building of new huts, talks with the first settlers,
and deals with the Indians, This, America s first greeting,
does not disconcert him. He makes fantastic plans. The
Indians are naked, certainly, but they have gold. With dip
lomatic artistry he demands tribute of them. The poor
things come bringing very little, and their leader, the chief
of the Bondas, does not appear at all The governor plans
his first expedition.
For the first time the settlement of Santa Marta sees an
army in full array. However many have been laid low by
fever, enough remain on their feet to form squads like an
army in Europe, Many, seeing adventure ahead, take fresh
heart and put themselves into their armour with real pleas
ure. The veterans, those who came first with Bastidas or
with Garcia de Lerma, watch these preparations with a
slow and sceptical eye, Don Pedro does not know what
America is, Only those who are now seasoned scouts would
remember that gesture of Garcia de Lerma when, possessed
by terror, he cried to his servants, "Let the silver plate go!
Back to Santa Martaf Those whom experience has hard
ened know there are no beautiful walled cities here, no
open roads, but always the mountains, the tangle of brush
and briers, the sharp ascent from which the Indians hurl
huge rocks those boulders that go rolling through the
chronicles of conquest for centuries and the poisoned ar
row or the pits full of thin pointed stakes into which foot-
soldiers fall and remain impaled*
These newly arrived Europeans who wear fine coats of
mail, who go armed like feudal knights, poised and elegant,
will very soon learn that all this is of no use in America. The
conquest, as an introduction to the study of the new conti-
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 47
nent, teaches that this is to be for hundreds of years a land
of guerrilla warfare and ambuscade. The Indian and the
mountain laugh at the European. They force him to adapt
himself to the new climate and the ironic air of the inhabit
ant. When the new arrival sees that those who are ac
quainted with America dress in "cotton armour" he shouts
with laughter. And there is no doubt that those horsemen
who covered themselves with quilted cotton to keep the
arrows from reaching their skins did look more like clowns
than soldiers. At these great overstuffed figures the soldiers
of Ferndndez de Lugo are, I repeat, overcome with laugh
ter. But when the poison from the arrows begins to curdle
their blood, they will laugh on the other side of their
mouths, as those possessed of devils laugh in the long cor
ridor that leads to the house of the dead.
The Spaniard has the arquebus, the petard, and powder,
all of which fill the Indian with terror. The Indian has the
poisoned arrow. He will lose thousands of his bowmen to
the Spaniard, but behind them, and to replace them, stand
the fecund mountains which bear hordes of them, the earth
which teems with naked multitudes. The Spanish army is
small, it has no rearguard, no mother to feed and nourish
the paleface. The Indian trembles with terror at the sound
of exploding powder. The Spaniard goes mad at the bite of
the arrow.
Four centuries after the conquest Europeans will come to
America to hunt for poisonous herbs from which they will
extract the juice for purposes of war in Europe. War is to
continue to be the greatest European industry, and bar-
basco (a poisonous root) will be a new twentieth-century
weapon in that industry.
In the modest sixteenth century a certain chronicler,
48 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Pedro Cieza de Le6n, made the first investigations into poi
sonous plants, In his famous book on Peru he wrote a small
treatise entitled "Of How the Very Venomous Herb Is
Treated with Which the Indians of Santa Marta and Carta
gena Have Killed So Many Spaniards/* He says that the
Indians dig down near those noxious trees called manchi-
neel to get out the smallest roots. These they bum in clay
pots, and make a paste, Then they hunt ants as big as
beetles, very black and wicked, which with a single sting
leave a man senseless, and these they grind into the root
paste. They also put in huge spiders and hairy worms. These
worms are so mighty that, says Cieza, "one day one bit my
neck, and I had the worst night of my life, and die most
painful/ Bats wings, tamhorino tails, snakes tails, and poi
sonous camomile complete the venomous formula. Far out
side the village an Indian woman, wicked and condemned,
stirs the mixture in a jar over hot fires until its blending is
completed. Then, having taken in the fumes and the odours
of so strange a brew, she swells up and violently expires.
The treatment which the Spaniards invented in order to
counteract such poison was rudimentary and cruel It con
sisted in opening the flesh to extract the piece of arrow
which had remained in the wound. The head usually stayed
in the body to the depth of four fingers, "for the Indians had
thus arranged it. Then/ says Fray Pedro Aguado, "they fill
the open wound with as much ground corrosive sublimate
as they can force into it ? and then, with an iron knife and
machete heated in the fire, they sear the wound and all the
surrounding flesh until it is well gone over, then they come
with the same glowing instruments and sear the loins from
top to bottom to deaden them against convulsions, which
are what the poison causes first* This done, they wrap the
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 49
patient thoroughly from head to foot and put him into the
darkest and most sheltered inside room so that no air shall
reach or touch him, and they keep him there three whole
days without eating or drinking anything; after which they
give him very thin broth, eight ounces of it at most . . ."
etc.
I remember reading that once in the country near Santa
Marta, on the Venezuela side, the Indians rose up against
encomendero Rodrigo de Argiiello. They robbed and razed
the city, and took the wife of Rodrigo, Juana de Ulloa, and
her three daughters prisoners. They carried off the daugh
ters so that the chiefs might amuse themselves, but they
stripped Dona Juana and hanged her from the branches of
a tree by a bridle rein. Then the whole tribe shot arrows
at her with such skill and prodigality that they left her
looking like a hedgehog. When the Spaniards arrived and
cut the reins the body of the encomendero $ wife fell on
its feet and stood there, upheld by the art with which the
arrows that adorned her had been loosed.
There is no reason for dwelling longer on these wars. In
the course of this book I fear that the reader will find so
many necessary examples that he will grow weary of them.
Let me simply say that Fernandez de Lugo went forth
against the Bondas like a knight and a gentleman. In ac
cordance with the instructions of Charles V and Dona
Juana, he asked the natives three times if they wished to
believe in God, and in the Holy Trinity, and in His Mother
the Virgin Mary, and in the whole dogma. As those wild
Indians understood nothing of this, the governor charged
against them, set fire to their towns, pursued them. But the
j 075 184
50 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
end of the adventure was a fearful thing. Through rubbish
and ashes and piles of corpses the Spanish soldiers, mad
dened by the arrows, went roaring like wild beasts. Even
the veterans in their cotton-wadding armour were hardly
able to defend themselves. Iron Age Europe, Catholic Eu
rope, was left humiliated and with empty hands.
* a *
But if the father had such bad luck, perhaps things would
go better for the son. In any event, Santa Marta could not
sustain so swollen a population as that brought by the ships
of Ferndndez de Lugo, and expeditions had to be invented
so that the army might at least find maintenance in the na
tive towns. With this in mind, Don Alonso set out to explore
the land of the Taironas. Better advised than his father, and
profiting by the experience of earlier battles, he inserted
himself into mountain fastnesses and around craggy cor
ners with great care, he confronted the Indians and almost
always beat them, he burned their hamlets and stole their
gold. Alonso Luis was advancing through lands that were
richer. After the fires the conqueror found golden nuggets
in the ashes.
"Sacking a town, and taking whatever was in it," says
Father Aguado, "they called ranching, and the gold they
got out of it they called ranch gold ; thus they went on
painting their acts of violence and greed with exquisite and
unusual words." The fact was that if many of the soldiers
were suffering from hunger and dying, at least the treasure
of America was gleaming in their fingers. When the gold
had reached a certain amount, Alonso Luis thought about
returning to Santa Marta. But his mind was already afire
with the idea that he would not share the spoils of victory
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 51
with anyone, not even with his father. If he went to Spain
and bought a governorship for himself, he might acquire
the same power and fame as had his grandfather. He felt
the impetuous spirit of that conqueror of the Canaries re
born in his veins. Any compassion there may have been in
his soul was burned out of it by this newly aroused ambi
tion.
He called his captains together. He discussed with them
the return to Santa Marta. A little beyond the land of the
Taironas roamed a greedy German, Nicholas Federmann
by name, agent for the Welsers, who had been told he could
not set foot in Santa Marta. A cautious man, fearful of the
forces which Fernandez de Lugo must have, the German
had retired and taken shelter in the lands belonging to
Coro. Alonso Luis was therefore moving between his fa
ther s lands and those occupied by the German, but the day
would yet come when he would have boundaries of his
own. The land he had to "ranch" had already been gone
over. The Indians were advancing, surrounding him, about
to close him in. If they did not flee at once they would all
be caught there, stuck full of arrows like the encomendero s
wife Juana de Ulloa.
He resolved to leave at night, while the Indians were
asleep. The army filed out along a narrow road between
bushes and thorn trees. A hundred men went ahead, their
feet shod with the sandals of care and quiet. Their eyes
strained to pierce the darkness so that no tribe should spring
out of the shadows to surprise them. Moving with delicate
and exaggerated care, not daring to use the machetes, they
broke one by one the branches that hung across their
path.
But suddenly the Spaniards fell into a trap. The Indians
52 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
had barred the way with cords on which hung empty
gourds and rattling bones. When the advance guard
bumped into this invention an infernal din echoed through
the mountains and whole armies of Indians sprang out as
though on springs. But the darkness was kinder to sword-
work and lances than to the flight of arrows. The army
emerged from this ambuscade with very few losses, and
moved on down the road to Santa Marta.
Don Alonso entered Santa Marta with a chain of Indian
prisoners loaded with gold. How much gold, nobody knew.
To Captain San Martin, who went along to keep account,
Don Alonso declared sums that had nothing to do with the
reality. True son of conquest that he was, Don Alonso
looked forward to using his booty for advancing his own
fortunes. The soldiers were already murmuring among
themselves, the captains talked out loud, and his own fa
ther called him to account and rebuked him for trying
to hide what he had brought in. The governor needed gold
to pay the debts he had contracted, and the soldiers felt that
gold was the only recompense for their labours. The camp
was haunted by an air of new tragedy. Yet it vanished as
suddenly as it had come, dispelled by Don Alonso s pru
dence.
When the soldiers arose on the day following the quarrel
between Ferndndez de Lugo and his son they found that
Don Alonso had fled. Loaded the gold onto a cargo boat
and gone off to Spain with it. The thief left his father with
nothing but disappointed hopes. The troops, who recog
nized that the real sufferer from this robbery was the gover
nor, had no one on whom to vent their wrath. And as on the
first day they landed in Santa Marta, the lawyer and judge,
Captain Jimenez de Quesada, looked from a point apart
TALE OF TWO CAPITALISTS AND A LAWYER 53
at this small world in ruins, and hope blazed in his dark
eyes.
Fernandez de Lugo now became the second governor
who let the silver plate go. When he saw that the soldiers,
tired of suffering hunger and fever, arrow wounds and
misery, and, to make matters worse, robbed of all their
booty, were beginning to stir with justified murmurs of
rebellion, the poor man gave them all he had. And first his
silver service, the beautiful service which he had brought
in his role of gran senor and in imitation of Garcia de
Lerma. What the devil, let the silver service go, but let
there be peace in the camp! Just the same, it seems to me
less bitter to have lost a silver service while fleeing from
Indians than to be obliged to give it up because of a thiev
ing son.
Besieged as they all were by fever and hunger, anything
the governor could do for them served merely as a tempo
rary distraction. When those soldiers who had been with
Don Alonso in the Tairona country came back, the epi
demics had broken out again. The bells went on tolling all
day long, until Ferndndez de Lugo, desperate, forbade
their ringing. There was no time to bury the dead in sepa
rate graves, and the day came when they threw twenty
corpses into a common fosse. Those who could left the city
in any sort of boat to seek better fortune elsewhere on the
coast, or to try an adventurous trip to Cartagena. The
fevers, the flights, the faintheartedness, treachery, and
death went on widening before the governor s eyes, in
circles like those that Dante painted. Surrounded by such
agonies, he must look for a new horizon, seek out a radical
54 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
cure lest the most brilliant expedition that had ever left
Spain fall to pieces in his hands.
Behind Santa Marta, in the inland country, are a series
of drop curtains which fascinated the Spaniard s mind.
First, of course, come the wild Indians. But beyond them,
further on, there might be the fundamentals of a great
country. Those enormous, muddy mouths of the Great
River, the wealth of waters which betokens a huge land in
the interior, beckoned discovery. Perhaps that El Dorado
of which the adventurers dream lay amid the gleaming
peaks of the mountains. The land of salt, where the bowels
of the mountains are white, and there are rivers of sweet
water and rivers of salt. It is the magic mountain of Muzo,
alive with chameleon butterflies and holding veins of
quartz shot with emeralds.
What a mysterious and shining spur to adventure, to
follow the wanderings of a muddy river in order to reach
and climb the flanks of a mountain that sleeps beneath the
quiver of butterfly wings! The troops, sunk deeper in de
spair when they are halted in Santa Marta than when they
claw their way through thickets and stand off the charge of
bowmen, want to leave. They have already tasted the gov
ernor s small skill and the too great cleverness of his son.
"And when Lieutenant Jimenez de Quesada offered his
services, a man who, though trained in letters and the peace
of study, had a vigour and an excellence of mind and good
fortune which led him to embark on this difficult and haz
ardous adventure, and to take into his own hands the jour
ney to and discovery of the sources of the Great River of
the Magdalena, the spirit of the governor was so moved
that, expending other moneys, he set about the labour of
this new enterprise."
in
Shipwrecks on Land and Sea
Into the swamps through which they were wading entered
crocodiles, which are, as I have said, fish that are ten, twelve,
fifteen, twenty and more feet long, made like lizards, and of
the ferocity of man-eating beasts or wild cannibals. Soldiers
passing through certain swamps or crossing certain rivers were
snatched by them with great suddenness, and plunged beneath
the water, with no aid or remedy possible, and suffered very
miserable and most cruel deaths.
FRAY PEDRO AGTJADO
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA
nr us suppose which is not a bad guess that there are
a thousand or more Spaniards in Santa Marta. Of
those, some seven hundred and fifty or eight hundred
are to go with Quesada. The rest will stay with the gover
nor. Those who set out to explore will go some by sea and
some by land. Those who go by land, with Jimenez de
Quesada at their head, are to cut a road through thick brush
and across wet marshes until they reach the banks of the
Magdalena. Those who sail, with Diego de Urbina leading
them, will go coasting along the shore until they reach the
mouths of the Magdalena River. Then, turning upstream,
they are to meet Quesada in Chiriguana or some other port.
The prospect of discovery put fresh heart in the soldiers.
Santa Marta became one gigantic factory where everyone
was working. The ships* companies spent their days twist
ing ropes, mending sails, building new brigantines, sawing
at huge tree trunks, preparing pitch and oakum with which
to caulk the boats. The Indians, full of curiosity, ventured
nearer, and watched the white men with amazement. The
blacksmiths blew at improvised forges. There was a con
stant hammering from those who worked at anvils or on
the ships planking. The horsemen went over their harness,
tested the stirrup leathers, sewed the girths, put new pad
ding on the saddles. The lances stood, cleaned, in the cor
ners of every hut, and the captains looked to the polished
brilliance of their swords.
57
58 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
The Indian servants, enchanted with this new life which
they neither shared nor understood, went from city to hill
top, and from city to harbour carrying tree trunks, barrels,
supplies. In their hearts they thought the Spaniards were
getting ready to let them go free, and that the burden of
servitude would pass from them to others who lived in the
interior. So the tribute would be less heavy for those who
remained in Santa Marta.
Quesada s captains were all men of long experience in
arms. They were familiar with war in Europe, or had ac
companied other discoverers across that sea of infinite
routes, the Atlantic Ocean. These were no delicate youths,
but hard and experienced men who had lived through hours
of victory and hours of bloody adversity. Juan de Junco,
chief captain under Quesada, had carried arms in Italy
and Hungary, and filled out his service record by following
Sebastian Cabot in his excursion to the River Plate. Junco
knew how kings fought in Europe, and how it was possible
that a great American discoverer, such as Cabot, could
later return to Spain "destroyed, and through no fault of
his, but of his men."
Another of Quesada s captains was Gonzalo Sudrez
Rend6n, one of those who had fought under the banners
of Charles V. In the battle of Pavia he saw the French king,
Francis I, taken prisoner, and he was present at the siege
and capture of Florence. In Vienna he watched the Turks,
who had destroyed the Hungarian army, advance on Chris
tian Europe, and then he saw the proud troops of Suleiman
the Magnificent stopped before the city gates and forced
to flee in disorder before the combined attack of the Span
iards and the Germans. Clearly this was a splendid school
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 59
for one who was now going to lead trail-breakers along
the banks of the Magdalena.
Nor were these cases unique. All the captains, ensigns,
and soldiers had their individual histories. Juan de Ces-
pedes was serving in the king s forces in Spain when they
defeated the Comuneros. Anton de Olalla went as a boy to
the wars in Italy. Many of the soldiers had fought in those
regiments known as the tercios. They were men whom mili
tary life in Europe had encouraged to come to America in
search of new and greater excitement. And then there were
some who, like Junco, having experienced the hard row
America offered in matters of discovery, had no hesitation
in trying their fortunes there again. So they had come from
Spain in the ships of Ferndndez de Lugo.
On April 6, 1536, Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada left
Santa Marta with his land army. The boats were not yet
ready, and it would take them twenty days more before
they were prepared to cast off. Don Gonzalo went ahead,
mounted on a good Andalusian charger, and behind him
some five hundred soldiers. Like men trained in the Cas-
tilian regiments they kept, in the beginning, a certain order
in their marching, and so there was about this departure a
flavour of the European, and talk of the fine army. But be
fore long they fell into a disorder that was far more human,
for there were no roads, no formation possible, no uniforms
in an army dressed in patches. Mingled with the soldiers
went hundreds of Indian carriers who marched stark naked.
Three privileged captains had Indian women as their trav
elling companions. Each carried on his shoulders, in the
60 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
manner of a knapsack, a bundle such as soldiers make who
do not go forth with their women for the sake of having
them arrange the baggage. Eighty-five horses loaded with
food and supplies looked, in this singular picture, like the
work of a gipsy camp. A solitary donkey, caught in the
mountains one day and kept as proof that other Spaniards
had passed that way before, added a note as philosophic as
it was Spanish.
It was the month of April, and this time April brought a
thousand showers. Hardly had they sallied forth when tor
rential downpours fell, soaking the soldiers to the skin. The
clouds flooded past, each dropping its load of water and
leaving the earth a sea of puddles. Then came the strong
tropic sun, and one could see the land steam while the air
thinned and distance lengthened under a transparent sky.
There was great variety in the landscapes. First the sand,
the dunes, beach scenes which stretched back long fingers
toward the foot of the mountains. Then the black earth
which turned to mud. Then the marshes, from which the
iguana, the lizard, and the snake emerged. Those soldiers
who were conning the first pages of their apprenticeship in
the things of America met the alligator a monumental
lizard, a lizard out of some far geologic past, with jaws
which could devour a man at a single gulp, and they were
stirred with enthusiasm, terror, and admiration. As if the
poisoned arrow were not enough, the alligator seemed to
the soldiers the first definitive sign of the New World.
They halted to make camp where the earth was less
water-soaked. Some nights they passed without sleeping,
in that blue electric light of thunderstorms which painted
brittle, unreal landscapes and brought out the spongy green
of trees. No clothing dried, there were no needles to mend
SHIPWRECKS ON- LAND AND SEA 61
the rents in it. At every crash of thunder the horses milled
together, terrified. The Indians, huddled under scanty foli
age, took advantage of every lightning flash to look after
the terror-stricken animals. When morning dawned, if it
dawned clear so the sun could warm them, their garments
hung steaming from their numbed bodies, and those who
had been shivering with goose flesh a moment before now
took comfort in the burning tropic sun.
Sometimes they stumbled across huts which had been
abandoned by their owners, and that brought great relief.
If the Indians had fled hurriedly, that meant more food
yucca roots, grains of corn. Where there was farmland un
der cultivation the army passed like a swarm of locusts. The
troops had left Santa Marta with a good supply of food
it would last all of a week. Soon it showed signs of giving
out, and what mountains and rivers had to offer in the way
of game, fish, or fruit was not enough to feed an army of
five hundred men. The size of the expedition was in this
case, as perhaps in all others, the greatest problem and the
greatest hindrance. Moreover., even when it set out from
Santa Marta the army was being ravaged by fever. Soon
faces twisted by pain appeared, soldiers who begged a sip
of water and trembled with the chills that were forerunners
of death.
Only one order came from Quesada s lips "Forward."
They must reach the Magdalena. Those who could not take
another step were to be put on horseback. But they were
hardly more than badly covered skeletons whom life would
very soon abandon. Fortunately there was no lack of
priests, among them Friar Pedro Zambrano and the presby
ters Anton de Lescamez and Juan de Legaspes. "My son,
repent of thy sins; fear the punishment of the Inferno; I
m THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
forgive thee in the name of the Father " And then to the
grave. A grave which opened and shut with great speed
two spadefuls of earth sufficed to close it. Sometimes a hand
clenched in the last agony, a hand which there was no time
to cross decently on the breast, remained above ground to
wave farewell to those who marched on a ghostly troop
in which those who moved in the saddles were already
corpses.
Lieutenant General Quesada turned aside toward high
ground in order to avoid the marshes. They had to reach
the banks of the Magdalena, so they could meet the boats
that would take them upstream. The sick could go on ahead
then, and there would be food. Salt, cheese, wine, oil
At times certain of the captains made forays into the
country around the encampments. While the foot-soldiers
were advancing so slowly, those on horseback had time to
pillage. The terrain lent itself to hiding places and am
buscades. The Indians fled, hid, attacked from behind the
bushes. But the Spaniards used the noses of their dogs to
smell them out. And if any Indian tried to run, the dogs
were loosed to tear him limb from limb. Man, horse, and
dog were the conquest s great trio. After each foray the
captains came back with yucca roots, corn, and new In
dian carriers.
One day, while the soldiers were enjoying fresh supplies
taken from the Indians, an Indian woman burst naked and
weeping into camp and rushed through the midst of the
group, Straight to the Indian prisoners she ran, and threw
her arms around the youngest. They kissed tenderly.
Jimenez de Quesada himself came to find out what all this
was about a mother who claimed a place among the cap
tives that she might not be separated from her son. The
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 63
conqueror set them both free. In this ferocious drama of
conquest there was a parenthesis now and then for love.
As the Spaniards advanced into the highlands they en
tered a region populated by bowmen the Chimilas. Poor
Indians, and fierce ones, from whom the army took noth
ing, for there was nothing to take, but left a certain number
of corpses on their hands. The rain poured down, implaca
ble, and as the troops neared the Great River the marshes
widened, so that they, like the Indians, had to take refuge
on higher ground.
The veins of water swelled. The Great River overflowed,
its branches overflowed. The army reached the banks of
the Ariguani. There was no fording that deep and rushing
stream. The soldiers were afraid of alligators. Yet cross
they must, whatever happened. They made a swinging
bridge out of stout vines. Soldiers, Indians, squaws, horses,
dogs, friars, mules, supplies, and weapons all were to move
across the fragile, swaying makeshift. The soldiers watched
the foaming, muddy water carry down dead animals, tree
trunks, flowers. Under the lash of heavy rains the men
worked desperately. They must reach the banks of the
Great River; some safe cove where they could join forces
with the brigantines which ought already to be coming up
stream. Finally the troops were all across. They had lost
some arms, a few supplies. But it was better now that they
could move at a faster pace, and might get news of those
who were coming with the ships.
They neared the shore, and in the native dialects made
inquiry. There was no news, the ships had not arrived. Per
haps they had been held at the mouths of the Great River.
64 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Perhaps they had been attacked by Indian bowmen. This
was the province of the Tamalameques, so at least there
were supplies, and Indians who were somewhat less hostile.
With the fleet behind time, Quesada moved ahead with
out such haste. The march lay through more open country
now, empty plains, swamps where there was no possibility
of making camp. The horsemen went out hunting game.
But there were still too many men to feed. When death re
duced the squads still further it would all be easier; they
would go faster, there would be no difficulties of carrying
the sick, and for better or worse the land would furnish food
,for a handful. But it takes a rich and abundant country to
sustain four or five hundred soldiers and as many more
Indians. Even captives began to seem a burden. As for the
soldiers, they ate whatever came to hand frogs, lizards,
snakes.
After wandering for almost two months they again
reached country that was inhabited. More Indians ap
peared every day. As there was no sign of war-making, the
natives regarded the army with no suspicion. They knew
what conquerors were, for the Germans under Federmann
had already passed this way. But an army so worn down
by weariness could safely be received under a white flag.
Soon they saw Tamalameque ahead, surrounded by fer
tile land and well-tilled fields. But it was not going to be
easy to take Tamalameque. The city was well defended
by surrounding water it was built like an island, and could
only be reached by a narrow causeway that cut across the
lake. The Indians were good boatmen, and went about their
business in canoes. At the rear was the Zazare River, and
roundabout were many lakes and marshes. Lugo s Span
iards and those with Ehinger had come this way earlier, but
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 65
had not dared to enter the city. This time, however, hunger
and need put added courage into men. Quesada ordered
them to force an entrance along the earthen causeway.
The Indians, who had pulled up their canoes so that the
Spaniards should not make use of them, attacked with ar
rows. The Spaniards defended themselves with bucklers,
and attacked the nearest natives with lances. The dogs
flung themselves into the water and, biting without mercy,
terrified the Indians. Blood stains opened on the lake like
water flowers, and spread in broad red circles. The Indians
were struck in the breast, in the head. Dead bodies, naked
and copper-brown, floated past like logs from the great
American forest.
Quesada s army advanced in good order, economical of
men, without undue haste. The Indians, watching the mili
tary machine move forward step by step, recognized that
resistance was useless, and began to leave the battlefield.
Soon the army found itself in the midst of the houses, which
were full of supplies. For the first time in months the troops
could rest. The Great River was close at hand. Quesada
sent San Martin with a few soldiers to see what they could
find.
Twenty days of idleness followed, of rest, in which the
sick slept beneath a roof and watched their fevers run their
vvonted course in the placid atmosphere of a hospital. Those
who had sufficient energy investigated their surroundings
and busied themselves with repairing the mountings of the
horses. The horses were the ones who most enjoyed this
rest, or perhaps that philosophic burro whose large and
mobile ears continued to surprise the Indians as much as
did the Spaniards beards.
The Spaniards began to wonder about getting back. If
66 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
it was such a perilous adventure to come along a road so
dreadful, then to go further was like defying God, who
had put those perils there for a barrier so that the white
European should leave the copper-coloured Indian in
peace. Long as they had travelled., they were still close to
the mouths of a river whose great size indicated the infinite
distance which must lie between the sea and its source.
After these swamps and this infernal heat there would
surely come rugged mountains and cold winds that would
freeze their limbs. The sick, especially, felt that their
strength would fail them and that it was better to draw a
last breath in the huts of Tamalameque than to push one
foot ahead of the other through more marshes. In their
delirium they no longer wanted the long-dreamed land of
gold, but the hands of a friar who would part the air above
their breasts, prepare them to die like good Catholics, and
forgive them the waywardness and violence of a sinful life
because of the labours they had just passed through.
Thus twenty days went by, and then a message arrived
from Captain San Martin. He had reached the banks of the
Great River and learned that the boats were coming late
and slow. He had installed himself at the mouth of the
Zazare, or Caesar, a sizable river, and he did not want to
leave for fear that the Indians might take up positions there
and impede the march. Quesada accepted the message, and
ordered the troops to go forward.
Those who had a little life left were again filled with en
thusiasm. Adventure had become a habit, a continual thirst
which allowed them no repose. Moreover, the bountiful ta
ble they had found in Tamalameque was now picked clean.
Inciting them to go ahead, audacity and hunger spoke the
same tongue. As though it were the first time! The soldiers
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 67
arranged their gear, the Indian carriers formed in line, the
horses were assigned to the sick, soldiers and captains
worked with equal fervour, and the general himself tight
ened girths like any man in the front rank. Then the march
began. Cut across lakes, throw out bridges, move machetes
as if they were wide arms of an endlessly whirling wind
mill. And so to the banks of the Zazare. There the soldiers
came together again, clasped one another s hot and dirty
hands, smiled with lips that were fever-cracked.
They crossed the Zazare in canoes and entered the prov
ince of Sompall6n. There they found new forests which
barred their way and new channels which demanded
bridges for their crossing. They counted the troops, and
noted that one man out of every five had died. The army
was like a clean, full set of teeth when it left Santa Marta,
but now it looked broken and dirty, like the mouth of an
old man. Again they halted in the fertile land of the Som-
pal!6n Indians.
Weeks passed, and still the brigantines did not come.
So far, all they had had *for their trouble was suffering.
Other troops up from Venezuela, such as Ehinger s, and
some from Santa Marta had already ranged through these
same territories, so they were not even discovering new
land. For many of them, however, it was the first encounter
with a great American river whose stream was both wide
and deep. Away on the other bank stretched a landscape
blue and shimmering as alcoholic fumes. The trees looked
like dwarfs. Men thrust their arms into the water and felt
the steady push of the current grow stronger as the stream
deepened. Even the brawny arms of machete-wielders
shook in the current s grip. A Spaniard who had never been
outside of Spain before had encountered streams like these
68 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
only in the pages of sacred history. The Nile must have been
like this, thought the priests, and the bachelors of law and
letters grew homesick.
It was impossible for Captain San Martin to remain idle,
Quesada decided to send him downstream until he met the
brigan tines. In Sampall6n men went on dying. Without
the brigantines the sick would never be able to set forth
on new marches. Practically everything they would need
for going forth to new discovery was lacking. The idea of
returning never crossed Quesada s mind. He thought of
Pizarro, of Cortes, of the heart of this America of his. Amer
ica was already his own, and he would be a true son of
America and lift up his head on top of the highest summit.
With a few soldiers and Indians behind him, Captain
San Martin hurried downstream. The burro with his long
felt ears, standing serene on his four feet, switching mos
quitoes away with his tail, cast slow glances out of great
philosophic eyes at those who went and those who stayed
behind.
Let us go back to Santa Marta. When Quesada and his
men went out amid a tumult of applause and loud cries of
"God and the Virgin give you luck!" from those who stayed
behind, and when the last of the foot-soldiers had disap
peared, nothing was left for the eye to look upon but a
miserable setting of weeds and underbrush. Those who
were to go by sea and up the mouths of the Great River
went back to their work on the ships. Let us see what hap
pened to them.
Here was the governor to urge them on, for the sooner
they went, the sooner he would be left in peace and ex-
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 69
pectation. And here were Diego de Urbina, who was going
as head of the flotilla; Diego Cardona and Diego Sandoval,
who would be brothers in adventure s end as well as in
name; Luis de Manjarres, Ortun Velasco and Diaz Cardoso,
Juan Chamorro and the friar Juan Zambrano. All of them
flung big talk into the wind and gave loud orders to the
Indians and the ships boys. Everyone worked to speed the
hour when the dirty sails of these amphibian adventurers
should be unfurled above the green waters of the bay.
Moreover there was need for leaving Santa Marta. In
spite of the fact that the population was reduced, the land
yielded hardly a mouthful of food. The governor himself
said he would go later, behind the flotilla, to follow
Quesada. It was a consolation God gave men so lost in illu
sion. Faced with all kinds of disaster fevers and death and
thorn trees the mind of this type of adventurer takes
refuge in thinking about a prodigious new kingdom, a king
dom where the Great River gushes out of the earth in the
midst of emerald forests and sands spattered with gold.
At last came Holy Week. On Ash Wednesday they held
one of those High Masses which precede long voyages.
Then for some hours there was a great shouting of orders,
and men stopping in the street to give one another a fare
well embrace. The captains whispered of tricks to be played
with the booty phrases which fell fat and shining in the
sunshine as a gold coin in the hand of a poor beggar. At last,
in the afternoon, the sails were unfurled. Quesada and his
men had left twenty days before. Now it was Urbina s men
who were leaving in brigantines and boats with lateen rig
the fleet had seven ships, and perhaps two hundred or
two hundred and fifty men to handle them to find the
country from which the great Magdalena River flows.
70 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
They passed the night in a sheltered cove. Very early in
the morning of Maundy Thursday they weighed anchor,
hoisted the sails, and moved out into the Caribbean Sea.
Carib means a wild thing. The Caribs were cannibal In
dians. "The people went Carib," wrote the ancient chroni
clers when they were talking about a native uprising. The
Caribbean is a wild sea, which grows suddenly rough, crisps
the edges of its waves, throws up cloud banks heavy with
storm like huge balls of smoke. Other times it drowses in
the sun, playing with its waves and tossing up spray like
flecks of cotton. It is a strange and treacherous sea.
On Good Friday it was not bad all blue and gold, regu
lar in its rhythm, and smiling; if it made the rigging sigh, it
also made the Spaniards sing. But not so Saturday, On
Saturday the daylight burned with a gusty flame and a
smoky chimney. The waves began to bite at the hulls of the
ships, those badly planked hulls which creaked and danced
about in a horrible fashion. The greater part of the crews
felt that death was pressing on their stomachs. Some rolled
in the wet bottoms of the lateen-rigged lighters which
danced the worst, and staggered up to seize the ropes and
lend clumsy hands in the manoeuvres ordered by the cap
tains. They were men of the sea, but not of a sea so savage.
In order to avoid collision the ships drew apart, and soon
were lost from one another s sight. They were now at the
river mouths, but the strength of the bore threw back all
that tried to enter. The rain lashed at the shadowy boats, a
ghost flotilla now. The crested waves where sea and river
met were more than masthead high on the lateens or the
smaller brigantines. Arms, supplies, goods which the men
who went by land had entrusted to Urbina s care to make
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 71
their own journey easier, all went into the sea. The crews
thought only of saving the hulls o the ships themselves,
those hulls in which they now kept afloat like shipwrecked
sailors. But the more they lightened ship, the higher and
harder did the white seahorses toss them from crest to crest.
Diego de Urbina s boat crossed the bar and neared the
coast on the Cartagena side. It was at once a triumph for
him and a hazard for those that followed. The brigantine
behind tried to do the same and struck the force of the
waves broke it into matchwood. All that could be seen in
the soot-black rain was a tangle of splintered planking. The
men afloat were carried to the tops of waves and flung
against the scattering planks until not a single one remained
alive. No one knows where corpses came up to furnish sport
for sharks. Urbina s boat was carried along eight leagues
beyond the river mouths. A big wave picked it up, held it
clear, shook it in the air, and dashed it against a rock on the
bank. The captain and the crew, caught amid rocks and
sand, soaked to the skin, worn down by seasickness and
fatigue, without weapons of any kind, well-nigh naked, sat
and stared at one another.
The same fate befell another of the brigantines. The
mainmast shivered, wavered, looked as though it was about
to be torn out by the roots. Fifty men flung themselves
against it, crowded in a nutshell which was visible only in
the blue intervals between lightning flashes. The ship got
across the bar, but more by the will of God than the skill of
men. Then a single gust of wind carried it some leagues up
stream, straight as the crow flies, and wrecked it against
the bank. When the men finally opened their eyes they
were on dry land, but their ship was broken to bits. They
72 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
were so bruised and sick that not one of them could move.
The storm was over, and the sun began to dry what few
clothes they had left on their bodies. The Indians descried
them, motionless as something painted on the sands. With
a shout, clouds of copper-coloured warriors burst from the
river bank, from between the rocks, from the very sedges,
and filled the air with their poisoned arrows. By afternoon
those Spaniards who had tried to defy the Great River
were hanging, sun-scorched and quartered like the loot of
any barnyard in the hands of cannibal Indians.
Two other brigantines were borne by the wind to the
other side of the Great River s mouths. By a miracle these
arrived safe at Cartagena. Without their cargoes, for every
thing had been thrown overboard into the Caribbean, but
at least the men, however terrified, were alive. They shook
hands with Urbina s men, who had been brought by land
in charge of friendly Indians, and stared in one another s
faces like men raised from the dead, thinking with horror
of the fate that had overtaken the others.
Two ships, notwithstanding, had saved themselves and
were proceeding upstream. Slow sailers, they had not been
able to reach that spot where the mother of all hurricanes
had unleashed her forces. The first night they anchored in a
sheltered spot on the coast, and the following day they
entered the narrowest mouth of the river. They reached the
lands of Malambo and awaited the rest of the fleet, but as
days passed and no ship came, one courageous soul resolved
to go to Santa Marta and tell the governor what had hap
pened. Before he got there, and while three who had
reached Cartagena safely were taking a caravel to go on to
Santa Marta, the governor dispatched another ship loaded
with food supplies which was also to go up the Great River
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 73
and aid Quesada s troops. This too the Caribbean devoured,
leaving fifteen survivors on the beach to bear witness to
the tragedy.
Don Pedro Fernandez de Lugo, former governor of the
Canaries, was awaiting news of the expeditions in Santa
Marta. It was the last great dream of his governorship. He
was fondling it, savouring it, when the unhappy messengers
began to arrive. First came the three from Cartagena who
told of the wreck of the captain s ship; then the solitary
messenger from Malambo who told how the only two ships
that had passed the mouths in safety were anchored await
ing reinforcements before daring to continue the trip; at
last one of Quesada s men who told him the state of the
lawyer s troops, scourged by death and basing their hopes
entirely on what help was to come to them by river.
The men from Cartagena told how terror would not al
low their companions to return. The three Diegos who had
spurred on the crew only a few days earlier by hoisting the
banners of Jimenez de Quesada took ship in Cartagena, to
gether with Friar Juan Zambrano, and chose to go to Peru
to adventure with the Pizarros. All agreed that the storm
was a piece of hard luck and Diego de Urbina a stubborn
fool who had paid with his own failure for having dared to
pass the mouths when there were plenty to explain to him
that the risk he ran was like tempting God.
Stupidity, daring, failure. Yet the only way out still lay
in reaching the heart of those mountains that fed the Great
River. They could not abandon Quesada, nor leave the men
in Malambo awaiting reinforcements so as to ascend the
river, nor stay on in Santa Marta suffering from hunger.
74 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
On the beach were three old stranded brigantines. The
governor ordered them scraped, caulked, put in order. This
time the new fleet was not to be entrusted to a simple sol
dier; whoever commanded it would also be a licentiate of
laws, for it was clear that educated Quesadas were better
than mere reckless soldiers, even though the latter carried
in their veins the wild inheritance of the Fernandez de
Lugos. So the lawyer Gallegos becomes captain of this new
enterprise.
Another brigantine came back from Cartagena, and with
it some of the men who had been with Urbina. With this,
there would be three ships to attempt the passage of the
river mouths. The men under Gallegos s command totalled
two hundred. When the fleet departed, only a handful of
men were left in Santa Marta. All those who were worth
anything had gone off to the conquest of a new empire.
Fern&ndez de Lugo looked not at the glassy edge of the
bay but at the arquebus he held at the town s back. Not
only those ships, he said, but others, and new men, and he
himself would follow the quiet, well-poised head of Law
yer Jim6nez de Quesada. He sent Luis de Manjarr6s to
Santo Domingo to buy a caravel, if possible, and three
lateen-rigged boats to serve the new enterprise. The gov
ernor had some gold left he put it into Manjarr& s hands,
and borrowed right and left for this last effort at salvation.
When Manjarr^s arrived in Santo Domingo, intent on
nothing but conquest, the lawyers and brokers of the island,
who had a great many other things to think about, laid
hands on him. They reminded him he had old debts still un
settled, and a certain obligation which had to do with mar
riage. Absorbed in the affairs of Santa Marta, we had quite
forgotten that Manjarr^s was a rascal We had forgotten
SHIPWRECKS ON LAND AND SEA 75
how rare was the captain or the soldier who could go near
a port in which justice had stationed her ministers. And so
Don Luis de Manjarres, with the small amount of gold
that Governor Fernandez de Lugo had left, stayed for a
while buried in the prison of Santo Domingo.
Let us leave the miserable fellow in jail and go on to
something else. Now I, the author of this book, am speak
ing in my own person.
As I have a high sense of the novel, it seems to me that I
ought to take this occasion to have done with the governor
of Santa Marta. This aged governor of the Canaries, son
of the man who had conquered the islands with his skill, his
money, and his courage, son of the man who had slain
Moors and black men in the name of Christ, master of such
a fortune that he was able to equip the richest expedition
that had ever reached Santa Marta, found in this Terra
Firma just what we have seen Indian arrows, the treach
ery of his son, the hunger of the city, dysentery, Quesada s
adventure, the wrecking of the fleet in the hands of Ur-
bina, and Manjarres in jail. I think it would be best if the
governor should die. And in fact he did die. While Ga-
llegos was going up the river, he dropped his head between
the archbishop s hands, his soul whiter than his whiskers.
At the same moment his son the thief was playing up and
down the peninsula, snaring with gold and lies the women
he met in the street.
IV
. !7rom Court-Room to
Captain of ^Mutineers
O dear God! That men of flesh and blood should have had
only their own hands for breaking two hundred leagues across
a most dense and difficult mountain, a mountain so craggy and
louring that all of them together could have broken only a
league or two a day had they been equipped with good iron
tools.
How many sicknesses racked bodies which had been deli
cately reared in a most kindly region? How many pestilential
fevers and other diseases put others in such a state that they
could not stand upright, and with all this working with their
hands, of which most died miserably?
LUCAS FERNANDEZ DE PIEDRAHTTA
FROM COURT-ROOM TO CAPTAIN
OF MUTINEERS
THE Great River has seen on its brilliant surface only
the light and slender dug-out which the Indian pro
pels with a paddle. This canoe is as much a part of
the landscape as the heron or the crocodile. The water car
ries it, caresses it, even exalts it, for this hollowed tree
trunk has a mind of its own and refuses to be sucked in by
whirlpools as it creeps along the bank making forest rich
ness and river wealth equally available to the naked man
who is fisher or hunter as need demands. In it the Indian
skims safely above nests of alligators, and the alligator
watches him go by, a prize he can never catch.
But the thing that is ascending the current now is a mon
strosity. A wooden skeleton, plated with wood, helped out
at times by sails. A floating fortress, full of men hairy as
animals. The canoes hide under the low branches along the
river bank so the sentries guarding these strange mecha
nisms shall not see them. There are four that go upstream.
The Indian knows that these are enemies that come this
way. If the first Spaniards to reach the coast took years to
get into the heart of America, the Indians, on the other
hand, sped swiftly through the intricate network of their
waterways telling of men with beards, of the horses, the
dogs, and even the God of the Christians.
There were tribes that grew alarmed and tried to op
pose the invasion. Then the river blackened with canoes
. thousand, two thousand of them each Indian had his
79
80 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
own, and canoe and Indian formed a single entity ap
pearing out of nowhere and forcing a way through to the
brigantines ribs. The soldiers huddled behind the rigging,
hid in the hold of the ship while the arrows flew overhead.
After each encounter the brigantines, stuck full of arrows,
looked like pincushions.
The brigantines went upstream with difficulty, almost
always hauled by cables from the bank or propelled by
paddles like the sampans of a later period. The soldiers
were in no hurry. They were more eager to explore the
shores, to find whatever luck might place in their hands,
than to reach Jimenez de Quesada, of whom no one had any
news. Where there was anything of a path, they followed
it to see what might lie in the interior, but they always kept
watch for tilled fields. Much time passed thus, until one day
someone caught sight of a canoe in which shone arms like
those the Spaniards carried; then they made out soldiers
figures; soon they saw Captain San Martin, who greeted
them.
Gallegos the lawyer and Captain San Martin embraced.
The soldiers mingled and exchanged news. The tales of
shipwrecks and of discoveries in the province of Sompall6n
were endless. They were very near Quesada now, and they
were urged to hurry in order to assist the sick. It was time
to speed up the march and drop this lazy upstream pace.
Gallegos put fresh heart into his men. The desire to shake
the hands of those few who had emerged alive from this
long adventure quickened muscles, speeded paddles, has
tened manoeuvres. A few days more and they all were in
Sompall6n.
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 81
Once united, the two expeditions rested in Sompall6n
for eight days. The sick were put on board the brigantines,
which became floating hospitals. A cordial wave of op
timism animated everybody, even in the very midst of fe
vers and fatigues. Quesada and his captains exchanged
ideas. They must go forward. This, which the most daring
endured as a bit of bad luck, Quesada carried fixed as an
obsession between his eyebrows. As they went upstream
the valley must narrow and there would be no more of
those swamps which now made the trails impassable. The
rains had come back to swell the river s arteries. Sompallon
was ceasing to be the granary it had seemed when they
first arrived. If they tarried longer, hunger would afflict the
camp. It was decided to go on. The brigantines were to
continue upstream at a much faster pace. The land forces
would leave the flooded river banks and open a road
through the brush. Jeronimo de Inza was to go as head of
the trail-breakers.
The friars, Anton de Lescdmez, a native of Mula, and
Domingo de las Casas, who had just lost his mare, took part
in the discussions and cheered the men as best they could.
The day of departure, when preparations were complete
and horses saddled, Anton de Lescamez said Mass, which
was heard with great devotion. "God and the Holy Virgin
go with us, guard us, and light the way for us/ repeated
these miserable beings who were standing before the door
to the unknown. Lescamez put a mystic unction into every
movement of the Mass. Las Casas turned over a thousand
ideas in his head: his Christian mission, the whole adven
ture, the mare which had just perished and which would
be worth no less than sixty pesos. . . .
82 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
We are in the forest. It takes only a few steps, past the
first tree trunks, and the Sompallon landscapes are left
behind, buried in memory. Here is no light, but a diffused
clarity which softens under the branches to a penumbra
which is warm, humid, charged with vegetable odours.
At first the soldiers found it dark, but as their eyes grew
accustomed to it, the blue trunks, green trunks, red trunks,
the tangle of branches, the lianas covered with mould, moss,
and lichens, all took shape. One recognized the day because
light awoke slow, milky, like dawn in a dream. At midday
this same clarity was tinged with rose, and at twilight it
faded away amid fingers of blue which foretold a night
made of dark cobalt or deepest jet. Of the sun nothing was
ever seen. The leafy roof was too thick for a ray to sift down
diagonally or for a beam to fall straight as a golden plum
met from the zenith. Depending on the hour, there was
only a white clarity, or rose, or blue, which enveloped blue-
green and rust-red trees, which slumbered amid the leaves,
which filtered through the crowding vegetation. At night
came insects with eyes that shone like candles. The sol
diers kept close watch lest they be surprised by the phos
phorescent pupils of a tiger.*
At times, indeed almost always, the soldiers were silent.
The musical echoings of the forest frightened them. "Now
we understand why the Celts used to turn sorcerers in the
woods." There is a metallic hum of insects. The parakeets
whir up in noisy clouds. Let him tread on a vine, and the
astonished man, thinking it a snake, jumps aside as if on a
spring. And the leaf that falls and the lizard that flees both
* This would have been a puma or a jaguar, both of which abound in
the Magdalena valley and occasionally attack men.- TRANSLATOR.
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 83
leave behind them the impression of the snake. Bands of
monkeys swing from the branches like festoons. An enor
mous blue silken butterfly, a butterfly all of mother of pearl,
hangs in the air like something out of the Orient, like a re
flection of the sea at midday, like a blue tile filched from
the Arabs of Andalusia.
Jer6nimo de Inza s woodsmen went ahead. With mat
tocks, axes, machetes, they cut aside lianas and opened
trails. Behind them the soldiers helped the horses, which
kept slipping and falling. The strongest gave a hand to the
weakest. Hunger was stalking in their midst again. They
had left Sompallon almost without a grain of corn. And the
forest is not exactly a granary. Hard and bitter roots grow
there, juices almost impossible to extract. The thick, warm,
humid air makes one dizzy, forms a palpable barrier which
must be broken through. Before long the soldiers, beset
by hunger, were eating everything. Lizards, snakes, frogs,
leather straps cut from the harness, all went into the stew
pot. When a horse died there was a banquet.
Some of the men turned stragglers. Hid behind the trees
so that no one should pay any attention to them, no one
oblige them to take another step, but leave them to pass
quietly to the other world, which was the only new world
for which they had any enthusiasm. Quesada had to re
double his vigilance in order to prevent these flights to
eternity. Others were suspected of killing horses in order
to get a bit of meat. The horse was the great staff of cpn-
quest, and Quesada published an edict that anyone who
killed a horse would suffer the death penalty. The horrible
thing about these orders is that they were carried out. Fi
nally, in order to lessen temptation, the men were forbidden
to eat horseflesh.
84 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Of the soldiers who had left Santa Marta strong and well,
one now saw himself at the gates of the other world. He
went to his son and bade him farewell. "You must follow
the conquest to its end, but I stay here to wait for death."
The boy did not hesitate. Gathering strength out of his own
weakness, he hoisted his father onto his shoulders and went
on another day, and then another. Fever and convulsions
shook the dying man and passed through the shoulders of
his son with a continued trembling. Finally the father
breathed his last. Friar Las Casas sped him on his way. Las
Gasas and Lescdmez had divided the spiritual labours be
tween them, and the care of the dying fell to the former.
Over the old man s corpse his son sprinkled a few handfuls
of earth. For those who thus remained behind, this bit of
earth was the long-dreamed Terra Firma. The troops went
on.
There is no reason for undue scruples. They also ate hu
man flesh. The dead companion was transformed into bits
of meat which went into the cauldron. Groups of unfortu
nate soldiers whispered together about these lugubrious
affairs. Already they were seeing murder in the calculating
glance of a companion. The night was full of terrors: fear
of snakes, fear of man, fear of tigers.
Juan Serrano was sleeping in a hammock one night when
a tiger approached. The first time the soldiers managed to
scare him off. But the crafty animal retired on velvet paws,
waited near by, and when the camp was quiet, came back
and carried the Spaniard off in its mouth as easily as a cat
carries off a rat. So says the chronicler.
At times they emerged from the forest. Then the soldiers
had to cross swamps and marshes full of bulrushes. Game
lurked among the rushes which the men on horseback soon
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 85
captured easily. The swamps were infested with alliga*-
tors. When they reached a river and stopped for a few
days to build a bridge or seek a ford, those who were al
ready in the grip of death were likely to hurl themselves
into the water. The preying alligators followed the troops
that dealt so generously with them. So great grew the
danger from these beasts that when the soldiers went to
get water they had to take a gourd tied to the end of a
long pole, Juan Lorenzo, a good swimmer, crossed a river
so as to fell a silk-cotton tree on the opposite bank and make
a bridge for the army. When he started to swim back he
was caught in an alligator s jaws. Feeling himself lost he
cried out for help, but in an instant his body disappeared,
leaving only a thread of blood floating on the surface. The
puma, too, followed the army, for the army left food be
hind which, if not very tasty, at least was abundant.
Quesada worked unceasingly. The greater part of the
way he went on foot so that his horses might be available
for the sick. The rhythmic strokes of the machetes awoke
in the forest a new consciousness of human life. There were
still those who knew how to laugh and get fun out of the
adventure. It was tragedy enough to go marching through
forests and marshes without adding the useless burden of
complaint. Lorenzo Martin improvised quatrains. "For
ward, lads; some day we ll be out of all this punishment/ 7
said Jeronimo de Inzd, putting spirit into the trail-breakers.
Quesada seemed to repeat Pizarro s words: "Thus we go to
the glory and abundance of tomorrow."
Lorenzo exclaimed:
Your steps are sidling paces,
Remiss, reluctant, slow,
86 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
But they ll more gallant go
When you have filled your -faces. . . .
And there were those who, hungry as they were, could
still listen to Lorenzo and laugh. . . .
The rains went on filling water pockets in the swamps.
Clouds of mosquitoes attacked the soldiers. There were
other insects that bored in between skin and flesh, and fat
tened and flourished there,, leaving the soldiers looking
as though worms had been doing repousse work on their
bodies.
"The heavenly constellation," Friar Pedro Aguado was
to say later on, "was by no means favourable to our men;
for, apart from the corrupt airs and vapours which affected
the land and caused many diseases and ill health, heavy
showers fell which, owing to the peculiar influence of this
tropical sky and the exhalations. from the earth itself, en
gendered in their waters a strange kind of worm that propa
gated in the human flesh without leaving any outward sore
or fester. Even he who was soundest of body would grow
benumbed and become host to this worm without sensing
it. Buried in the flesh, the worm would leave a very small
hole in the skin, like a pin-prick, through which to breathe,
and would grow within, nourished by the fleshy substance,
and become as large as those bred in oxen (which are
called tumours). These worms are destroyed by the appli
cation of plasters either of diachylon or of turpentine."
The channels became torrents where the waters leaped
in fantastic forms that looked to the hungry, weary men like
sheep and horses. The winter deepened. Lawyer Gallegos,
looking out from the brigantine, saw huts. Thirty huts
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 87
which opened onto a plaza. At last there was hope of reach
ing country that was inhabited. The valley narrowed.
Streams tributary to the great Magdalena dropped down
the rock-faced sierras. This was La Tora o the Barrancas
Bermejas: this the site of Cuatro Brazos. Gallegos sent sol
diers to inform Quesada of the find. Quesada received the
news with joy. He and his brother, with Antonio Lebrija,
Anton de Olalla, Aguirre, Velasco^ and Venegas, left in
three canoes, guided by two Indians and a black man, just
as dark was falling. All night long they went up the black
waters of the river. The crisp air was vibrant with the music
of cicadas. The seven conquerors were seven sentries that
never closed their eyes but constantly searched the banks
without seeing anything. When dawn broke they caught
sight of one canoe. The Indians fled, terrified. There in a
bend of the river was La Tora. When the Spaniards landed,
there was not an Indian left in town.
Soon all the Spaniards were in La Tora. The town was
surrounded by tilled fields. A series of paths pointed to the
possibility of scaling the Cordillera s flanks. Moreover, the
rivers that joined the Magdalena here were so big that
brigantines could safely enter them. To follow the course
of the Great River would mean to prolong the adventure
endlessly. It was time to seek a change in direction.
While the greater part of the army was resting and wait
ing for the rains to cease, Quesada ordered small bodies of
men to go exploring. The brigantines started up the first
river in sight. As the wind gave no assistance, the boat had
to be propelled with paddles, or pulled with cables, while
the sails hung limp and flapping from the masts. The brigan-
88 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
tines went on for thirteen days and found nothing. Then
the explorers returned wth empty hands, and disappoint
ment weighed heavy on all hearts. But Quesada was in
sistent. He sent other men to hunt new routes in other di
rections, and many soldiers to explore paths and side
streams.
There were fields of corn in La Tora, but Quesada issued
an order that whoever touched an ear of it would be pun
ished with death. After their past starvation the grain had
to be doled out bit by bit in order to accustom stomachs
to receiving food again. Any soldier at the point of death
was thrown into the water. Whispers of rebellion began
to circulate. Six months of marching and they had found
nothing. Better Santa Marta with its Carib Indians, where
at least the ships kept coming from Santo Domingo, Cuba,
Cartagena. This place, with its swollen rivers and a soil that
offered little sustenance for human beings, was a charnel
house. Finally someone raised his voice to the general and
said, as Piedrahita tells it:
"Who, Senor Licenciado, could see the army, so fine
when it left the coast, so impaired now before it has pene
trated more than a hundred and fifty leagues, without ask
ing himself what the danger is that threatens its final ex
tinction? These stout hearts bred in Spanish provinces are
not intimidated by hostile Indians, but by hunger and epi
demics, against which courage avails little. Never did so
brave a leader suffer direr hardships than he who guides us,
and it is therefore the more lamentable that he should per
ish where he would leave no trace and where no record of
his invincible valour would remain. Thus far the suffering
of so many miseries could be endured, and for as long as
hope lasted, but on leaving here, and with hope gone, forti-
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 89
tude becomes mere desperation. To see only barren moun
tains devoid of civilized beings, offering no sustenance,
overrun by ferocious beasts, threatening inevitable hazards,
is no diversion to be pursued unto death; and the more so
when there are no tidings, however false, to spur men on
to an imagined rest. Fame is not to be won by a stubborn
obstinacy that spurs its possessor forward when enterprises
that would justify it are lacking, but at moments and in
places where the sword may open the way to a glorious
end. And so if we go back to our governor, he will read
in the record of our many dead the hardships through which
those of us who return alive have passed, and even the
most ambitious will recognize that the determination of an
unconquered heart could go no further."
This is the kind of speech that is always addressed to men
of the conquest as a prelude to their noches tristes. Cer
tainly many hardships lay ahead, but for the ambitious
to go back was as sad as to meet death in the forest. If they
went forward, they might reach the same end as those who
had already fed the crocodiles. But would Santa Marta
give them any better burial?
Quesada s mind was busy turning over a series of ambi
tious ideas. He knew that if he found rich territory, if he
discovered and conquered a kingdom, he would rise to
command, could turn his back on the governor, would him
self become a governor, or perhaps even a viceroy, and
would have more wealth than that miserable Fernandez de
Lugo. But, crafty man that he was, Quesada did not make
direct reply to those who urged him to return. He let the
rest do the talking. In this crowd of the despairing he
searched, not for those who might give tongue to terror,
but for those who might serve as the mouthpiece for am-
90 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
bition. He manoeuvred so that the most adventurous should
seem to impart fresh courage to him. Gently at first, and
then with resolute decision, he urged the troop forward
again into the green hell of this adventure. Urged it, yes,
but his resolution was tinged with melancholy.
Here they are surrounding him, pressing in on him, lis
tening to him, their eyes brilliant with fever; the soldiers
with curly beards and dishevelled locks looking in their
ragged clothes like a crowd of unlucky beggars; men who
have lost all hope and men of great faith who first had
staked that faith on El Dorado and who now, defeated and
melancholy, place that faith in God and the Holy Virgin.
The friar Las Casas, in whose veins runs the same blood
as that of Bishop Bartolome, defender of the Indies, is the
same man whose mare died in Sompallon. He has more
daring and ambition than many in the threadbare troop.
He exalts the soldiers honour, the apostolic mission of the
conquest, the duty of following the general, the prospect
of the riches which they all are going to find when the ad
venture ends.
Anton de Lescamez and the donkey look at Quesada
from an angle apart. The soldiers, doubtful, wipe away the
sweat with ragged sleeves. The horses slap mosquitoes with
their tails. Captain Fernandez de Valenzuela, who thinks
he has surprised a shade of sadness on the general s face,
makes him a speech which Fray Ant6n, the son of Mula,
will later put into a ballad:
Ferndndez de Valenzuela
In this way spoke to Jimenez:
Do not grieve thyself, Gonzalo,
Make show of thy gallantry.
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 91
One time we must needs all perish
But not several times a day.
Rendon goes as thy companion.,
Flower of all chivalry,
And the steadfast Ldzaro Fonte
Makes thee valiant company.
Do not grieve thyself, Gonzalo,
For with thee Garcia travels
And has with him many soldiers
Both of horse and infantry.
So, as well becomes a Christian,
Yield not to a coward s fears;
Thou art thorough Granadino,
Cunning, and with gallantry.
Show a face that s never frowning
And a spirit full of joy,
Launch thee bravely in the trial
Gainst a hostile wilderness
As it were against the squadrons
Of the heretics and Moors.
This hour held for Quesada something of the same prob
lem that furrowed Cortes s brow. He had reached the same
point Columbus reached in the last days of September 1492,
when, on the verge of sighting the American horizon, he
found himself besieged by a crew in which doubt had al
most become despair; when "all day and all night those
who were awake never ceased complaining; those who
could joined others to whisper and plan how they might
turn back again/* Quesada was at the same point Pizarro
reached on Cock Island (Isla de Gallo) when he drew the
line and said, "That way to Panama, to eat bitter bread, to
92 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
live vanquished and insulted. This way to the hunger and
misery of today, but also to the abundance, the riches and
fame of tomorrow." But Quesada, at this point, had his
own quarter of an hour of melancholy:
And the circumspect young lawyer
In this fashion made him answer:
Fernandez, it is not I that
Ever d wish to shun the fight.
Than retreat I first would rather
Give the last drop of my blood.
Thou art, Valenzuela, loyal,
Good, and to a high degree;
So with thee for my companion
I would greatly heartened be,
And o er all this kingdom triumph
And these high peaks soon surmount
Hold four worlds in dominion
And have spirit left for more.
And to king, and Spain, and me, then
I would bring a great renown
By the prowess of my weapons,
Finest in all chivalry,
And then later in my fashion
My heroic deed recount,
For I am a man of letters,
Quill pen like a sword I wield.
But my homeland, the Alhambra,
Always makes me very troubled,
Seeing how my people, stripped there,
Making no resistance, died. . . .
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 93
Salt and woven cotton! These were what Albarracin and
Antonio Diaz Cardoso., who had followed a trail to "ranch,"
brought back. This salt was fine white salt in cakes, which
bears no resemblance to that which men take from the sea.
This salt could come only from a country that was white at
heart. And it was salt which the troops coveted. They had
gone on for days without this indispensable condiment.
In the neighbourhood of Sompallon, the Indians made it
"from human urine and palm dust." This salt, the salt which
Albarracin and Cardoso struck, was strong and came in
cakes that were "like lumps of sugar." And with this salt in
his hands, symbolizing the country which at heart was
white, Quesada answered all those speeches.
Captain San Martin soon went out with twenty or
twenty-five men in canoes to identify the route they must
travel to reach the land of salt. As the canoes advanced he
felt hope reborn. At the first stream they met he left the
canoes hidden in the bushes and took the land route. First
he found two or three huts, then six, and as he advanced
toward the spurs of the sierra he went on finding habita
tions where there were always lumps of salt and cloths of
red cotton. Also there was corn. He caught sight of the well-
worn trail which must lead them to the Chibcha empire.
When they reached the actual foot of the range, he recog
nized that it was time to turn back. With only twenty-five
men the captain could not venture into a nation of Indians
who surely must be numerous.
When San Martin entered La Tora draped in a cotton
manta, with salt in his hands and his arms held high, he was
already a victor. Quesada was the first to rejoice and to
communicate his enthusiasm to the others. Though La Tora
was a hospital, hope always gave the sick new heart. Be-
94 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
fore they left, Quesada wanted to see with his own eyes
the road San Martin had found, and among those who were
most healthy and most determined he enlisted sixty men.
If the road looked to be safe, they would set out from La
Tora to conquer the New Kingdom. This time they would
go with horses and well provided with arms.
But the water rose against them. As the exploring party
advanced with Quesada in the lead, the river swelled,
dragged all sorts of things down with it, covered its waters
with spray, seeped beneath the forest which edged its
banks. The freshet lasted ten days. Against the handicap set
by this new enemy, the men advanced through water to
their waists. At night they climbed into the forks of trees
in order to sleep. The horses plodded through water up to
their girths. Food began to give out. The general set a maxi
mum ration of forty grains of toasted corn. For two days
the company had to wait on a flooded island until the crest
of the current dropped. Then they went on through the
mud. What tremendous effort it took to build a fire to dry
their clothes! But they went forward.
"There was no mangy dog they did not devour, no bit
of refuse they declined to eat." Here is what Aguado says :
"The greatest prize they took in these fourteen leagues
of land and water marches was a stray dog which had fol
lowed them from La Tora. The feast this provided for the
leaders seemed to them as splendid as those which certain
Roman emperors used to give, and upon which they squan
dered a large part of the revenues of their realm. And it
may well be believed as some of those who were present
affirmed that the dog s feet, paws, head, entrails, and hide
were as completely devoured as though it had been the
tenderest mutton, and even more so, for it is seldom that
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 95
the skin of a sheep is made use of, unless for the confection
of some insignificant article, whereas that of the dog was
used as food/
And the march went on. The waters had dropped. The
army started up the trails. They advanced with difficulty,
for there was no path for the horses. Soon they arrived at
San Martin s huts. They appeased their hunger with cakes
of corn which the soldiers themselves ground. Another
time they threw yucca roots into the cauldrons and had
salt with which to flavour them. These soldiers grew fat and
thin like accordions, had flesh on their bones one day and
only skin the next. In the same way the direct glance from
their eyes sometimes hid behind clouds of scepticism and
at other times, as by a miracle, burned with the flame of
hope.
As it became harder and harder to advance with the
horses, Quesada resolved to halt at huts that had good fields
about them. Lazaro Fonte, Anton de Olalla, and Cespedes
went ahead with a few soldiers. These were the leaders
who must do the exploring. They were given ten days in
which to return. They accepted, but planned secretly to
make it twenty. No one could do anything in less time. If
they were not back by the twentieth day, let them be con
sidered dead. Those who stayed behind hardly left the
camp even to pillage, so busy were they washing clothes,
grinding corn, making cakes "very full of straw." In those
Spanish camps they made everything, even turning them
at times into sandal factories. Out of rags, out of rawhide,
of whatever God put into their hands, they made foot cov
ering for those who had covered most of these marches on
bare feet.
From now on prospects improved for the expedition.
96 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Those who went ahead as scouts found a good village
which the Indians had abandoned on first sight of the
Spaniards. There were ten or twelve houses, and good
fields: potatoes, yams, yucca roots, kidney beans. News of
this soon reached Quesada. Everything pointed to their
being on a sure path. But to drive the horses up these steep
ranges was a difficult undertaking, possible only with the
whole army. Quesada resolved to stay behind with eight
soldiers to take care of the horses, and to send all the rest
ahead on discovery.
Soon the exploring party ran across Indians who spoke
a different tongue. Then they spied small villages. Paths
and tilled fields began to multiply; they sensed the near
ness of a great nation. They stumbled on a group of abo
rigines, and an Indian woman took a liking to the Spaniards
and came over to their side. Apparently she was in bad
standing with her husband, the chief. The first interpreter
of these conquests, the Indian Peric6n, marched with the
soldiers. Some of the greediest went "ranching" and found
gold and emeralds. Cotton cloth, salt, gold, and emeralds
these were the keys to the new empire. With these in
hand the soldiers went back to Quesada. He was ill, but
firm in his hopes. With these things in hand, no more vacil
lation. He left the entire company in camp, and with C6s-
pedes, San Martin, Valenzuela, Cardoso, and three soldiers
returned to La Tora. Now the adventure was really begin
ning.
When Quesada and his companions arrived, La Tora
took it as a miracle. The freshet had not swallowed them,
nor had they met the fifty canoes full of Indian bowmen
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 97
who had beset the Spaniards in camp only the night be
fore. La Tora was no more than the shadow of what it had
been in previous days. Death had gone on thinning out the
army, and there was a pervasive hospital odour that made
it hard to draw a breath. With rain and sun had come clouds
of insects which descended on the troops and poisoned
them. The four keys to empire which Quesada brought
attracted only half-hearted attention. To men in that con
dition their value was at best dubious, and represented
poor compensation for the amount of further suffering
their pursuit would entail. For the second time his men
tried to dissuade the general from continuing with his
project. They told him that to venture into the ranges of
the Opon with a miserable company like this was to be
foolhardy. To go on would be to despise one s own life
and the lives of the soldiers. It would be tempting God,
But Quesada, who in the common life of the encampment
laughed and talked with all the charm of the true Anda-
lusian, now looked illumined by fever, his throat dry, and
his eyes afire with forest wizardry, as though he had stepped
out from the pages of a book of chivalry; and he reasoned
just as Don Quixote was to do later on. Faced with the
avalanche of good arguments with which they surrounded
him, pressed him, and tried vainly to dissuade him, he was
fixed in his idea, simple and invincible.
"None of these things/ the chronicler would say, "suf
ficed to change the general s mind. Fortified by a brave
spirit, he desired to achieve a memorable deed which would
do service to God and his king; and so he replied to those
who counselled him otherwise that, although their inten
tion might be good, the course which they wished him to
follow was against his honour, as it could justly be said of
98 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
him that he had, by his inconstancy, turned his back upon
the gates of a most promising land; and that, although he
should die on the way, he considered death in that enter
prise more glorious than life with such infamy as would
be his if he turned back; and he begged them that, if they
wanted to preserve his life and his friendship, they should
refrain from such advice; that nothing could so quickly
consume and destroy both these as to persuade him to re-
, 3>
turn.
Do not these pages foreshadow the whole drama of Cer
vantes? Note that the gentleman who speaks thus is a lean
man, with beard uncombed and clothes ragged, his gar
ments full of holes, muddy to the neck, his breeches tat
tered, worn and ridden by hunger, fever, and ambition. It
is all laughable, and none of it is laughable. Certainly the
miserable creatures who were under the lawyer s spell
could not laugh. His mind was set on a fabulous castle:
Castilla de Oro Golden Castle Castilla Aurea, as the
maps say. He sees a new kingdom within his grasp. To
make his madness the more complete, he thinks, as Fray
Anton de Lescamez says, of a lady:
To the loveliest of the cities
I would give the name "Granada 9
In remembrance of the sadness
That I suffered on the journey.
When on her, my gracious lady,
My thoughts ever went revolving
How she had, my faithful mistress
Weeping, said farewell to me
When I had to leave Granada
For some miscreant deed of mine. . . .
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 99
But no what might be and has been fiction in Europe
is true for us, the very stuff of life. After these talks will
come the adventurous achievement. Let those who wish
to go forth to conquer march beneath the banners of Law
yer Jimenez de Quesada.
He lay prostrate on his bed and from his bed prepared
the expedition. He talked with another lawyer, with Ga-
llegos, and told him, "Let Your Grace wait here with the
brigantines, and if six months pass and we do not return,
better go back to Santa Marta and blot us from your
memory, for we shall all be dead."
Then he ordered the sick to go to the boats and the well
to form in marching order to leave at once. The well?
There was none. All of them went forth staff in hand, a
haversack over one shoulder, like a beggar s bag holding a
few grains of corn. They were as tattered as the poor pil
grims who journeyed to Santiago de Compostela. These
conquerors conquerors! were bitten by mosquitoes, dis
coloured by fever. And their hair! Long locks without or
der or combing, stuck together by sweat; that hair of beard
and moustache which gives each face the impress of virility.
It was the same Spanish hair, the same fuzz, the same
beards as might be seen crowding around the convent
doors of Toledo begging a plate of soup. The same locks,
the same beards behind which Castilians look out at the
public from any canvas, whether in palace or sacristy. Thus
the JEsop of Veldzquez will look, thus Ribera s beggars and
his apostles. . . .
Quesada was first of all a good Christian. Before leaving
he ordered a Mass to be said. There was no church here,
no belfry, no altar, no altarpiece. Only the one white soli
tary Host which was lifted high in the hands of a priest
100 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
hardly able to uphold it. In the silence which bowed the
heads of these talkative Andalusians, these loud-mouthed
soldiers, came the warm breath of the tropics. A mosquito
hummed. From the near-by trees sounded the chatter of
monkeys. The air stirred the beards of these world wan
derers, and a mystic emotion oppressed the heart. Besides,
there was the sermon of Fray Domingo de las Casas. . . .
Finally those who were to stay with the brigantines em
braced those who were to start out in search of El Dorado.
The general, drunk on the drugs he had taken to banish his
fever, gave any kind of order to the troops. Ambition could
hardly serve as inspiration for this march. There was some
thing magnificent, something both mad and audacious
which beat amid the rags. With the beggar s haversack
went the friar and the burro naturally enough. It was the
whole romance of Spain. A novel in human form which set
out from hospital doors to cross the channels that run to
the Magdalena, to bury themselves in the mire of the trails,
to thrust thin, greedy, hard, dirty claws into the flanks of
the cordillera, into the ranges of the Op6n.
Five hundred, eight hundred, a thousand had left Santa
Marta to crown this enterprise with victory. Some in brig
antines, some through the mud and thickets of Terra Firma.
Of all these there are hardly two hundred left. Nor will two
hundred reach the top of the Andes. Two hundred lame
men, whose clinging hands catch like live tendrils at the
ragged fringe of Quesada s garments. Two hundred lame
men beneath a fabulous standard which carries blanch,
vert, and gules salt, emeralds, and gold. ...
At this point the general s mind, moving in the contra
dictory fashion essential to such romances, was already
busy with the idea of turning himself into a captain of mu-
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 101
tineers. Lawyer Gallegos, who was to stay there with the
brigantines waiting until those who were leaving should
return or not, would be left planted there for the rest of
his life. In vain would he one day bring suit in an attempt
to have his right to a share of the booty recognized. He
will get nothing. All he had suffered and endured going up
stream at the same pace as those on shore will, when he
litigates against Quesada, dissolve like sugar on touching
water. For Quesada first of all studied law, and studied it
so well that at times he imposed his own law, and would
always have done so had not a certain scepticism and mel
ancholy, a certain marginal irony which, as I have said,
borders the edges of history, sent his spirit along unusual
and capricious paths.
The march began again. The river route was abandoned
for ever. Soon the whole troop would be reunited. They
knew the path that led to the land of salt, and this time
they must take the horses up it. As they mounted the flank
of the cordillera the air grew temperate, so that when they
reached the country of the Chibchas their muscles revived.
With mattock and machete, with axes that slashed noisily
at the mountain s heart, they widened way for the horses.
But there were moments when the rock was so sharp that
the horses could not climb. Out of vines they had to make
slings to hoist them up. Finally after a great deal of hard
work they reached the valley of La Grita. A broad panorama
rolled away before the eyes of the company. Small grey
mounds that were huts showed thin columns of smoke that
announced the presence of man in every direction. Many
roads snaked their way amid brush and between fields.
102 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
The emotion stirred by this new kingdom showed clear
on all faces. The survivors numbered some hundred and
seventy. They were all that were left of the fine army that
had bidden farewell to Fernandez de Lugo and his despair
ing overlordship in Santa Marta.
The Spaniards stayed in La Grita eight days to rest and
mend their gear. The Indians watched them from a dis-
tance > held back by the beards and the presence of the
horses. The horses are said to have created such a panic
among the Indians one night that they fled, possessed
by terror. It was like a stratagem Cortes used in Veracruz
when he loosed one of the horses that it might go, amid
the terror of the Indians, to seek the company of a mare.
This time, however, the horses worked on their own. In
open camp their strength returned, and one night they
began frolicking with the mares. Overexcited, the mares
broke into flight. The horses followed. In a tumultuous
band they invaded the Indian camp. Then came chaos.
The Indians thought the Spaniards had sent the animals
to destroy them. They left their huts in a rush. When
dawn awoke the soldiers, they found the Indian camp
deserted and the horses straying among the huts.
Quesada got the troops in shape. All threw their canes
away and with their fingers began to comb their hair, and
set their beards in order. It was as though they had come
back to life and were preparing to appear at court. A breath
of cool air had given them back their youth.
The general made no war against these Indians. He
sought parleys. He instructed the interpreters to say that
they came in peace. In the beginning the Indians did not
understand, but when they saw that the Spaniards did not
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 103
want to eat human flesh, when they sent an old man and
the Spaniards failed to set tooth in him, when they threw
children down some of the hills and the Spaniards re
frained from roasting them, and when instead of showing
such Carib tendencies, the Spaniards sent them glass beads
and trinkets, they dared to come closer. How strange that
along these same routes where fighting Indians had come
at other times these who came now should not be canni
bals. No, these were hairy types; some who had the dis
position of men were provided with sharp sticks that shone
like the rays of the sun, and others were animals that walked
on four feet. So the Indians came nearer, cautious at first,
then more confident until they ended by offering the Span
iards banquets game, corn, potatoes.
Quesada felt himself transported from the world of arms
to that of politics in which a supreme court is conceived
and formed. The moment had arrived for defining the es
sential point of their adventure how much of the work
accomplished should fill the pockets of Fernandez de Lugo
and how much those of Quesada and his soldiers? Should
this continue to be a perquisite of the governor of Santa
Marta, or was it to be a new kingdom created by their own
force and valour? The question must be defined now with
complete clarity. Gold and emeralds would soon fall into
their hands soon there would be booty to divide. There
they are, for the solving of the problem Quesada, who is
skilled in the law, and the friars, who know plenty about
morals. But, above all, there are the soldiers themselves,
whose efforts must also be consulted as to the natural re
ward for these marches.
It is exactly the same situation Cortes was in when, from
104 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
the beaches of Mexico, he said to Diego Velasquez, "Fare
well, my dear Governor. From now on we shall require
nothing more of Your Grace."
We have reached the exact moment in which Jimenez de
Quesada, who had left Spain as chief magistrate, is to be
acclaimed captain of mutineers. He takes stock of men and
horses, reviews the troops, and . . .
This is how Bishop Piedrahita, in whose hands luck
placed Quesada s papers, is to tell this stupendous part of
the story:
"And so, having made the list and conditioned the horses,
it is the accepted opinion throughout the realm that Gon-
zalo Jimenez de Quesada, considering the great conquests
that he had in hand, and that these must be undertaken
amid such manifest perils as war carries with it, wherein
failures would be judged against him personally by his
impassioned rivals, and wherein successes would redound
to the glory of the governor, Don Pedro Ferndndez de Lugo,
for whom as lieutenant he governed the camp; and trusting
hopefully in the affection and good standing he enjoyed
among his soldiers, he (having assembled them for this
purpose) artfully renounced the office which he held by
appointment from the governor, saying that he did not feel
himself capable of commanding them in an enterprise that
must result so gloriously for them all. He asked that, by
election of the camp, a captain general be chosen whom
all must obey, since they had reached the turning point
which admitted of their doing so without failing in their
duty as faithful vassals of His Majesty. He would be the
first to abide by the choice they made, and would obey the
chosen one as his chief and follow him on the march unto
death itself. And as there are words which, efficaciously em-
CAPTAIN OF MUTINEERS 105
ployed, can persuade to the very opposite of that which
they propose, his were heard by his followers at just the
time when there was no one to fill the place of so well-
loved a chief whom they were accustomed to obey. They
discussed it among themselves, and in consequence Que-
sada was newly elected and was acclaimed by the whole
camp as captain general without dependence upon the gov
ernor of Santa Marta an acclamation which he accepted
with pleasure, thanking them for the goodwill thus shown
to him. . . ."
V.
!Mud, Chiggers, and
the Indian Woman
The chiggers are a universal plague. There is no defence
against them, they enter through stockings and shoes, pene
trate into the living flesh with pain and a burning itch; then
they form a web, and within it, in twenty-four hours, they have
tiny eggs laid for the creation of a whole swarm of chiggers.
They are like tiny fleas, which dust engenders.
It is indispensable and urgent that a servant, with pin or
needle in hand, go carefully over the feet every day. It is cus
tomary to find four or six chiggers to take out daily, another
will have fifteen, and another many more, according to each
one s fleshly humours.
FATHER GUMILLA
The Indian woman went off with another.
OLD SONG
MUD, CHIGGERS, AND THE
INDIAN WOMAN
IN Tinjaca, in Gachancipa, in Cogua, in Raquira, man
talks with the earth. These are the pottery towns o
Cundinamarca. The Indian sits down, spreads a piece
of hide across his knees, pats a pancake of clay, handles it,
shapes it. A current of warm air plays across his face. From
time to time he wets his hands, for the clay dries in small
patches parched by the breeze, and then he goes on with
his potter s art. The sky is clear, and the tiny clouds, mere
puffs of harmless fleece, chase one another gaily across the
hills, The heavy clouds, the threatening, dirty rain clouds
have all passed by. They dumped their load of water on
the hut and soaked it through as though it were made of a
single thin branch. Now one can see open country again.
The rise and fall of the hills gives the horizon a feeling of
slow movement. The water runs through their folds, clear
and singing.
The Indian hollows the clay with his fingers; now gives
it the form of a cup, now deepens it to make it round and
smooth, now turns its rim. What his father, what his mother
did before him, he goes on doing, while his straying
thoughts lose themselves in vague ideas like those which
pass across the minds of sailors as they gaze through the
smoke from their pipes. Now the fresh, smooth, round jar
stands on the damp hide. This is a ewer. He thrusts his hand
into its mouth and goes over the inside with his fingers so
that it shall be clean and smooth as the rounded surface
109
110 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
which shines damp and glossy in the sun. One or two chil
dren, dirty as the earth on which they were cradled, take
a handful of clay to make pellets. Or bring brush to stoke
the fire.
The cordillera, which is defended by such steep escarp
ments as it descends into the depths of the Great River of
the Magdalena, here breaks into gentle hills. The land
scape flattens into little valleys with no depth to them, into
musical undulations, into meadows where the water no
longer runs but stands poised in lakes. The higher the land
rises, the more the light tempers and softens. Here the day
light hours are not glowing with golden rays but simply
infused with clarity. The trees are not corpulent trunks
wound around with vines and creepers like those that
dulled the machetes of Jeronimo de Inza, but scrub which
crinkles the flank of the hills with creeping bushes and tries
to hide the skein of gleaming threads that are minute rivers.
Along paths worn by the feet of Indian runners move the
women pottery-makers, their baskets of jars on their shoul
ders.
Now the jar is big-bellied, hollow, handsome, ready for
the sun to dry it or the flames of the oven to caress it. Like
a wise and contemplative god, the Indian fastens two
handles on its neck. And by a logical continuity of ideas,
with a certain languor that smiles in his eyes and on his
lips, he makes two small rolls of clay and fastens them from
belly to neck of the jar with all the art of a master dec
orator. They are his symbols, and so placed on the surface
of the jar that a frog moves, or a snake crawls, or the nose,
eyes, and ears of a warrior are visible on them. The Indian,
seeing his work finished, gives a sudden laugh, and the
youngster with him laughs too.
MUD, CHIGGERS 111
Many paths go off from the hut. Toward the cornfield
which is coming into bearing. Toward the far-off salt mines,
toward the distant fairs of Muequeta, toward the harsh
lands of the Muzos. The empire of the Chibchas is crossed
by a narrow network of paths. Seen from the air, the In
dian runners look like quick-moving ants, coming together
in black clots at the salt pits and the fairs. This Indian
pottery-maker who has finished his jar makes a fire by rub
bing dry sticks together. Flat on the ground, he blows until
a blue flame starts. At last red tongues lick round the belly
of the vase. Soon the small column of smoke announces the
success of his blowing. Inside the hut his woman grinds the
corn or spins with a spindle turned by a whorl of baked
clay.
Tac, tac, tac . . . the Indian taps gently at the baked
jar, and the jar answers with a voice at once sonorous and
confidential. It has been well made, there is no crack in it.
Perhaps this means that the Indian is going to have many
happy moons, that he will not go to war again, for the Zipa
is content and neither the Sopoes nor the Guatavitas, the
Muequetaes nor the Chias will come to attack him.
In his malicious eye, poorly shielded by short, straight
lashes, shines the memory of that day when the Indians
from the city of Junza (now Tunja) defeated those of the
Bogota plains! The men of Bogotd were more accustomed
to war. Fighting every day against the Panches who came
from the hot country, they had learned to handle the arrow
with skill, they were treacherous. In the fairs and the
drunken feasts those who came from the Bogota side and
those who came from the Junza side usually insulted each
112 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
other because the one came too near the other s wife, or
because the other gave the one some jars that were faulty,
or because one deceived the other in the matter of woven
goods or tubers. But the final result was clear the Junza
men put those of Bogota to flight. The Zipa himself had
to flee, carried by his servants in his litter. A few days later
he died, while his adversaries were celebrating their vic
tory with intoxicating chicha in the midst of a terrific
racket. The Indian still remembers the embraces he gave
his wife that night, the bites and the squeezes, both of them
exhilarated by victory and chicha, while the happy squaw
laughed and twisted, showing teeth as white as the yucca
and gums like the red anatta.
But now we are at peace. In the whole vast territory
which goes from the sides of Velez to those of Jacatativa
and Jusagasuga, there is not a hearth where the fire is out.
One must travel many leagues, many days marches, many
moons, in order to go from one end to another of this im
mense nation. The country of the Aztecs or the Incas is
hardly larger. All the tablelands, all the fields which here
form an end to the Andes, are peopled and cultivated,
tended, provided with roads by these Indian pottery-
makers, farmers, weavers, miners, who pass their days
holding dialogues with clay, struggling to raise potatoes,
hunting rabbits, making their cornfields bloom with gay-
tasselled ears. And all this work that they may frolic at night
on their beds of woven strips or of matting, with no other
witness than the eye of the guttering candle which trembles
on the hearth.
We are at peace so at least think those Indians who
gather water at the salt beds in Nemocon, set it to boil in
great clay pots, and never cease to feed the fire until the
MUD, CHIGGERS 113
snowy lump of white salt stands forth, white as the teeth
of the Indians. We are at peace so think the fishermen
shut into the labyrinth of canals and lakes which the river
forms in the broad savannas of the Bogota men, ingenuous
fishermen who laugh when they catch a fish slippery as a
serpent or when they feel the bite of a crab. There are
Indians who hack firewood from the hills with their stone
hatchets. Others on crude looms in rude workshops weave
the black-dyed, red-dyed threads into fine and gaudy blan
kets. There are some who beat skilfully on a sheet of gold
to bring forth a ferocious image which they have previ
ously engraved on a bit of stone. Not a few of them go to
the fair at Muequeta with small bars of gold, cakes of salt,
loads of corn, small green stones from Somondoco, cotton
mantas, in order to barter and exchange. But all of them
feel that a cordial air of friendliness protects them, that
they are wrapped in an atmosphere of peace.
Two great lords, great chieftains rule this immense na
tion: on the Bogota side, the Zipa; on the Junza side, the
Zaque. The Junza lives to the north; his lands extend to
the temperate extremities of Velez, where a wind blows
warm and fragrant; they reach as far as Somondoco, where
the small green stones come from, crystals which look like
little avocados, emeralds born amid white nests of quartz.
On his side is the lord of Suamoz, the Sugamuxi, who reads
man s future in the passage of the stars and knows the fate
of the harvests. The Zipa of Bogoti lives to the south. Puffed
up by the victories he won over the Panches, he took arms
against the Indians of the east, at Ebaque. Then he went
north and conquered Ebate. And when he tried to pene
trate the Junza dominions, the two armies met in Choconta.
In the potter s imagination that seemed like an encounter
114 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
between a hundred thousand Indians, and thus the chron
iclers will describe it later.
After all, this land with such gentle levels, such quiet
plains, such broad horizons, which serves as terminus to
the Andes, is like a miracle inviting to labour and to peace.
The Indian who has planted the poles of his hut in the
earth, who sits down in the afternoon to knead clay, who
spends his spare time hunting rabbits in the brush, feels no
desire for battle. He sees that the paths which lead away
from his hut toward all the pointings of the weathervane
are innumerable, and sometimes he follows them to go to
a fair or to barter with his neighbours. The son of the
house who ventures farther will perhaps go down to the
valley of the Magdalena some day, and perhaps he will
never come back. The Caribs who clamber up the hard
flanks from the river and fall upon the mountain plains
soon grow bent and lazy, cover themselves with blankets,
no longer eat fish, feed on potatoes and other tubers, and
after not very many moons become peaceful labourers.
The lands of Bogota are so high that the cold strikes to
the bones. Sometimes in the early morning the water turns
to ice. A crown of hills surrounds the plain. Standing at
the summit of these hills, or on certain peaks and outcrop-
pings where the tableland seems to hang suspended over
the abyss, one can look down to the depths of the Mag
dalena. There are five thousand, six thousand feet between
the two levels. Many times the living spurs of cordillera
rock stand stripped and naked as if to show on what kind
of concrete the land of the Chibchas is founded.
The Zipa lives in an immense circular hut surrounded
MUD, CHIGGERS 115
by a palisade into which are woven painted woods of vivid
colours; the walls are covered with the finest cloths. The
litters in which he goes forth to visit his dominions are
plated with gold. His subjects hunt game in the brush and
roast it a golden brown in their ovens. In the afternoon
the landscape of the savannas is a tapestry. There are for
ests of myrtle with its twisted trunks, its branches deco
rated with a moss that hangs in long grey beards; canal-
crossed swamps where the rushes grow; smooth waterways
for the rafts that the Indian fishermen propel with a pad
dle; the river, muddy and troubled in its flowing, traces a
bed meandering and capricious; maize fields here and there,
dry leaves stirring sonorous under the hand of the wind;
ears of corn wrapped like children in their swaddling
clothes and showing a red head already blackened and
crisped by the sun; from time to time a hut, grey and gilded
like a sheaf of wheat; on all sides lakes which turn ver
milion under the afternoon sun.
The afternoon is one long hour of quietude, the first call
to rest, which dissolves amid cloud flecks of gold. The wild
game stop, cautious, raise their heads with round startled
eyes as black as jet, and hold the twilight suspended like
a golden banner on their branching horns. Into the west,
swift and proud, falls the sun of the cold country: the clear
sun of the wild. .
The Zaque of Junza lives in an enclosure with sheets of
gold at the entrance over which the breeze wanders as
though it were playing amid the cymbals. The priests, after
powdering their skins with gold dust, wash themselves in
certain lakes. The Indians make frogs and lizards out of
gold and offer them to the Mojanes to obtain their good
will. In Sugamuxi a temple dedicated to the sun is covered
116 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
with gold. In some places there are goldsmiths who work
for the Zaque and for the Indians in good standing. It is the
gold, the cursed gold of America, which determines so
many undertakings, both good and bad.
The Indians move about like ants. Like ants they travel
along winding paths to the hot country and exchange salt
cakes for golden statuettes. The tale of the Indians who
have salt, who weave cotton cloths, who worship the god
of the lakes travels into far-distant lands.
But now there is something strange in the atmosphere
which heralds catastrophe. The virgin flanks of the cor-
dillera tremble. Whispers of terror run through the towns.
On clear nights the Indian looks at the goddess Chia in the
moon and questions her. From the rocks that serve as bal
conies by the lakes the Indians watch the goddess Sia in
the water, she who guards the sacred frog under her crys
tal skirts. In the sacred mirrors they try to divine the truth
about the future. A warrior shout comes up from the bot
tom of the valleys. The monster horse whinnies in their
ears. On the wind runs the voice of bearded men who carry
poles brilliant as the sun s rays. The pottery-maker strikes
the rounded surface of the ewer which he has just taken
from the fire, and the jar responds with a cracked and hol
low voice. The Indian looks at it, terrified. . . .
From the north, from the south, from the east come ru
mours of the invaders, like the sound of rising waters tear
ing out a tree centuries old and playing with it as though it
were a straw. From the north come the troops that set out
so recklessly from Santa Marta. In the south sound the
arquebuses of Belalcdzar, who makes the thrust for the
MUD, CHIGGERS 117
conquistadors of Peru. On the east climb the troops of
Federmann, the soulless Germans who have become hard
ened in the crucible of treacherous crimes; they are di
abolic forces which ascend like fire that bores upward to
crown the mountains with a flaming crest. It seems the
fulfilment of some absurd prophecy that three unknown
captains with their troops of vagabonds should arrive at
the same time as if keeping tryst with the devil. And all of
them carry the cross of Christ in front. But we are getting
ahead of our story.
Quesada was the first to arrive, the most punctual. The
sight of these pleasant and cultivated regions put new heart
into his soldiers. When in the distance they saw huts that
dotted the landscape until they were lost against the hori
zon, the enthusiastic conquerors exclaimed, "This is the
valley of our dreams 1" After such arduous marches, with
the rude flank of the rugged cordillera well behind them,
there was not one who did not seek rest here, a chance to
pitch his tent, to found a lasting home. Father Castellanos
was to capture this feeling with rare perfection in his verse:
Tierra buena! Tierra buena!
Land that puts an end to sorrow!
Land of gold and land of plenty,
Land to make for ever homeland,
Land with good food in abundance,
Land of large towns, level land,
Land where one sees people clothed,
Where in season cooked foods taste good;
Land of blessings, bright and clear,
Land that puts an end to sorrow!
118 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
The land is not exactly a land of gold, as the priest says.
It is a land of labourers, of fanners, where a conquistador
who comes in search of fabulous riches will find only an
elusive, fleeting splendour that slips between his fingers.
Yet the Spaniards entered as though they were going into
Aladdin s cave, with their eyes wide open and their pov
erty plain to be seen in their most miserable appearance.
This was their New Kingdom. Malaria, hunger, and fevers
had left their mark. At the first feasts, with an abundance of
game, potatoes, corn, rabbits, the colour came back to their
faces; their bodies grew stronger. Out of the beautiful
cloths woven by the Indians they made themselves new
garments. The horses frisked gaily. Clean, new air filled the
lungs. Past hungers were forgotten, and they looked only
for riches. And when those riches failed to materialize,
when the would-be "ranchers" found only emptiness, "in
their sadness they clearly showed the motives with which
they began so arduous a conquest," as the melancholy
Bishop Piedrahita says.
From this time forward the Indians displayed their
whole game, which was to make sly fun of the Spaniards.
Quesada, with his air of a wise statesman, borne on the lit
ter of authority, began to dictate his first laws, in which he
condensed a fine Machiavellian principle into these words
"to ensure the chase with art and to subdue these nations
with cunning." Clearly Quesada had not had Belalcazar s
experience in founding cities, as that former donkey-boy
was to throw in his face later on.
While those who had rebelled against Pizarro were
marching to Cundinamarca by the beautiful valley of Po-
payan, by the broad vale of Cali, Quesada was scaling the
cordillera with his body suspended in vine slings and the
MUD, CHIGGERS 119
horses going up in baskets. He might not know how to found
a city, but he did have an illusive concept of what justice
was. He was stubborn, fantastic, extravagant, magnani
mous, full of illusions, as befits this type of caballero. Here
is the speech he addressed to his soldiers, boldly confront
ing his conquest, in full view of that land which was to be
the subject of his governing:
"Brave Spaniards and my comrades, the time has ar
rived when the chain of hardships with which you have
been fettered in these imprisoning mountains has been
broken, and you see before you, in the broad spaces of this
surrounding country, the well-merited reward of your ef
forts; the multitude of natives, the neatness and order of
their persons, offer clear evidence of the benign influences
they enjoy; the land, less cautious than its inhabitants, gives
open sign of rich treasures in the shape of copious lodes
upon which our hopes feed. I have well tested your valour
in the quick obedience with which you have carried out
my orders, overcoming enormous difficulties; and on the
occasion which now confronts us, I would not want to im
pose delay, for speed in action increases fear in our oppo
nents, whom we must subjugate more through terror than
by force of arms; and this will be the greater in their minds
in proportion as they feel more haste on our part. When
Marcus Cato was asked how he had conquered a certain
city in Spain, he answered that it was by covering in two
days time what would ordinarily take four days, for if fore
sight has the force of thunder, execution should have the
speed of lightning. What good will we have reaped from
calamity if we do not attain the glory which fortune holds
out to us? What good to have saved our lives while so
many close friends perished, if we do not risk those lives
120 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
so that our names may be eternal or an honourable death
vindicate us? Compared with that fortitude which heaven
freed from such enslaving misery, our enemies, numerous
as they are, are not powerful. If the purpose of exalting
the name of Christ is served by the display of a bold valour,
even more is it served by bearing it victorious through
greater dangers. Good soldiers never seem few, nor do ene
mies seem many when they fight in disorder. The hazards
that await us carry no greater risk than those which you
have already overcome in so many encounters; and those
who knew how to emerge so gaily from the first can hardly
anticipate failure in the second. Those who have no con
fidence in themselves become the posts on which the vic
tories of our opponents will be engraved; and those who
are not afraid when the die is cast become the darlings of
fortune whom she courts with the same favours she show
ered upon Julius Caesar. All this is understood when the
way must be opened by force of arms; but otherwise it is
an error, which prudence condemns, to provoke a combat
when the end can be achieved by gentler methods. Some
of the greatest successes have been won through the media
tion of peace and friendliness, both of these being advan
tages which even the most barbarous desire. And since it is
so important to reconcile these Indians to our presence, it
will be sound judgment to try winning them by flattery,
and forbear breaking with them until occasion demands it.
If they believe us men of honour, they will not shun con
tact with us, and if by our deeds we belie all reason, they
will defend their rights with their lives, and will, first of
all, and to our great loss, secrete all their possessions. So
the most judicious course will always be to ensure the chase
with art and to subdue these nations with cunning, since
MUD, CHIGGERS 121
fortune renders him who fears her incapable of winning her
by force; and if pacific means are likewise simple we shall
gain superiority by keeping our pact and not breaking our
word; but if they fail to respond to our friendly advances,
I shall not hesitate to take stronger measures until they do
respect them/
Quesada was energetic in enforcing the laws which
stemmed from this discourse. Having reached open coun
try, he allowed no flouting of his military ordinances, and
he wanted everything to move as by the magic of a single
spring, A shifty little Indian approached the soldiers* camp
one day with a load of blankets, and on the way ran into
Juan Gordo (Fat Jack), who was one of Quesada s good
men. Gordo had stolen off from the camp in secret to strip
the flesh from a horse that had died near by. Seeing him,
the Indian dropped his load on the ground and took to his
heels. Gordo understood this to be an offering and took
the blankets for himself. Recovered from his fright, and
seeing that the Spaniard had walked off with the pile, the
Indian turned his steps toward the camp and laid his com
plaint before the general. Quesada investigated, found that
Gordo was the guilty one, and executed him. As Caste-
llanos says:
It did not save him to be nicknamed "Fatty"
For, following the usage of these peoples,
His neck, where he was thinnest, broke the rope.
In matters of law the lawyer s ideas were in accord with
that feudal attitude which inspired the laws of Spain, and
of which the fueros of the cities and the partidas of the
wise King Alfonso X were a faithful expression. They were
cruel laws, mystic and ingenuous. "The day of the Assump-
122 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
tion of Our Lady," says the chronicler, "there was no rea
son for marching. What was done meanwhile was that the
general and other chief personages confessed and received
die Sacrament in order that they might go with more de
votion and attendant contrition to rob the chief of Tunja,
thus putting themselves right with God so that the robbery
should not be on their conscience/
What the army really needed was order, to obey one
person; and that admirable captain of mutineers, Quesada,
well understood that the natural thing was that the order
should be of his establishing and that the troops should
think through his head. "Troop/ 7 thinks the lawyer, "comes
from troppus, flock. I am the shepherd. Rob yes. But
when I order it. And let no one murmur or contradict/ 7
There goes Lazaro Fonte saying that when they reach the
coast he is going to denounce the general for hiding em
eralds in order not to pay the king s fifth. Who ever heard
of such a thing! From that moment forward the general
thought only of hanging Ldzaro Fonte. Let the soldiers see
him dangling in the air like any Juan Gordo. Quesada
invented a subterfuge to give his sentence some founda
tion. He contrived to have a soldier denounce Lazaro Fonte
as an emerald thief. The general had said, "No one is to
steal emeralds except on my order/ There were "ranch
ing" days in which everything was allowed, and days of
no "ranching" in which everything was forbidden. And
Ldzaro Fonte made an error in this simplest of calendars.
To receive the accusation against Ldzaro Fonte and to
condemn him were one and the same thing. No question
of proofs, no opportunity for the accused to defend him
self. Anger was working within Quesada s mind. "So I was
MUD, CHIGGERS 123
stealing the king s fifth, and you were going to denounce
me, you great rogue!"
But this time, my dear general, this is no Juan Gordo.
This is no less than Lazaro Fonte, flower of the captains.
This is Lazaro Fonte who went ahead with San Martin to
the discoveries of the Opon. He is the best of the horsemen,
the one who outran the swiftest of the Chibchas in races
which left the Indians astounded at the efficacy and the
wonder of the horses.
Lazaro Fonte demanded an appeal to the king, but
Quesada refused to concede it. There was a movement of
horror in the army. Captain Suarez advanced, and in the
name of all of them asked that the sentence be commuted
to exile. "The sentence which Your Grace has pronounced,"
he insinuated, "might be taken as the fruit of rancour/ The
blow struck home. Quesada retreated. He changed the sen
tence and Lazaro Fonte was disarmed, and ordered forth
to exile in the lands of the chief of Pasca. For Quesada this
was equivalent to a death sentence. To fall disarmed into
the territory of wild Indians, already known for their treach
ery, was to head straight for death. A good escort went
with Lazaro Fonte to the native town. They were twenty-
five Spanish horsemen, a body that, to the Pascas, meant
the town s destruction. The Indians, seeing them come,
fled to the hills. Then the soldiers abandoned Lazaro Fonte
in a hut, and left him tied.
But Lazaro Fonte was one of those captains who make
themselves beloved. There was an Indian woman who
had become attached to him and who followed him. She
passed the whole night at his side while Lazaro was com
mending his soul to God. The copper-coloured maiden had
124 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
no intention of letting the Pascas sacrifice her captain, her
man, the handsome Spaniard with the curly beard which
her fingers caressed, while the captain was running his hairy
hand over her abundant tresses. As soon as dawn broke, the
Indian woman went out to the entrance of the town. The
Pascas were already coming back. She advanced to meet
the chief and told him that Lazaro Fonte had been bound
and tied for having opposed his companions plan to burn
the town. And thus was Captain Lazaro Fonte saved.
The new land defended itself from its conquerors only
through irony and dissimulation. The Spaniards advanced
full of confidence, for they were going to conquer more by
diplomacy than with arms. From now on this would be a
war in which there was no fighting. The swords that were
covered with blood in Hungary and Italy, the lances that
in Santa Marta had carried thin vermilion points after bat
tle, as though crowned with red carnations those same
swords and lances were blunted by the mists of the high
plains, and turned the colour of lilies. Everything moved
on a level of malice, cunning, sagacity. And thus it would
be for centuries in this new world of guerrilla warfare,
ambuscades, and delay.
When the army entered Sorocatd, they found abundant
supplies. Here was the laden table of which they had
dreamed in those far-away days in Spain when the elo
quence of the governors had turned these vagabond heads.
The potato fields were just ripe. And of the potatoes Cas-
tellanos says:
To the roots of this aforesaid herb,
Which in height may grow perhaps three spans,
MUD, CHIGGERS 125
Underneath the earth these are attached.
They are more or less of an eggs size,
Some bulbous-shaped, but others growing long.
In colour they are yellow, white, or purple,
Mealy roots and pleasant to the taste.
The army, then, decided to rest. After two or three days
of idleness, they all felt as though their feet were laughing
or at least smiling. Their toes itched with a delicious tick
ling. When they sat on their piles of straw, or on their
beds, it was delightful to rub one foot against the other.
But on the third and the fourth day the pleasure turned
into something quite different. Their feet burned, itched,
hung like red beets, and were unable to move. The army
had caught a foot infection. It was the chigger, the
white chigger of America, which had worked its way into
the flesh.
Minutest fleas that inward drilling
Bury themselves *twixt skin and flesh
Where feeding on the fat they grow
And wax, should they be overlooked,
Until they are as large as peas;
And that fatness is all full
Of issue similar to the mother
That go spreading through the soles
And multiplying their generations.
But soon it became evident that the Indians, or at least
the Indian women, did not wish the Spaniards to disap
pear. These bearded men had a grace all their own. The
passion which dominated them gave them a certain pres
tige. And the Indian women resolved to give them back
126 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
the use of their lower limbs. The Spaniards, shoeless, rested
against the walls, or sat on the beds, and stretched out a
foot to the Indian women, who, squatting before them,
amused themselves by picking out the chiggers with straw
needles, with long thorns, working in the weeping flesh
with a care and a gentleness that were a delight. . . .
The conquest of New Granada has many entertaining
things about it. Just as the land laughs in mockery, so did
the Indians, and above all the Indian women. There is a
certain coquetry in virgin land. It was the same amusement
which moved the Indian potter to laughter as he drew the
ferocious image of the god of war on the jar s neck. It was
the laughter of the child when he thrust his hands deep
into the clay of Raquira and smeared himself to the eye
brows. It was the same gaiety that made the Portuguese
soldier s squaw split her sides with laughing.
Father Castellanos was to make the tale of the Indian
woman and the Portuguese soldier immortal in a certain
passage of his Elegias. The Indian woman was well formed,
well made, well disposed. The Portuguese who saw her
said, "This one is mine/ This Indian was one of those
women who stand out wherever they are. She had personal
ity, she had charm. The Portuguese had no wish to drag
her off by force; he sincerely wanted to make her his ac
cording to the proper legal and religious formulae. And
he dressed her in a good slip, he had her baptized, he pre
pared feasts and a real wedding for her.
The Spaniards and the Indians watched all this with
pleasure. Some laughed at seeing the Indian woman in
MUD, CHIGGERS 127
so foreign a costume and the Portuguese in so deep an
ecstasy. When night fell, a dark night, the Portuguese took
the Indian woman to his hut. Up to this point she had said
nothing, as if her will had no tongue. She was shy, fright
ened, silent. The Portuguese took her to his hammock and
pressed her lovingly against his breast. She trembled like
a little bird, and did not close her eyes. Suddenly, with
much cunning, she indicated that she must rise a moment
"to go to do some necessary business." The Portuguese re
leased her gently from his arms, and watched the Indian
woman, in the white slip he had given her, move across his
room and go out through the door s black hole. The white
silhouette stopped under the branches of a tree at the en
trance to the hut. Some time passed. The Portuguese looked
and looked again at the white form which moved gently
in the same place against the shadows. The Portuguese
called his sweetheart, demanded her, but she made no an
swer and she did not come back.
My own Tereya, come to me,
To thy lovers arms who yearns for thee.
But the Indian woman made no answer, came forward
not one step. Nor could she come, for what the Portuguese
saw was only the white slip which the Indian woman had
left hanging on the branches of the tree, while her swift
feet carried her far away from the hut. The Portuguese
grew impatient.
Seeing no response, twas his desire
To rise, and this he did with ardent fire,
Saying, "Guard thou that I should not see?
128 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Why, thy clothes betray thy place to me."
He put a hand to her, and found the skin
Now empty of the lovely flesh within.
So he returned with nothing but the shirt
And nearer tears than laughter at the hurt.
VI
. The Indian
Mine is not a bed of roses. . . ,
CUAUHTEMOTZIN
THE INDIAN KINGS
AL these histories are alike. The heads of all the kings
in America were detached in the same manner, and
a grey wave of defeat ran from Mexico to Chile in
which Aztecs and Chibchas, Incas and Araucanians, all met
the same fate. There was a moment when the Spaniards,
moved by the simple dignity of the native monarchs, bowed
before them, but greed gnawed at their vitals. Their ap
petites were whetted by the first small samples they took
on the coast, and the pupils of their eyes dilated as if gold
had been belladonna. The tale of El Dorado implied inex
haustible treasures. And as there is no limit to the desire
for riches, the Spaniards were firmly convinced that the
Indians hid some part of their wealth. It was not possible
that there should be no more than one small mound of
gold in the neighbourhood of the Zipa or the Zaque. How
could it be that Atahuallpa was hardly able to fill one
single room with jewels? Who doubted that Cuauhtemot-
zin had thrown millions into the lakes in Mexico? Then
came the torture systematic cruelty organized to tear the
Indians secrets from them. And perfidy, and treason, which
should not be considered as moral vices, but as natural con
sequences of the thirst for gold which was stimulated by
the very atmosphere of America.
Let us, for a moment, turn aside from Quesada and the
Chibchas in order to look at what was happening tinder
the conquerors. In so doing, we will evoke the figures of
these native kings who all seemed moved by the same
131
132 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
noble spirit until they were pulled down by an identical
greedy band.
One day Cortes and his soldiers went to Montezuma s
palace with the secret intention of seizing him. Monte-
zuma was the king, and Cortes an intruder. Cortes had
asked an audience. His first words were veiled in polite
ness, but then, brusquely changing his tone, he said:
"I am very much surprised that you, so valorous a prince,
and our avowed friend, should have ordered your captains
on the coast near Tucupdn to take arms against my Span
iards, and to dare rob the towns which are under the pro
tection of our Lord and King, and to demand of them In
dian men and women for sacrifice, and to kill a Spaniard
who is my brother, and a horse."
The king had done none of these things. Surprised and
terrified, he listened to the demand and "taking from his
arm and wrist the sign and seal of Vichilobos" he ordered
an immediate investigation. But Cortes had scattered his
soldiers about the king s apartments, and the king was
alone and unarmed. It was hard to attack a man who was
loyal and honourable. Cortes set forth certain arguments,
but his soldiers cut short his discreet words and broke out
in a manner which left no room for discussion. "What is
Your Grace doing with so many words? Either we take
him prisoner, or leave him stuck full of sword thrusts.
Therefore tell him that if he shouts or makes outcry we
will kill him, for this time it is more important that we
make sure of our lives than that we lose them."
So they took Montezuma prisoner, and held him in jail
under heavy guard while he was swearing to remain Spain s
THE INDIAN KINGS 133
vassal and trying to calm down the Mexicans. Montezuma s
nephews went about stirring up the Indians in order to free
him. There were Mexican uprisings. The king went to the
jail roof to quiet the crowd, but everything he did in an
attempt to pacify his people was useless. The Indians in
the streets were growling with anger. With stones, sticks,
and arrows they let fly at the Spaniards. Some of the stones
reached Montezuma. He met the injury with tears in his
eyes, and fell into melancholy silence. He saw life slipping
away from him, and refused to try to hold onto it. He would
not eat, he would not drink. The Spaniards, to whom their
own defence was more important than that of a prisoner,
abandoned him. "While we were otherwise engaged they
came to say that he was dead."
With Montezuma dead, there still remained Cuauhte-
motzin. He fought in the defence of his people like a lion.
When the Spaniards finally defeated him the city of Mex
ico was covered with the bodies of Indians who had died
rather than surrender. In the streets, in the plazas, in the
very houses there were piles of human heads. Never was
invader resisted with such intrepid courage. Diaz del Cas
tillo says, "I have read of the destruction of Jerusalem, but
I am not at all sure that the mortality was greater there
than it was here." Says Torquemada, "Torrents of blood
ran through the streets as water runs when the rain is
hard." Cuauhtemotzin had asked the priests if he ought
to continue fighting, and as their reply was in the affirma
tive, he said, "Then as you wish it that way, guard well the
corn we have, and the supplies, and let us all die fighting;
and from now on let no one demand peace lest I slay him
for it" And the Indians promised to fight "night and day,
and to die in the defence of the city." And thus they did.
134 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Death put an end to the combat. Cuauhtemotzin, sur
prised by a small group of soldiers, fell into Cortes s hands.
Seeing himself lost, he asked only freedom for the women,
and peace for the vanquished. The Spaniards were already
thinking of the gold to be had. What they had found in
Montezuma s chamber was not enough. The Indians had
had to hide the jewels, and their leader must know where.
To drag out a confession, they put him to the torture.
The knotted cords worked on his flesh. The king had noth
ing to say. Whether much or little, he indicates that they
will find something in the bottom of the lake. Wrath mounts
in the soldiers. "Where is the gold?" they demand furiously.
Their eyes seem about to start from their heads. Their lips
are dry, their faces marked with blood and anger. "Let s
burn his feet," some demand, "until this villain talks."
They put oil to heat in a cauldron. They pour it over his
feet until they become a mass of raw flesh. A slight odour
of frying assails the nostrils of the hungry Spaniards. But
nothing else comes. Not a word.
Another leader was put to the torture at Cuauhtemotzin s
side. This was Tlacopan. When he felt himself burning,
and when the boiling oil began to bite to the quick, he
cried aloud, and twisted about. Cuauhtemotzin, who had
been enduring this martyrdom with the utmost imper
turbability, turned his head toward his companion and re
proached him gently, "Am I in some pleasure nest, or
bath?"
The capture and death of Atahuallpa at the hands of
Pizarro was identical. He was invited to an interview with
Pizarro. Atahuallpa agreed, and came one day so slow and
THE INDIAN KINGS 135
majestic that it took him four hours to cover a league. "He
came in a golden litter, lined and decorated with many-
coloured parrot feathers, which men carried on their
shoulders, and seated on a rich golden cushion garnished
with many stones and placed above a block, or throne, of
gold. He wore a coloured borla or fringe of finest wool
which covered his eyebrows and his temples, and which
was the royal insigne of the kings of Cuzco. He brought
three hundred or more liveried servants to bear the litter
and to clear away sticks and stones from the path, and
they danced and sang before him, and many great lords
were borne on litters and hammocks in token of the majesty
of his court."
While the king was advancing, Pizarro and his men sta
tioned themselves behind the doors of the hut where the
interview was to take place, in order to fire at Atahuallpa
and assassinate him if it came to that. Among them was
Sebastian de Belalcazar, who as a boy had herded donkeys
in Spain and who now figured as one of Pizarro s grandees.
So die king came on in slow majesty. A Dominican friar,
Vicente de Valverde, who reminds one a bit of Tomas Ortiz
of Santa Marta, advanced to receive him. The friar said to
the king:
"Does Your Excellency believe in God, and in the Holy
Trinity, and in the Holy Ghost, and in Jesus Christ His
only Son, who was born of the Virgin Mary?"
In short, that same speech of Don Francisco de los Cobos
which all the friars had learned, and which left Atahuallpa
as perplexed and amused as it had the Indians at Santa
Marta. Fray Vicente, who wasted no time getting to the
point, thus ended the creed:
"Who was resurrected on the third day, ascended within
136 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
forty days into heaven, leaving as his vicar on earth St.
Peter and his successors who are called popes; they have
granted unto the most powerful King of Spain the con
quest and conversion of these lands; and thus Francisco de
Pizarro has now come to beg you to be the friends and trib
utaries of the King of Spain, Emperor of the Romans,
Monarch of the world, and to obey the Pope and receive
the faith of Christ, if you believe in it and that it is most
holy, and that the faith you now hold is most false. And
know that if you do the contrary, we will make war on you,
and tear your idols from you, so that you may quit this
false religion, and your many and false gods/
It seems to me that Atahuallpa was no fool, for he an
swered thus:
"Let Your Grace be assured that, as I am free, I have
no reason to pay tribute to anyone, nor can I listen to any
statement that there may be a greater lord than Atahuallpa.
Nevertheless, I am willing to be a friend to your emperor,
and to recognize that he must be a great prince, inasmuch
as he has sent so many armies throughout the world, as
Your Grace says. But I will not obey that Pope of whom
you speak, for he is far away and I will not yield to one
who has never seen my father s kingdom. As for religion,
mine is a very good one, and I am content with it, and
I do not wish even to argue about a thing so old and tried.
That Christ of which Your Grace speaks died. The sun and
the moon never die. How does Your Grace know that it
was your God who created the world?"
Friar Vicente was in no mood for theological disputes
with a savage such as Atahuallpa. Up to this moment he
had been speaking with crucifix in hand. Now he took his
breviary and advanced toward the king. "Let Your Majesty
THE INDIAN KINGS 137
read these pages," lie said, "and you will see whether what
I am saying is the truth or not/ The king took the book,
looked at it, leafed through it with a certain curiosity, gave
a loud laugh, and dropped it on the floor. The priest at
once lifted his hands toward heaven and cried vengeance.
"The Scriptures on the floor! Vengeance, Christians!
Have at them, at those who wish neither our friendship
nor our laws!"
That was what they were waiting for. The soldiers threw
themselves forward with daggers, swords, lances, and
bludgeons, and began hacking at the litter-bearers. For
every Indian that fell, another Indian of the retinue took
his place. The king rocked amid a sea of heads, screaming
tongues, swords which waved in the air, white at first, then
red. Pizarro threw himself forward, put hand to Atahuall-
pa s mantle, and pulled him down. Confronted with this
horrible sacrilege, the Indians were aghast, their hands fell
to their sides, their eyes opened wide with horror. And
panic took them, and they rushed away leaving clouds of
dust behind them. The soldiers led Atahuallpa to Pizarro s
room.
The Spaniards wanted gold. "I will give you gold until
it chokes you, if in exchange you will give me liberty," said
the king. The Spaniards stretched their ears, they listened.
"More, more, more," was the word that rang in their heads.
They were in a room twenty-two feet long by sixteen feet
wide, "I will fill this room with vessels of gold and silver
until they reach the height of my hand on the wall." The
king raised his hand, and the Spaniards marked a line along
the wall. They could hardly believe that the king s treasure
was so great.
All the roads of Tahuantinsuyo filled with Indian car-
138 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
riers going to Caxamalca with the ransom gold. From the
remotest confines of the empire all roads, paths, broad Inca
trails become veins, roots flooded with gold to feed a tree
of greed and to make sure that when the golden apples
ripen, the king shall get back his liberty. Already they are
pouring out their loads on the floor, covering the earth with
jars, disks, breast-plates of gold. It is a musical cataract
which gives the Spaniards a feeling of amazement and ad
miration. This is Peru, the "Piru" of the Peruvians. It is
Spain s Golden Age. In the shadows the men of the con
quest unsheathe their daggers so as to make themselves
felt when the moment comes for dividing the loot.
Now the treasure is heaped before them. Now they must
laugh at all compromise and hang the king. Pizarro is as
delicate in this as any advocate, and he opens criminal pro
ceedings. Felipillo is the accuser, an interpreter who is "in
love with and a friend of one of the wives of Atahuallpa.
This Felipillo is the Indian traitor who always figures in
every criminal proceeding of the entire conquest. Pizarro
and Almagro agree on the king s death. A friar helps them
Valverde.
"When the sentence was communicated to him," says
Benjamin Carrion, "Atahuallpa rebuked Pizarro for his
falseness. He reminded him that he had fulfilled the ran
som agreement; and he told him that while he and his
people had had only a kind and friendly feeling for the
Spaniards, they had been repaid with death. Seeing his re
proaches useless, he again returned to his attitude of ap
parent serenity and, in accordance with his rites, recom
mended to the mercy of the conqueror the fate of his wives
and his children. He then conversed with the priests and
sages who surrounded him. They reminded him that the
THE INDIAN KINGS 139
soul of the Inca cannot return to the sun if his body has
been consumed by the flames of earthly fire, and they
counselled him to allow himself to be baptized so that
eternal punishment would be commuted. This was the
moment of Valverde s dark revenge. There in the plaza,
under the gallows and surrounding the piled faggots ready
to be lighted, was the group formed by the Inca and his
butchers. The sun had hidden its face. A few wavering
torches lighted the fateful scene. Valverde was muttering
psalms, and after the Inca had declared through the dog
Latin of an acolyte that he abjured his infamous idolatry
and embraced the Christian religion, the priest poured the
baptismal waters over the head of the great king and with
the aid of oil and salt imposed on him the grotesque name
of Juan Francisco. ...
"The death sentence. The friars recite their office of the
dead. The soldiers kneel. In the corners of the plaza the
Indians, like men drugged and drunken, listen to the death
agonies of the Son of the Sun/*
"Chaupi punchapi tutayaca": darkness fell in the middle
of the day!
Among warrior peoples the Indian kings fell fighting;
thus Cuauhtemotzin in Mexico and Caupolican in Chile.
Among agricultural peoples the kings fell into the snares of
the conquerors; Atahuallpa in Peru, Sacresaxigua in the
kingdom of the Chibchas. In the last analysis it was all the
same. The same legend of treasure thrown into the lake,
the same tale of the king plotting uprisings, the same friar
who stirs the bonfire and assists in proper dying, the same
captains who hide behind the doors, the same pressure of
140 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
the soldiers to get on with the torture and continue the
victorious emprises of Spain. As there are always some
among the troops who have read the letters of Cortes on
the taking of Mexico, or have fought with the Pizarros, a
tradition grows up. On the death of the Zaque of Tunja
Castellanos writes:
Ferndn Perez de Quesada caused it
. , . and this with no great prudence
And the encouragement of bad advisers
Who came there -from Peru. . . .
The death of Caupolican must be placed as a proper
climax to these first enterprises which began with the
heroic martyrdom of Cuauhtemotzin. Caupolican repre
sented fighting valour. He fought in the land of the Ajau-
canians. He was chosen captain because he had proved
himself the strongest in the military trials. He got his troops
in order, and for his first battle chose a new scene the
sea. When the Spaniards in two or three ships arrived at
Peuco he hurled himself into the sea to hold them off. The
men from Spain shot off their cannons. Caupolicin threw
himself on the cannons, tore them from their bases, flung
them into the sea. Then came a second battle, Lagunillas,
this time on land. Here the Spanish forces created havoc,
and Caupolican paused to consider. Ordinary shields were
of no avail against powder, so in the next attack at Cafiete
he presented his army protected with planks for shields.
He had arrows thrust into the piles of hay which the Indi
ans paying tribute to the Spaniards brought into town,
and thus provided that the attack should come from within
as well as from without.
But the Spanish weapons were always more effective.
THE INDIAN KINGS 141
Caupolican fell prisoner. He was impaled, thrust through
with arrows until his body looked like a St. Sebastian. His
wife, who had come running like a madwoman across the
near-by hills, arrived in time to throw the body of his son
at the feet of the dying Caupolican. The Spaniards pursued
the conquered Indians, offered them new battles. After
the battle of Quiapo six hundred native prisoners were
hanged. From then on the history of Chile developed in
an atmosphere of cruelty. They cut two toes off the feet
of the Indians who worked in the mines so that they could
not flee.
Against such a background of contemporary activity,
let us return to the tale of Quesada and the Chibchas.
Sacresaxigua, king of Cundelumarca or Cundinamarca,
in whose lands Quesada found himself, was to die under
conditions very like those of Cuauhtemotzin and Ata-
huallpa, but as these uplands are wrapped in a cold which
makes even the dead grin, the tragedies of his suffering
and death were to be mixed with humour. Sacresaxigua
knew right well that death was snapping at his heels, but
he still had spirit enough left to make fun of the Spaniards
as did that Indian girl who left her nightgown hanging
at the door of the Portuguese s hut.
The Spaniards entered the kingdom of the Chibchas
resolved to get their fill of gold. "The spies," as Father
Aguado says, "kept their eyes turned in all directions." The
army seemed to be set in the centre of a roulette wheel.
They did not know which way to move for the lucky num
ber. The green uplands were like a gaming table. King
Bogota, in order to rid himself of Quesada, pointed out
142 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
that the emerald mines lay to the north, and the soldiers
Pedro Fernandez commanded went prowling around So-
mondoco until they stumbled on the nest of precious stones.
Then an Indian woman told about a city, which was
Tunja, where the hut doors were hung with "great pieces
of gold which strike against one another, chiming and mak
ing a noise/ so the general moved down Tunja way, im
prisoned the chief, and laid hands on his treasures.
In Tunja they said there was another city, Sogamoso,
where the temple of the sun was lined with sheets of gold
and the floor covered with mats made of golden thread so
that it shone brilliantly within. The Spaniard put spurs to
his horse, the troops marched through the midst of war
rior nations, but nothing kept these sons of greed from
going where they meant to go. They reached Sogamoso
and at nightfall entered the gigantic sanctuary of Re-
michinchagagua with blazing torches; sheets of gold gave
back the light in a thousand reflections. Torch in hand,
the soldiers drew near to touch that unbelievable treasure,
and suddenly the tongues of flame licked the wooden
columns, soared to the ceiling, sang amid the dry thatch
ing, and turned the whole thing into a gigantic bonfire
that burned for a solid year. More singed than enriched, the
Spaniards returned to Tunja by the light of this fire, and
it was then announced that the greatest riches were not
toward the east, in Sogamoso, but to the south in the pos
session of Bogoti, king of Cundinamarca, to whom all
towns were tributary. And Quesada left like a soul borne
by the devil, followed by the thieving rabble, to clap irons
on Bogotd. But Bogota had taken advantage of Quesada s
absence to hide himself.
THE INDIAN KINGS 143
It was not going to be easy to lay hands on Bogota. Cun
ningly hidden, the Indian moved through certain hills
which only his friends could reach. From his retreat he
watched Quesada through the thousand hidden eyes of
his spies. The savanna was a deceptive plain covered with
marshes. The Indians, moving on rafts, slipping along
paths known only to them and to the lizards, fired or
shouted from behind the rushes, and no one could find
them. They had no greater order nor accord, for their cap
tains were far away. One day Ldzaro Fonte and Maldo-
nado caught sight of two Indians hidden behind the weeds.
They confessed to being spies. To make him speak the
older one was put to the torture. The Indian let fall noth
ing of value. The Spaniards increased the torture. The In
dian was silent. They multiplied the pressure of the in
fernal machine. The Indian was silent. Finally the body
was empty of blood, the flesh of the tortured man darkened,
his limbs fell apart: the Indian was silent and dead.
The same torment was prepared for the younger Indian.
He, having seen what awaited him, chose to tell where the
king hid. With this informer as guide, Quesada and his
men began the hunt. The king lived in a sort of monumental
cave formed by two fissures of the cordillera: it was the
Mouth of the Mountains. Neither he nor his soldiers offered
open resistance, they scattered and played a delaying guer
rilla game. By pure chance someone killed Bogota. Once
more the treasures slipped through the Spaniards hands.
They searched, hunted, smelled about, but found nothing.
Neither army, nor palace, nor treasure.
Now they would surely get their hands on Sacresaxigua.
144 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Many days had passed since the grey soul of Bogota van
ished into the impenetrable world of shadows, and the
conquerors ranged from Muequeta to Chia, from Chia to
Tunja, from Tunja to Bosa, hunting rich gold, hunting em
eralds. Over the vast stretches of the plateau they ranged
like hounds on a scent. Only one question concerned them:
what had happened to Bogota s treasure? The rumour
spread that he had thrown it into the lakes. It was that
same Mexican fable, now applied to every chief who dis
appeared without leaving trace of his riches. But no; it
was known that Bogota had left a successor. This was Sa
cresaxigua, who lived in that same Mouth of the Mountains.
Quesada and his followers recognized then that it was bet
ter to hunt him with cunning than to risk him in the haz
ardous game of a military undertaking. Once more it was
proven that what availed there was politics, diplomacy.
It went beyond that: Quesada remembered again that he
was an advocate. That he had won his place in the world
of law. That Sacresaxigua must be taken, but without omit
ting legal formula. And Quesada himself "who perad-
venture sought his counsel" had Hernan Perez present
him with a written demand for the capture of Sacresaxigua
for having failed to swear fealty to the king of Spain and
for having concealed the treasure of Bogotd.
The first part of the hunt was a game of hide and seek.
The Indians, practising their art of concealment, first
learned to conceal their bodies. Sacresaxigua, who well
knew how Bogota had fallen, never slept two nights in
the same place, but wandered from nook to cranny amus
ing himself by watching, with a smile and a shiver, the
general s efforts to find him. These tricky Indians were al
ways like that When the chiefs were required to visit the
THE INDIAN KINGS 145
general they never said "No/ but dressed their servants as
chiefs and stayed in the back of their huts, convulsed with
laughter at the thought of the gifts and the genuflections
which the general would lavish on those who were, in real
ity, nothing but poor serving-men. Sacresaxigua amused
himself with the general for many days, until the general
managed to find out exactly where he was. Then Quesada,
with soft, melodious, and skilful phrases > began to persuade
him to pay a visit. Messages went hidden in glass beads,
tongues told him that everything would be done to the
tune of peace.
Until one day, like Montezuma, he was captured by
twelve cross-bowmen, his fetters were double-locked by
twelve cross-bowmen, and twelve cross-bowmen mounted
guard. Then, as with Atahuallpa, there was the king s cate
chism, that catechism we first began to hear in Santa Marta,
and which already had been modified most artfully in Peru.
"Know, my dear Senor Sacresaxigua," Quesada said to
the chieftain, "that I shall surely treat you with all courtesy,
like the great lord that you are, if, relieving me of having
to take more strenuous measures, you turn over to me all
the gold of Thysquesuzha, the king of Bogota, for, since his
property is that of a rebellious vassal, it belongs by right
to the king of Spain. For you must know that the Pope, that
sovereign monarch who through God s might has supreme
authority over all the men and kingdoms of the earth, saw
fit to give the king of Spain this new world that his heirs
might succeed to it, in order that the barbaric peoples who
inhabit it and live so blindly in their idolatries might be
instructed and indoctrinated in our holy Catholic faith,
recognizing only one God, Author of everything created,"
etc. . . .
146 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Sacresaxigua listened to all these reasonings, and they
seemed to him so diverting that he could only smile. He
had not the slightest doubt that he would suffer the same
fate as Atahuallpa, and he therefore resolved that the last
chapters of his life should constitute a fine and ironic farce.
With his fetters double-locked, he could no longer slip out
and evade the conqueror by hiding in the pathless hills,
but he had all the resources and cunning of the spirit left
to him, and perhaps the hope that, by using them to make
fun of Quesada, he might some day escape like the wind
through a crack in the door. So the king laughed, and an
swered Quesada with a promptness which saved further
speech-making:
"If what Your Grace desires is Thysquesuzha s gold, I
will order it gathered for you this very moment. And within
forty days Your Grace will have this room filled with gold
to half its height. And then, is it not true that Your Grace
will let me out of this imprisonment and return me a free
man to the hills, that, at liberty, I may see my town and be
happy?"
The Spaniards looked with greedy eyes at the circum
ference of the hut, and saw it as a solid cylinder of gold, to
be divided among them like a wonderful cheese that would
make them all richer than King Croesus. They nudged one
another, looked at one another, and rejoiced. The pact was
made. Sacresaxigua gave orders to his Indians. They were
to go to every nook, through the king s hiding place in the
mountains, along the lake edges, hunting the gold of Thys-
quesuzha, and bring it in heavy sacks to empty it in a room
next to the king s, so that Spaniards would not always be
looking at it and the lantern of their greed be lit
Each afternoon the Indians came with their loads. He
THE INDIAN KINGS 147
who carried die gold sweated and bent almost double tin
der the weight of the metal. Thirty-six peons followed him,
well wrapped in cotton blankets, provided with cudgels,
and their faces covered to the nose, as if they were engaged
in a ritual. The Spaniards watched the procession avidly.
The Indians emptied the sack in the place reserved for the
ransom treasure, and the Spaniards heard a cataract of
golden vessels, jewels, and idols that tormented the imag
ination. "Ill give you not only gold," Sacresaxigua had said,
"lout three gourds full of emeralds/
The Indians came out in front of their king, reverent
and silent. With two or three words Sacresaxigua dismissed
them. The Spaniards, knowing how Atahuallpa had kept
his promises, never doubted but that they would be made
as rich as the Peruvians. And thus the forty days passed.
Sacresaxigua never ceased looking for a way of escape
every night. But the cross-bowmen, unsleeping, zealous,
implacable, guarded him. On the fortieth day Quesada en
tered to look at the mound of gold. His bearded counte
nance wore an air of victory. If the pile were not big
enough, he would press the king until he kept his promise.
He would not reduce it even one inch. The king said two
or three things he did not understand. When Quesada
entered the room, the king smiled behind his back. The
room holy heavens! was empty, swept clean: Nothing
on the floor but the plain black naked earth. The general
swore angrily. The soldiers bellowed with rage. The king s
head trembled beneath the circle made by the captain s
fists.
"Great villain, deceitful dog, filthy liar!" the general
shouted at him. "Where is the gold the Indians brought?
Is not your life forfeit for this promise?"
148 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
The long shrank back, his spirit wound within him like
a ball of yarn, and through a certain trembling that passed
along his skin like an electric current he began to thread
a cautious speech, full of fawning and subtlety, to which
the Spaniards listened without losing a word:
"What could I, fettered here, know of what the Indian
carriers did? What I have seen, your cross-bowmen have
seen: that the Indians entered bowed down beneath the
weight of gold, then left with the bags empty. But I know
what has happened. It is those ingrates Quixrmmpaba
and Qufxirrimegua, my enemies, who have contrived this
trick to see me die. It is a scheme of those miserable men!"
Here the long showed an energy that emphasized his in
dignation. "Have those chiefs arrested, and Your Grace
will see the pile grow as if by magic art."
The Spaniards held onto this hope. No one could doubt
the sincerity of a king as gentle as Sacresaxigua. Everyone
saw the Indians* trick clearly now: the leader had emptied
the sack, and each one of the peons had picked up one
piece, hid it in his sack, and carried it out again under the
cotton cloak with as much skill as dignity.
The Spaniards rushed for the two accused leaders like
hunting dogs. Twenty-four hours after Sacresaxigua had
spoken, they were in Quesada s hands. Sacresaxigua, who
saw them on the road to the torture, smiled. He was going
to repay two Indians who had never been faithful to him.
Quesada reflected: one must be politic, one must proceed
according to law. With due measure he made the demand
in the name of the long, and then applied torture at the
same pace as the questions. As a matter of fact, the two
chieftains knew nothing of the treasure and had nothing
to answer. That was so clear that there was no point in
THE INDIAN KINGS 149
going on with the questioning. But the dilemma was final:
either they should speak or they would be hanged, A shiver
of fear ran through the souls of the other Indians when they
saw the two chiefs swinging on the scaffolds.
Quesada came back, his voice muted by anger, and with
measured firmness announced to Sacresaxigua that, if he
would not confess where the gold was, he should hang on
the scaffold like his two enemies. Once more the lawyer
in the general acted to express things in order and clearly:
". . . The captains and soldiers accused Sagipa [Sa
cresaxigua] to their general, saying that he had absconded
with the gold and emeralds of Bogota which for the above-
mentioned reasons belonged to the royal exchequer and to
them; and, the necessary testimony having been given by
the Indians of the country themselves, who said all they
wished to and all they knew, the poor prisoner was con
demned to questioning with torture, that he might declare
where the gold and emeralds of Bogota were, having been
first of all provided with a healer, and the process having
been most judiciously substantiated that there might be
no errors of procedure, in an affair of such importance. . . /*
The king still sought a way out He still kept a certain
wheedling smile that he thought might save him. "If you
will remove these shackles, allow me to go with a good de
tachment of troops to search for the treasure myself for
I suspect where it might be I shall bring it to you/" Such
was the greed of the Spaniards that it was converted into
trust. The gyves were struck from the king, and with a
rope about his neck he began travelling toward the Mouth
of the Mountains, to look for the treasure. The king
thought: "If I could at least fling myself off a cliff and die
of my own will, in order not to give this old man the pleas-
150 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
ure of banging me . . /* And by rough gullies and hard
ridges and difficult hills he led the soldiers to a place where
the rock fell off steeply. "Xisysa, xisysa "This way, this
way*" he said hoarsely and wheedlingly. And when he
was on the edge to the abyss! He launched himself in
one leap, but failed. The soldiers, who had come to sus
pect him, pulled back the rope in time, and this time the
Indian returned, defeated, to be mounted on the rack.
Five months was the king of the Bogota men in prison.
He no longer misled the general with smiles. The contest
had been very long, and the king was beaten. Melancholy
enveloped him. He was carried to the rack, but said noth
ing. It was a hard silence,, cutting and aggressive, the
fruit of long bitterness. In vain was the lash plied, in vain
did the blood run. They worked over him for two months.
They did not want the king to die, because, with Tiim dead,
all hope was gone. The king stood it in silence, like Cuauhte-
motzin. All the captains were present at these ceremonies,
with the anxiety of relatives about a dying man s bed,
waiting for the long to speak his last word. But the king was
tired and said nothing. Two horseshoes were heated red
hot, and with them the soles of the king were slowly
burned. Suddenly, his eyes fixed like two eyes made of glass
and the sweat on his brow froze. Four centuries were to
pass, and herdsmen would still be hunting for the treasure
of Sacresaxigua.
of the Qerman, the
Jfndalusian, and the Donkey- Boy
To ensure the chase with art and to subdue these nations with
punning.
QUESADA
Arriving at the provinces of the said New Kingdom, Belal-
cazar found in it Licentiate Ximenez de Quesada with certain
soldiers who were as men leaderless and lost and who did not
understand what it was they had to do in the settlement of the
said land, on account of which the said Adelantado Belalcazar,
as an old and skilled conqueror, gave them order and policy in
settling, and moreover furnished them with many horses and
arms and other very necessary things.
, PROOF OF THE MERTTS AND SERVICES
OF SEBASTIAN DE BELALCAZAR
I, Nicholas Federmann the younger, of Ulm, embarked in
Sanliicar de Barrameda, a port of the province of Andalusia, in
Spain. I went appointed by Messer Ulrich Ehinger, in the name
of Messers Bartholomew Welser and Company, as captain of a
hundred and twenty-three Spanish soldiers and of twenty-four
German miners whom I must lead across the great Ocean Sea
to the country of Venezuela, whose government and dominion
His Imperial Majesty has ceded to the said Welsers, my mas
ters.
FEDERMANN
MEETING OF THE GERMAN,
THE ANDALUSIAN, AND
THE DONKEY-BOY
THE time had come to seek a little rest. Up to now
they had taken all the gold which the ingenuity of
the Indians had failed to hide, The general, the
priests, the captains, and the soldiers had their pockets well
stuffed. They would have liked more, but what they had
taken and counted was plenty. From now on the metal
was to elude their fingers as the shade of Sacresaxigua had
escaped them. As a matter of fact this land was poor in
minerals. There was not a single mine within its bound
aries. What the men of Spain had found was what had
been accumulated for centuries by the venders of salt and
of cloths in their barterings with the Natagaimas or the
Coyaimas in the hot valleys where the rivers wash down
golden nuggets. But the Spaniards had not yet set foot in
any Potosi.
In the five months they had been roaming through the
kingdom, the conquistadors had had no thought of found
ing a city. It was time to do so. They looked about them,
but the savannas were an uncertain terrain and subject to
flooding. Only to the east was there solid ground leading
to the foot of two hills: it was the place where King Bogota
used to rest in the rainy seasons. "What made them de
termine to establish a town on that site," Fray Simon was
to say, "was the advantages to be found there such as a
city judiciously founded should have for the ground is
high enough for superfluous water to run off without leav-
153
154 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
ing the streets muddy; there are two streams of sweet and
potable water which flow gently down from the summit of
the sierra without flooding the streets and plazas, one of
them so abundant that even in dry years it turns the mill-
wheels of the city; there is plenty of stone for building,
sufficient firewood, good air ... the sky is usually clear,
the outlook of the city to north and west is long and ex
tended, with no barrier; but what was not a little noted in
choosing this site was the protection given on the east by
the hill and the whole range, for on that side the nation
could not be molested by its enemies. . . ." Alcedo was to
say in his dictionary, "The winds which regularly prevail
are the south wind, which is called Ubaque and is at the
summit of the mountain from which it comes; it is subtle
and cold, and so beneficial that the natives say it should
be received with open mouth; and the one from the north,
from which they protect themselves, for it is humid, tem
pestuous, and intemperate. . . ."
Quesada drew up his army in the midst of a great con
course of Indians. A scribe took notes on what was happen
ing. The Indians looked on without understanding any of
it. At the edge of the crowd the burro flapped his ears in
differently. Father Las Casas prepared the altar cloth for
the Mass. Quesada advanced very solemnly to the centre
of the field and pulled up some blades of grass. This meant,
and he proclaimed it roundly, that he took possession of
the country in the name of his lord and master, King
Charles V. Who would dare to contradict him? A very
good horseman, he mounted his horse, drew his sword, and
asked the assembled multitude if there was anyone who
dared to dispute this conquest. These actions and these
words are like a chapter from the Siete Tartidas of Al-
GERMAN, ANDALUSIAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 155
fonso X, made flesh and blood. No one contradicted. The
scribe made his record.
The priest Las Casas was ready now. All faces were
turned toward the altar. Quesada got down from his horse,
which a peon took by the bridle. The knight, so proud an
instant before, was now to bend the knee. The soldiers,
those adventurers who clutched at their pockets in order
to feel the material possession of gold, the same who had
heated white-hot irons to torture Sacresaxigua, closed their
eyes and bowed their heads. Before a Christ painted on a
cloth, the friar elevated a chalice made of lead. A droning
of Latin hummed through the limpid air of August, that
clear month of August which seems to pour a golden glow
over the savanna. . . .
Then the voices of the leaders were heard again. A new
undertaking, a new going to and fro. The general had said,
here would be the church, here the houses of the captains.
The Indians opened trenches in the black earth, set up
corner posts, brought bundles of wild cane on their backs,
drew water from the Vicacha which is the river of very
sweet water made clay, trod it out with broad and dili
gent feet, prepared straw for the roof-tops. Very soon there
would be twelve houses which those from Spain, or some
of them, would occupy. The others would be more at their
ease in a camp a little way off. The chroniclers would say
that the twelve houses were founded in memory of the
twelve apostles. The city which was thus founded is called
the New City of Granada.
... I would give the name "Granada"
In remembrance of the sadness
That I suffered on the journey. . . .
156 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
But strange winds began to blow. The flanks of the cor-
dillera were trembling again. Toward the summit of the
Andes which backed these twelve huts of straw, clay, and
wild cane were moving other adventurers. First came those
from the north. The humid, tempestuous, and intemperate
wind announced it. They were Federmann s foot-soldiers
who had started out from Coro, They were broken soldiers
under the command of the gentleman from Germany. La-
zaro Fonte, who stayed a prisoner in Pasca, sent word of
it to Quesada by a runner, writing it on a bit of deerskin.
The history of these gentlemen of Germany merits a word
by itself.
I have already told how the Fuggers gave the necessary
money to elect Charles emperor of Germany. There is more.
As the shameless electors who auctioned off the crown,
and in whose hands the fate of Germany lay, had no reason
for trusting the word of the melancholy lad who was king
of Spain, and as the election was partly on credit, with the
price of the votes to be paid later, the Fuggers deposited
a bond of one hundred and thirty thousand florins in or
der to guarantee the obligations of the future Emperor
Charles V.
Among the portraits which the elder Hans Holbein
painted is one of Jacob Fugger. He is a man with a hard eye
and thin lips, wearing his velvet beret perched over one
ear. He is the image of adventure plus shrewd calculation.
Once they asked Jacob why he never rested, why, when
he had plenty of money with which to do as he pleased, to
play, to amuse himself, he never left the bank for a single
GERMAN, ANDALUSIAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 157
day. And Jacob answered, "As long as I can make money,
I will not stop making it, nor will you ever see me idle."
Jacob was not only the emperor s banker, lie was also the
Pope s banker. His power went so far that he even founded
a city, the Fuggerei, with a hundred and six houses which
he built with his own money along six streets or avenues.
A thick wall defended the Fuggerei, ornamented and pro
tected by three monumental gates, on which were the
banker s coat of arms.
Competing for power with the Fuggers was another
banking house the Welsers. Fugger and Welser were born
in the same Bavarian city, Augsburg. Their power grew
like two parallel trees stemming from the same root. In
those first decades of the sixteenth century we must con
sider these two houses as having power and splendour
similar to that which the Medicis of Florence displayed
earlier. The Fuggers and the Welsers acquired noble titles,
patronized the arts and sciences, and were building in Ant
werp such rich palaces as those northern cities had never
known, cities where the guilds covered the coats of arms
on their houses with gold. They were called "Fucares" and
"Belzares" in Spain, and the Spaniards looked with amaze
ment upon these people who moved behind the empire and
the Papacy, managing the king or adorning the Pope with
threads of a gold more brilliant and more skilfully managed
than that of AtaLuallpa, whether in the hands of the Pizar-
ros, the longs of Spain, or tihe priests of Toledo*
While the Fuggers were monopolizing the political en
terprises of Europe, the Welsers were turning their eyes
toward America. And therefore Charles V gave them the
captaincy of Venezuela. While Jacob Fugger was receiv-
158 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
ing noble titles, the Welsers, who were no less able, were
doing something more substantial. Filipine Welser, daugh
ter of Bartholomew, was secretly marrying a nephew of
Charles V King Ferdinand of Bohemia. So the business
prospered. The contract regarding the captaincy of Ven
ezuela could not have been more advantageous. The Ger
man colonists were to go to Venezuela with fifty Austrian
miners, many Negro slaves, Spanish foot-soldiers, eighty
horses. The leaders would be Heinrich Ehinger and Hieron-
ymus Sayler, or, failing these, Ambrosius and Georg
Ehinger. They would take with them the right to enslave,
to erect strongholds, take out gold, import horses, discover,
conquer, and populate. They would not pay salt taxes. They
would not return to the king a fifth, but a tenth, of the
gold they mined in ten years. And whoever carried out the
agreement would be governor and captain general for all
the days of his life, with an annual salary of three hundred
thousand maravedis.
While the terms of the agreement were being perfected
and completed, the Welsers did not sleep: Ambrosius
Ehinger was already moving about Hispaniola as the bank
ers* agent, pointing with pride to the power of his house
"our house." When the papers arrived, everything was
ready. Soon vessels were crossing the Caribbean en route
to Coro. In the bow the ferocious face of Messer Ambro
sius, and in the hold of the ships "the worst fellows who
ever left Spain for America, and he who is worse than the
worst of his men." Germans, Portuguese, Spaniards, Ne
groes from Guinea, all would soon leave Venezuela marked
with the iron of their ambition.
GERMAN, ANDALUSIAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 159
I do not really believe that in matters of cruelty the Ger
mans were any worse than the Spaniards. The natural
thing, of course, is that the Spanish chroniclers should fling
all the dirty water of the conquest at these blond meddlers.
The conquistador had no homeland; he was a conqueror
and nothing more. And the conquest, as I have said many
times, was hard. Ehinger marched, investigated, hunted
along the banks of the Maracaibo, through Guajira, through
Tamalameque. "He took with him lines of Indians carrying
food and baggage, and they all went tied around the neck
with the same cord; as the rope made a ring or loop around
each head, it was not possible to release one of them with
out beginning with the first in line; for this reason, when
an Indian grew tired, they cut off his head, if he did not
cut it himself, without undoing the chain or calling a halt"
Ehinger got some gold, but not enough even to pay the
soldiers. On the other hand, he got reports of the fabulous
country of the Chibchas. It was said that there were Indians
in a certain town whose task it was to smelt in special
forges. "And they have their forges and anvils and ham
mers, which are made of tough stones. The hammers are the
size of eggs, or smaller, and the anvils as big as a Mallor-
can cheese, made of other tough stones; the bellows are as
thick as two fingers or more, and as long as two palms.
They have delicate scales with which to weigh, and these
are made of a white bone which looks like marble, also
there are some of a black wood, like ebony."
Nevertheless, Ehinger did not complete the undertak
ing. His cruelty was punished by the Indians or by the
Spaniards themselves. Suddenly, with no one knowing
where it came from, a poisoned arrow pierced his throat.
There were four days of a furious struggle between life
160 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
and death, in which the red-head spat blood and unintel
ligible revilings, while the poison spread through his veins
and his body swelled. On seeing him suffering the agonies
of a man condemned to death, even the Spaniards, who
hated him, felt their hearts oppressed. That he might have
a broad tomb and a legend to recall his name, the valley
in which he drew his last breath was baptized the Valley
of Messer Ambrosius . . .
With Ehinger dead, Johann Sinserhoffer became gov
ernor. He was a quiet, phlegmatic banker, made for the
life of a cashier in Europe, weighing gold and specie, rather
than for the business of killing wild Indians and dying with
an arrow in the throat So Sinserhoffer installed himself in
a chair, while his lieutenants hunted Indians in the near-by
regions. But the Welsers wanted something more positive
and the soldiers something more tangible. So the gover
norship soon passed from Sinserhoffer s hands to those of
Georg Hohermuth, He brought Messer Nicholas Feder-
mann as his second in command.
There is something exotic about finding these names with
a harsh German flavour Welser, Ehinger, Sinserhoffer,
Hohermuth, Federmann running through the history of
the conquest of America. The tropical paradise is to swal
low them all. Or the green hell; as you wish. . . .
When Georg Hohermuth and Nicholas Federmann saw
themselves masters of the captaincy in Coro, they found
this poor, thin stage as sterile as was Santa Marta to Fer
nandez de Lugo and Jimenez de Quesada. In the back
country were the plains, fiery savannas in summer and in
GERMAN, ANDALUSIAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 161
winter covered by the waters of rivers that had overflowed
their banks until they looked like mirrors traced by the
flight of scarlet flamingos. Behind the plains, and mounting
the flank of the cordillera, it ought to be possible to reach
the town where the Indians smelted gold. This gold of
America must clink in the bank of the Welsers in Amster
dam. Not the gold that the avid claws of the Spaniards
snatched from the Indians, but that which was to be dis
covered by the red-blond Germans, who were about to
prove heir nerve and their courage in the captaincy and
the adventure of Venezuela.
Messer Georg Hohermuth and Messer Nicholas Feder-
mann looked toward the interior and ordered the march.
Messer Georg must follow in Ehinger s footsteps; Messer
Nicholas must await him in Coro. But when the tread of
Messer Georg s troops ceased to echo in Coro, Messer Nich
olas could not resist, and he himself went out to explore.
Georg had ordered Nicholas to go to Hispaniola to bring
back from that island more men, more slaves, more horses.
But Nicholas was not so simple-minded, and he forgot those
orders.
I need not now recount all that Georg Hohermuth suf
fered in his long peregrination through those lands. I will
only say that he wore his fingers to tie quick in trying to
climb the flanks of the cordillera without ever succeeding
in doing it. Higher, ever higher was the land of salt and
emeralds, the land of the Chibcha nation, where men were
eating beautiful baked potatoes and the flesh of game, and
drinking good corn wine, while the German, not knowing
it but sensing it, groaned with hunger on the vertical slopes
of those same mountains. The elusive El Dorado spurred
162 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Messer Georg on, but always escaped his grasp. It is the
constant jest and coquetry of our America, so unyielding,
so deceptive, and so beautiful.
One day Chief Guaygueri said to Messer Georg, "March
two moons more, and you will reach a town where the
Indians eat from vessels of gold and silver, where the land
is flat and smooth and the wind targes flocks of fat sheep
across peaceful cultivated fields/ Messer Georg advanced,
and f ound nothing. Another time the Spaniards lost a great
raft which they had built to cross the Opia. Indian ene
mies managed to seize it, and then amused themselves by
passing up and down on it in front of the Spaniards, per
forming their dances of war and lust on this floating stage,
to the sound of diabolic music.
These Indians of the plains and the steep slopes were
fiercer than those of the cold country. When they advanced
against Messer Georg, they did it with a very martial air.
They beat hard drums and blew on rosy snail-shells. They
marched in squads. First came the lancers, then the bow
men, then the women with ropes, jars, and food. In America
women have always followed the armies, when they have
not preceded them. One day the soldiers will call them the
Juanas [Janes], and the Juanas will be the most typical
note in our wars.
These Indians loved the sun and the moon. It is told of
Salammbo, the most beautiful star of the hot Carthage
nights, who communed with the moon on the temple s flat
roof, taking off her clothes in order to adorn herself with
the impalpable light that flowed silently over shoulders,
breasts, and knees, that one night when there was an eclipse
she flung herself to death. The Indians whom Georg Hoher-
muth saw also went mad when the moon disappeared and,
GERMAN, ANDALUSJAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 163
during an eclipse, hurled "brands, sticks, stones, clay, and
whatever they might have in hand," begging it desperately
not to flee away through the hazardous corridors of eternal
night.
Nicholas Federmann was more daring, or more lucky,
than Hohermuth. While the latter was losing three years
and destroying his army on an unsuccessful expedition,
Messer Nicholas, his second in command, a man not very
tall but stout, with blue eyes and curly red whiskers, agile
and stubborn, reached the summit of the Andes and the
kingdom of the Chibchas. When Hohermuth got back to
Coro, he found neither his second in command nor any
trace of him. One day he would be writing to King Charles,
"I marched more than five hundred leagues, as far as the
Choques> and, being no more than twenty-five leagues
from what I sought, I found myself so weakened in men,
horses, and arms that I had to go back to recuperate in
order to renew the march/
Not so Federmann. He went thrusting himself into the
mountain like a wedge. Two things made him climb: the
desire to reach El Dorado and the fear of meeting Hoher
muth. As is obvious, his soldiers died, he suffered hunger,
and there were weeks when the troops fed on the flesh of
horses, which were stricken by some strange ailment. But
he climbed, climbed until he reached the high uplands, un
til the soldiers felt as though blades of ice were penetrating
their flesh those selfsame soldiers who had come from
plains where it was the blades of an implacable sun that
had pierced them. When the troops reached the land of the
Chibchas, they were poorer and more miserable than Gou-
164 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
zalo Jimenez de Quesada s men. Three years and a half
did Federmann spend roaming through an unknown world.
His soldiers had not a stitch of clothing left on their bodies,
but went dressed in the skins of wild animals.
Lazaro Fonte, who remained in exile in Pasca, sent, as
I have said, a runner to Jimenez de Quesada, announcing
the German s coming. Quesada, as if not sure whether to
believe the message, sent out spies. Federmann s scouts
and Quesada s met face to face. The two armies confronted
each other. There was a miracle; the soldiers of Quesada
numbered a hundred and sixty-three, and a hundred and
sixty-three were those of Federmann. But Quesada s men
were refreshed by food and rest; they wore cotton gar
ments and Chibcha blankets, and there were twenty thou
sand Indians whom Quesada had ranged in the manner of
an army belonging to him as lord and master of these lands.
The red beard looked at the jet-black beard with jeal
ousy and amazement. The two strong hands first faltered,
then clasped. The soldiers embraced. For an instant, the
Spaniard suspected that these miserable foot-soldiers had
come to rob him of his conquests; soon he was convinced
that there was none of this. What was needed was to give
them a few grains of corn so they could resume their old
habit of eating. The amusing chronicler of El Carnero
summed up the results of the interview between the two
generals, "They received each other very well at first, and
soon were exchanging various jests which the gold con
verted into laughter; they remained very good friends, and
agreed that the soldiers of the two generals should be fed
in the conquered territory thirty at a time. . . ." Later,
when Rodriguez Fresle made up the roll of Federmann s
GERMAN, ANDALUSIAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 165
soldiers, lie began it in these terms, "Soldiers of Nicholas
Fedennann who were fed in this kingdom . . ."
It was a never-ending source of amusement that a few
poor fugitives from Santa Marta who had been living on
snakes and lizards, and who in Spain were never more than
adventurers swaggering around church porticoes, should
have fed the agent of the Welsers, bankers as great and as
rich as those that had bought the crown of the German
emperor for the long of Spain.
It is hard to say whether the Indians or the Spaniards
themselves were regarding this meeting of the troops with
the more surprise, when a no less unexpected bit of news
arrived to amaze Quesada and to leave the Indians and
the soldiers stupefied. It was brought by the south wind^
the wind called Ubaque, that cold and subtle wind which
the natives say should be received with open mouth. . . .
The news concerned certain soldiers under the command
of Don Sebastian de Belalcazar who, having left Peru years
before with destination unknown, were now riding their
horses along the other flank of the cordillera. It was as
though the hidden reason for the illegal venture on which
all three captains had embarked was leading them irresist
ibly toward these desert uplands. The three generals were
all mutineers. Just as Quesada had mutinied with the troops
which Fernandez de Lugo had confided to him, so Feder-
mann had mutinied with those Hohermuth had confided
to him, and Belalcazar with those Pizarro had put in his
charge.
This city of mine which was shortly to receive its he-
166 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
raldic bearings from the mystic King Charles and the mad
Queen Juana could not have had a more honourable origin.
This is the way all noble cities are born; the best dynasties
and the finest family trees are rooted in the same soil.
But let us be a bit more definite about the coming of this
Belalcazar, who was, as everyone knows, a mere donkey-
boy in his own land. Whenever, years before, could that
poor lad*s head, nodding up and down between the bur
ro s plushy ears, have dreamed of the stupendous future
which America had in store for him!
Sebastian very often was accustomed.,
By reason of his elder brother s order
Or his own will, to go into the forest
To carry cord-wood out upon his donkey.
Once, leading it full-loaded by a trail
On which a lashing rainstorm barred the way.
The skinny pack-beast fell with all its burden
Into a slippery pit, and stuck in mud.
He stripped it of its halter, cords, and panniers,
Then urged it, shouted, begged it to get out,
And, sweating, tried to lift it by the tail;
The skinny donkey did not budge an inch.
Then he, seized by a jit of childish anger,
Took up a sturdy cudgel in both hands,
Saying, "Know, beast, that if I m angered,
By force Til make thee lift thyself and trot."
At last, without intending such great damage,
He aimed one of his blows behind the neck
And with such fury did the beast belabour
That the unhappy donkey, he fell dead.
GERMAN, ANDALUSIAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 167
An ill-advised one will not linger longer,
But flees when once his madness stands out clear.
So leaving wood and rope and panniers mired
And throwing off a poor and narrow life,
He went to win a new and better fortune
Imagination painted jar -from there.
It seemed a finer thing to be a warrior
Than stay and till the -fields he knew at home.
So Belalcazar fled from home because of the death of
a burro. Somehow he enrolled in one of those expeditions
which were going to the Indies. He reached the Antilles, ex
plored in Hispaniola, went to the mainland, explored in
Darien, "ranched" for gold, traded, bought, sold. The kd
became a man; the donkey-boy a captain. He stored up
money, and when the harsh voices of Pizarro and Almagro
and the persuasive speeches of a certain friar who was fi
nancing expeditions in Panama said, "On to Peru!" Belal-
cazar s eyes sparkled and burned.
One day, when Pizarro was raging like a wild beast in
Peruvian territory, Sebastian de Belalcazar arrived on the
coast of Ecuador, or what we were later to call Ecuador, to
reinforce and serve him. He had come from Nicaragua in
a big ship and he brought twelve horses and thirty men.
Belalcazar was now a man grown, sparing of words and ef
fective in action, who kept his thoughts to himself and made
his calculations before he acted. He was one of those with
naked swords who had helped Atahuallpa into prison, and
he was ready to drive that sword in up to the hilt if it was
necessary. Ninety-nine hundred gold pesos and four hun
dred and seven silver marks came to him when the booty
168 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
was divided. Pizarro, though fearing him, gave him com
mand over the city of San Miguel. Belalcazar went as cap
tain, and nine horsemen accompanied liim.
As Belalcazar got farther away from Pizarro, he had only
one fixed idea to become a governor. He had seen that
Atahuallpa came from the north, from the kingdom of
Quito, and he thought that in Quito the gold would stand
about in piles. San Miguel did not hold him long.
Shortly after establishing himself in the city, he had set
sail again. From ships that came from Panama and Nica
ragua with new troops for Pizarro, he took two hundred
men and sixty horses. "Let us go/ he said to the soldiers,
"to the land of the king who filled a room with gold in
Cundinamarca. To the land of Atahuallpa, where his sons
are now." And without Pizarro s knowing anything about it,
he left that poor city of San Miguel and set out for Quito.
In order to place himself in the right, he arranged a peti
tion. In a declaration made by Bartolome Garcia, ship s
captain, the trick is told thus, "The citizens presented him
with a request that he go to Quito, and he said he could
not do it; then the citizens entered the council and told
him that if he did not want to go, they would put another
captain in his place; and as he saw that they intended to do
it, he said, TThen, as someone must go, I will . . . and he
began to gather a force. . , /*
"And he began to gather a force" and set out for the
north. To get away from the Pizarros and the Almagros,
Belalcazar said that he was going to punish the Indian
Ruminagui, who was Atahuallpa s successor in position and
wealth. Ruminagui opened battle against Don Sebastian.
GERMAN, ANDALUSIAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 169
He dug wide ditches for the horses to fall into, but the
horses avoided them. The Indian battalions opened like
fans and let fly their arrows. The Spaniards shot off their
arquebuses, and won the round. Ruminagui re-formed his
army and offered new resistance. He hung dead horses
heads on the road and decorated them with flowers to give
pleasure to the Indians and warning to the Spaniards. But
again powder conquered the arrow. And to add to the Indi
ans* terror, the earth trembled and Cotopaxi wore a crown
of fire. Then the Indians abandoned Quito. Ruminagui,
wounded and sarcastic., went back to the women, "to his
great seraglio of wives and concubines," and said to them,
"Rejoice, for the Christians with whom you can amuse your
selves are coming." Some of them laughed, says the chroni
cler, as women will, perhaps not thinking any evil at all.
Ruminagui throttled those who laughed loudest.
Belalcazar went on. On the site of the city which the
Indian king had burned and abandoned, he founded San
Francisco de Quito. One night, guided by certain bright
stars, he climbed the two cliffs, Oromina (gold mine) and
Copagua. He did not find the treasures they all were hop
ing for. The soldiers grew impatient. Belalcdzar went on
to Guayaquil, founded a city there, and returned to Quito.
In Guayaquil he had left a small force. As soon as he was
out of sight the Indians rose against the Spaniards, because
"they began to understand their importunities and the
speed with which they demanded gold and silver and
beautiful women."
But this meant nothing. There was news that El Dorado
lay to the north. In the lands of Cundinamarca was an In
dian king who anointed his body with turpentine and ? cov
ered with gold dust, went to bathe in the lakes, while the
170 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
priests offered their gods golden idols and emeralds by the
handful. Belalcazar had a letter from the Spanish empress
congratulating him on his discoveries and his conquests.
In the service of so great a lady, he had to go forward.
While they were doubting him and building up resistance
against him in the council, Belalcazar got his army ready.
In the hands of the former donkey-boy that mysterious let
ter from the empress became a talisman. Until he left Quito
one day with everything that had any value for the army.
Five thousand Indians marched in his train; he carried a
silver service with him, and a hundred hogs. The cij^y was
left with no garrison and no horses. The town council,
alarmed, told Pizarro so without giving Belalcazar a copy
of the letter "for lack of paper."
Belalcazar left behind him Peru, the land on which a fatal
destiny was weighing. In those years, the history of Peru,
from which the prudent and ambitious Don Sebastian
thought it well to disassociate himself, can be summed up
in a few words. Listen to them: Francisco Pizarro, its
founder, assassinated his companion Diego de Almagro.
Diego s son assassinated Francisco Pizarro. Vaca de Castro
strangled that second Almagro. The viceroy Nunez de Vela
put Vaca de Castro in jail. Gonzalo Pizarro killed the vice
roy Nunez de Vela. The lawyer La Gasca strangled Gon
zalo Pizarro. And the Contreras tried to assassinate La
Gasca. If he had not returned to Spain, I think they would
have devoured him alive. That is all. Incidentally it might
be noted that Friar Valverde, who helped Atahuallpa to die
so nicely, ended with a cudgelling well and skilfully ad
ministered by the inhabitants of Puna.
Consequently it was not a bad idea for Belalcdzar, al
ready skilled in the matter of conquests, to go on further
GERMAN, ANDALUSIAN, AND DONKEY-BOY 171
to the north. To traverse the harsh wasteland of the Gudi-
tara, to cross the simmering plains of the Patia, to reach the
broad and beautiful valley of the Cauca, to found cities
there, and to set up there the imaginary centre of his future
governorship: Popayan, which had a pleasant climate and
a fertile soil. "Having reached Popayan, and finding himself
in a beautiful valley which stretched for a space of four
teen leagues from there to the headwaters of the Great
River, a valley no less abundant in streams and rivers stem
ming from the Andes than in charming fields and plains
where the multitude of farms and gardens showed the fer
tility of the country, Belalcazar decided to settle there,
electing as site a high tableland whose temperature was
moderate, avoiding the extremes of Quito as to cold and
of Cartagena as to heat; and whose benign though rainy
sky, and fields adapted to the best grain, have made Popa
yan famous as containing the best sky, land, and bread in
the Indies."
This did not mean that Belalcazar, conqueror that he
% was, ceased to march in the midst of blood and fire. On
leaving Quito, he divided his army into three sections, and
put one in charge of Juan de Ampudia. "You must follow the
footpaths of the cordillera/* the chief told him, "and not
engage in any dangerous action. We will follow you" It
was not difficult for Belaldtzar to follow in the leader s foot
steps; for, as Ampudia burned all the towns he ran across
and strangled all the TnrKa-ris., Don Sebastian could be
guided by the ashes and the blood.
It would be long and tedious to repeat the tale of a
march which in no wise differed from that of the other
conquistadors. Belalcazar spent four years in discovering,
conquering, founding, and populating, until the natural
172 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
force of liis destiny led him toward the kingdom of Cun-
dinamarca, toward the site where Quesada and Federmann
were. And by a strange coincidence he arrived, as I have
said, at the same time Federmann came up through Pasca.
Belalcazar came across the valley of the Magdalena, and
touched the spurs of the mountain on whose summit was
Quesada. While the lawyer was receiving the news of the
German from Lazaro Fonte, Indians brought him the news
of the man from Peru who was coming up the opposite
side. Quesada treated somewhat hastily with the German
while his brother was advancing to talk with Belalcazar.
And in less time than it took for them all to recover from
the surprise Belalcazar., who refused to let himself be dis
tracted by conversations, came forward with his troop,
which consisted of exactly the same number of men as
Quesada had on the one hand and Federmann on the other.
In the geometry of military forces, this is called an equi
lateral triangle. The only thing in which they differed was
their clothing. That of the men who came with Belalcdzar
was better; it was the clothing of men from Peru, the rich
and the fortunate. He who in his childhood had walked only
with burros came now "eager to find the gilded man/
dressed in silks and fine stuffs, with good coats of mail and
many Indian servants. He brought a silver service and a
herd of pigs. Belalcazar s present eminence and his former
profession were balanced between the plate and the pigs.
VIII
. Play and Qaming in Europe
As he carried a great deal of gold, General Jimenez de
Quesada wished first to see Granada, his homeland, and to
amuse himself among his friends and relatives. After some time
there, he went to court in pursuance of his affairs, arriving dur
ing the period when the court was in mourning for the death of
the Empress. They said here that the Adelantado entered in
the scarlet clothes adorned with much gold braid which were
worn in those days, and that he was seen crossing the plaza by
Secretary Cobos, who called out from one of the palace win
dows, "What madman is that? Throw that lunatic out of the
plaza," and at that he left. If it was true and he did it, as was
said in this city, there is no reason why I should not write it. The
Adelantado was absent-minded; I knew him very well, for he
was godfather to a sister of mine, and a close friend of my par
ents, and I valued him in spite of all he cost us in the second
voyage he made to Castile, when he returned ruined from hunt
ing El Dorado, for on this voyage my father went with him,
with a deal of good money which never came back, though both
of them returned.
JUAN RODRIGUEZ FRESLE
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE
T N TH AT great plain at the top of the Andes, enamelled by
I the trembling blue of the lakes and shaded by emerald
JL clumps of underbrush, lies, I think, the very heart of
America. Three men started from three different points
the green bay of Santa Marta, the ruddy coast of Venezuela,
and Quito, seat of the Incas to hunt for the centre of Terra
Firma > and as though they had been climbing the three
sides of a pyramid simultaneously they came face to face
when they reached the summit, their hands still bloody
from having torn themselves to tatters on the rough rock
flanks. One came by the Great River of the Magdalena,
another followed the waters of the Meta, the third came
up the Cauca; when they began unfolding the tales of
their prowess the whole narrative was braided through with
the mysteries of those three rivers into whose broad streams
fall the gurgling cascades of the Andes and are silenced.
The petals of all the winds come together here as in the
rosy heart of a flower. The cold and subtle wind from the
south and the tempestuous wind from the north caress
the backs of the swift and tremulous deer, or thin out
above the waters of the Funza and fold their wings to follow
the slow pace of Indian fishing craft which glide through
the sleeping shallows. The hours of anguish which the
troops of the conquest passed when they were crossing the
eastern flatlands or overcoming Carib resistance, or break
ing the pride of the last of the Inca kings, ended here in the
175
176 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
light from the zenith. Those troops were mingled to form a
single, restless, noisy army which included men from Spain,
Portugal, Greece, Italy, and Germany, soldiers whom fate
had decided to bring together on a single day in this poor
land of the Indians, crowds that darkened and hummed
like a swarm of hornets.
Of the three captains, I may say that the Andalusian,
armed only with his own eloquence, imposed his will on
the others. He was again the good politician, who disarmed
Federmann s pretensions, if he had any, and Belalcazar s,
which were many and plain to be seen, Fedennann was
not exactly a fool. On his first trip through Venezuela he
wrote, or had the scribe write, a fantastic account which his
brother-in-law was to publish under this title, Charming
and Agreeable Account of the First Trip of Nicholas Feder-
mann the Younger, of Vint, to the Indies in the Ocean Sea,
and of All That Happened in That Country until His Re
turn to Spain, Written Briefly and Diverting to Read. In
this account the Welsers agent decided to cede nothing
to the most prevaricating of the chroniclers and told in
prolix detail of his trip to the land of the dwarf, where the
largest living being was only four palms tall. In the pro
logue, which Kiefhaber wrote as a dedication to Messer
Johann Wilhelm von Loubenberg, of Loubenbergerstein,
he said as follows, "Dear and Gracious Lord, I have known
you not only as a lover and a connoisseur of ancient things,
but also of the oversea expeditions carried out in our era,
which have, by the grace of God, produced the discovery
of new islands called the New World, where a quantity of
gold, precious stones, spices,, and fine woods is found, prov
ing God s great goodness to humankind; many things still
remain hidden, which we shall discover before Judgment
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 177
Day, as your great wisdom doubtless has taught you earlier
than I."
But notwithstanding Federmann^s excellent aptitude
for serving his masters the Welsers and for making good
use of his eloquence, he was now, at the head of troops
which the Venezuelan plains had thinned and ravaged, a
beaten man. "Federmann" means "Featherman." But in this
instance the man who handled the quill was the man of
law, Quesada. And the plumage of the German who arrived
dressed in uncured skins might better seem to refer to the
kind that the poor American Indians wear on their heads.
Belalcazar s case looked a bit more serious. That gentle
man, who arrived with a great show of swine and servants,
had been founding cities everywhere. He was the first
technician in the art of creating towns. He kept explaining
to Quesada how colonization should be carried out. His
schooling, which consisted of conquering Indians in Amer
ica, had been better than that of the Andalusian, who had
burned the midnight oil in Salamanca reading Caesar s
Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. Nevertheless, Belalcazar
could consider his ambition satisfied with Popayan, the
land of the best bread. It would be absurd to pretend to
gather under a single governorship all the broad territory
his legs had measured, and perhaps for that reason he was
not so demanding.
All in all, as it was a matter of three lieutenants who
with their troops had mutinied against their governors, but
who might find the merit of those enterprises serving for
something before the court, they agreed that the Spanish
monarchs themselves should decide the fate of this New
Kingdom; at once they took the necessary steps for going
to the peninsula. Belalcazar pressed the empress s letter to
178 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
his heart, Quesada clutched the booty emeralds in his fist,
and Fedennann caressed the plumage of his name. , . .
Let us be brief. There go the generals down the road to
the Magdalena, which is to say, the road to Spain. Each has
gathered all the gold he could, and his imagination is busy
with old friends in Spain whom he now hopes to meet, The
tales of their conquests, their riches, the contact with the
grandees of the court, will open a circle of praise and ad
miration for them when they begin to talk in the taverns,
when they approach girls of good family, when they hold
forth in church porticoes to the throngs of idlers who gather
to listen to them. Those who have conquered a New King-
dom can put an arm about the waist of the prettiest girl in
town, and just as they had previously felt a warm wave of
the tropics, so now, as they bring an ear close to the breasts
of European women, they will hear the heart-beats jump.
Into their dreams of returning to the peninsula these cap
tains put all the swagger, the Don Juan audacity, the boast-
fulness of Spaniards in the best theatrical tradition.
And so the three captains went down the gentle slopes
on this side of the cordillera, which the Indians had webbed
with paths. The governing of the new lands had been left
in the hands of Hernan Perez, brother of the lawyer. Almost
all Quesada s soldiers and those of Fedennann stayed with
him. Of Belalcazar s, only forty were left there "whom he
agreed to feed," and the rest were sent to settle other re
gions. They were too enterprising to be kept in the new
colony. Belalcazar pondered on how he had let Quesada
gain a great deal of territory, and he even played with the
idea of rising against the chief on the pretence that a group
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 179
of soldiers was insisting on it. Quesada managed to read
these ideas in the donkey-boy s mind, and hastened to de
fend himself before the other could do anything about it.
Quesada won that new move, and the game was over, for
the wish to go to Europe with gold was stronger than the
temptation to do battle in the Peruvian manner, which is
to say, in the style of the Almagros and Pizarros.
The three captains reached the Magdalena. They em
barked with certain of their entourage in ships built by
Captain Albarracin, and soon the current was bearing them
down waters which for the first time were reflecting Span
ish faces that were placid and smiling. For a moment each
one remembered what he had left in the New City of Gra
nada, which they had at the last moment decided to
christen with a new name at once Christian and indigenous.
They would call it Santa Fe de Bogota. And Belalcazar
thought wistfully of his swine, Federmann of his hens, Don
Gonzalo of the burro. Those were the humblest details of
this conquest, and the only ones which were to become a
part of Indian life as democratic acquisitions. Let three or
four centuries pass, and of those days that were so stu
pendous the Indians would see only Quesada s burro, Belal-
cazar s pigs, and Federmann s hens, which would be rang
ing through the gardens and fields of their ranches.
Among tie captains and the soldiers heading thus gaily
for Cartagena, and soon to be crossing the Ocean Sea
toward the port of Sanlucar de Barrameda in Spain, went
a certain Dominican friar already familiar to us Father
Domingo de las Casas. He also busied his imagination with
restless dreams. Taking part in the gay amusements which
180 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
those who came home from the Indies were wont to pro
mote might not be entirely outside his programme. The
soldiers saw no saint in him. They even said that during the
conquest he usually threw the major weight of spiritual
labours on Lescamez, and kept the easiest and simplest part
for himself. Of his apostolic zeal the chroniclers preserved
no very good memory. Fray Pedro Simon, speaking of the
founding of the New City of Granada, says, "Quesada
named neither judge nor regiment, nor did he establish gal
lows or guillotine, nor any of the otter things so important
in the governing of a city, nor a priest for the church." On
this last point, the major responsibility rested clearly on
Las Casas. But Las Casas had other worries.
Among those other worries was money. The fact is that
when Quesada divided the booty taken from the Indians
those twenty million ducats in gold and emeralds he made
the distribution
Giving each his share, but favouring
The two priests they had brought with them. . . .
And as though this were not enough, Fray Domingo had
himself paid for the mare that died on die road. And not
yet content, he addressed himself in a moving speech to
the soldiers, instructing them as to the use which they
should make of their gold:
Before they carried it into their huts
They must not lose dl at playing dice and cards.
The idea that the friar then put into action was very sim
ple. Those soldiers who had, by a miracle, reached the be
nignant lands where they now found themselves owed
their lives to the Virgin. The Holy Virgin had saved them
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 181
from the plague, from hunger, from Indians and wild
beasts. There was not sufficient gratitude in the heart of
any one of them to repay her for such good fortune, nor
could any tongue ever reach in her praises a height of elo
quence which could properly express what was due her.
So what they ought to do was to raise an enduring monu
ment of thanks to Maria Santisima. Build a chapel near
those Seville wharves which saw the soldiers depart amid
a shout of "God carry you safely, and the Virgin go with
you!" from the women on shore. Yes, that was the spot
where the conquerors of the Chibchas must lay the founda
tion stone of their Christian faith and their love for the
Mother of God. "Out of the gold which is his, let each one
set aside a portion and place it in my hands," said the friar,
"for I am going to Spain, and by my faith I will have the
chapel built. Ajad on a day I will return to this Christian
land and give account of my labour which is to be the
labour of all of you to the captains and the soldiers."
The friar had never, perhaps, talked so long and with
such high eloquence as on this occasion. He softened all
their hearts. For one thing, they were more enthusiastic
about spending money when their pockets, which had al
ways been empty, were newly stuffed with it; for another,
it was truly a miracle that they had reached this port of
safety. And so, while the bark was dropping downstream,
the friar, instead of counting the beads of his rosary, added
up his bits of gold.
For his part, Quesada took out gold and emeralds in an
amount which is not known with exactness to anyone. In
addition to what had gone to him as his share of the booty,
182 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
it was said that lie took money from the royal strongboxes
by force, on the ground that he was going to hand it to His
Majesty in person. This would be told to Seville officials in
a letter which was never to reach them. Later, another let
ter from Hernan Venegas, Pedro de Colmenares, and Juan
Tafur said, "At the time when the lawyer Gonzalo Jimenez,
captain and lieutenant governor, left this New Kingdom to
make his report on the discovery of this kingdom and on
its natives, we wrote Your Honours what you should know
in order to be forewarned concerning what had happened
to the gold and stores which belonged to His Majesty as
his royal f ths, and also to the thirteen thousand castellanos
of sixteen- to eighteen-carat gold which Hernan Perez de
Quesada, the lawyer s brother, who remained in his stead,
took out of His Majesty s box by force and against our will,
in order to give them, as he gave them, to the lawyer, who
said that he would take them to His Majesty; not being
certain about this., we are advising Your Honours that these
may be collected."
As a matter of fact, there would never be any way of
knowing how much the Indian loot amounted to. Gold and
emeralds were hidden in prudent, or imprudent, quanti
ties so that the royal fifths should not be increased. Denun
ciations came from time to time, out of jealousy of the
conquerors. But as we have seen, the letters were lost, some
times in the long trip across mountain and ocean, sometimes
through trickery on the part of the captains, sometimes be
cause the pile of letters and reports that reached Spain
climbed higher and higher, without eyes enough to read
and pass on them.
What Venegas, Colmenares, and Tafur said of those thir
teen thousand castellanos that Don Gonzalo took would
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 183
agree with the denunciation they themselves made, first in
another letter which was lost, and later in one that said,
"We wrote Your Honours by Captain Juan de Junco to tell
how Captain Hernan Perez de Quesada had taken another
six thousand castellanos of good gold out of His Majesty s
box by force and against our will, saying that he was tak
ing them for the discovery of the Sierra Nevadas because
he had had great news of them, which six thousand castel
lanos he gave to Jeronimo Lebron in payment for certain
clothing and a horse bought of him for the journey; and
because force was used against us in this matter we have
decided to advise Your Honours of it**
It ought not to surprise us that these adventurers and
conquerors, having never handled anything of more value
than copper coins in Spain, felt dizzy as they awoke to the
sudden sense of wealth. Thrust thus into Aladdin s cave,
they filled their pockets with gold and grabbed fistfuls of
emeralds in such an orgy as had never been known before.
Even Don Gonzalo himself lost his head and his sense of
discretion as he neared the shores of his native land. The
poor lawyer who had left in disgrace after losing the dyers*
lawsuit was coming back in triumph to dress in fine clothes,
with an inexhaustible stream of gold gushing from his
pockets.
The ship that bore the three conquerors dropped anchor
at Malaga. The peninsula that they had left poverty-
stricken years before was now, under the feverish impulse
of discovery and with the aid of conquest gold, bursting
forth into a froth of stone. What had happened to the lucky
conquistador was now happening to Spain, Simple churches
184 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
grew into presumptuous piles., with twisted baroque col
umns hanging against their fagades like stone corkscrews.
In Toledo, Granada, Salamanca sounded the noise of the
stone-cutters. Charles V built a gigantic palace within the
Alhambra and destroyed certain Moorish monuments in
the process. The empire felt the need of affirming itself
above infidel ruins and humiliations. In Toledo the Alcazar
grew to monumental proportions.
The first loads of gold taken from the Peruvian kings
went ringing into the royal coffers, and Hernando Pizarro
amazed the court with his fantastic description of the
treasures of Atahuallpa. They say that when he unloaded
his ship "the customs office was filled with solid bars, vases
of diverse forms in imitation of animals, flowers, fountains,
and other objects, executed with more or less skill and all
of pure gold, to the great astonishment of spectators, who
came in great numbers from near-by towns to look upon
the marvellous products of Indian art." In the face of the
physical reality of Peru, the stories Cortes told began to lose
their importance. The first time he came back he had daz
zled the country and almost eclipsed the imperial majesty
of Charles V himself, but now, back a second time, he was
to seem only the younger brother of the Pizarros, those
Pizarros who had risen from Trujillo swineherds to be the
court s bright stars.
Quesada, coming out of the unknown, was besieged by
people eager to hear about this other kingdom which had
risen from his hands as if by magic. He brought the latest
news, When he passed through Granada he declared that
he carried a hundred and fifty thousand gold pesos in his
pocket. Pale envy snapped at his heels. Cobos, knight com
mander of Leon, wrote the fiscal agent of the Indies dilat-
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 185
ing upon this fortune, and pointing out that the conqueror,
in place of landing at the customs office in Seville, had
stopped in Malaga so as to escape inspection. But Quesada
was now the most important figure in Malaga, Granada,
Cordova, and Seville, and for some days they left "him in
peace.
Naturally, Quesada was burning with the ambition to
have the governorship of the New Kingdom placed in his
hands. Fernandez de Lugo had died some time before, and
his thieving son wandered about the court claiming the
right to succeed him and carrying his pretensions even to
the lands discovered by Quesada. In Seville, Quesada ob
tained permission to go to court, and left to seek out the
long and queen. He thought that if Peru had been given to
Pizarro, New Granada should be given to him. But Alonso
de Lugo had a head start, and Quesada decided that the
best thing would be to buy the governorship. Alonso, mar
ried to a lady of high degree, was acting very much the
gentleman. He was everybody s friend, and he was adept
at using the gold he had stolen from his father in giving
parties and placing bribes. Quesada proposed purchase,
Don Alonso was disposed to sell. The lawyer advanced
certain moneys. But the court did not accept the transfer,
and there now began an interminable suit in which the
lawyer tried to get back the money he had advanced to
Don Alonso.
Quesada certainly began under an evil star. This golden
age of Spain was full of intrigue, denunciations, and what
Ignacio de Loyola and the friars of the Inquisition called
"Christian spirit" Charles V had reached the peak of his
186 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
greatness, and his greatness coincided with the formation
of the first militias of the Company of Jesus. In the same
year that Quesada returned to Spain, Loyola perfected the
Jesuit constitution. There was something sordid and savage
which gave Spain an air at once severe, fearful, and de
fiant. Quesada fixed his hopes on Charles V, and Charles V
slipped from between his fingers. The emperor went off to
subdue the rebellion of Ghent, and the western world trem
bled under the impact of his horse s hoofs.
A short time before Quesada had left for America, King
Francis had fallen prisoner to Charles in the battle of Pavia.
Now Charles was crossing Francis s kingdom with his whole
armed force, and receiving from this same King Francis
a most splendid homage. Quesada stayed at court, litigat
ing against Alonso de Lugo, while the emperor s figure
whirled on beyond the Pyrenees, enveloped in a cloud of
dust. Federmann, thinking himself cleverer, went after
Charles to claim the governorship for himself. The Welsers,
seeing him, laid hands on him. This German crook who
had asked so much money of them brought no sign of the
gold he had "ranched" in Venezuela. So the gentleman with
the red beard stayed caught in the toils of the bankers. Let
us drop him out of sight. He will die penniless in Spain a
little later.
King Francis, stout and gallant, wily and unworried,
cheerfully patronized pleasant reunions in the castles of
France, where the nobility amused themselves without re
gard to convention; and at the same time he stirred up the
infidels against Charles V. The Spaniards who travelled in
Charles s train, like all those accustomed to amusing them-
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 187
selves in French cities, went singing the pleasures of wine
and women as they were described in the most delightful
outbursts of mirth by the most boisterous genius that ever
made the sons of the Seine laugh. While Ignacio de Loyola
was preparing his spiritual armies on the Spanish side of
the Pyrenees, Franois Rabelais on the French side was
bringing forth the life and deeds of Gargantua and Panta-
gruel. In Spain,, men saw the world through the sufferings
of the Inferno. In Italy, through the crude lessons of Ma-
chiavelli. In France, through the sensual life of the king of
the drunkards. When one considers that Ignacio de Loyola,
Machiavelli, and Rabelais all lived in the same period, and
that men who were their contemporaries, like Quesada, had
those three horizons to look toward, it explains many things.
So, for example, it may explain why those who brought gold
from America had little doubt as to whether they should
waste it in Spain or enjoy it in France or Italy.
As Charles V was crossing France, reaching Brussels, en
tering Ghent, his ministers were getting documents in the
mail from Spain which told of affairs of the Indies. What
reached the emperor s ears was merely the sound of crum
pled paper. Much more important than any tale of wild
Indians was the maintaining of the European order which
Charles V was going to establish when he had humiliated
those freemen of Ghent It was there in Brussels, with his
mind fixed on other things, that the king decided the fate
of Quesada and of Santa Marta by ordering that the gov
ernorship be handed over to Alonso de Lugo, and this in
spite of all petitions to the contrary and without taking into
account the fact that that great villain had already sold it.
188 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Charles V, entering the city of Ghent, was something to
look at. It was not many weeks since, in plazas and taverns,
markets and guild houses, the locksmiths, the weavers, the
saddlers, the cabinet-makers, the bakers, and the butchers,
boiling with democratic fervour, had raised their voices
against the king s decrees and with clenched fists had
threatened those who ruled them. Like the Spanish Comu-
neros twenty years earlier, or the German peasants fifteen
years before, these burghers of Ghent asked liberty at the
tops of their voices. Ghent was actually a small republic.
The fifty-two guilds of manufacturers and the thirty-two
tribes of weavers had their own government; the thousands
who milled through the streets and stormed the city gates
looked a turbulent mob which opposed the majesty of the
emperor. But there was no lack of those who, in the depths
of their hearts, preferred "the peace of despotism to the
turbulence of liberty." And even more so now that Ghent
had lost its equilibrium.
One day it was proposed to levy new taxes upon the citi
zens. The guilds met, and solemnly destroyed the famous
"calfskin" in which Charles V announced that he would
punish anyone who pretended to uphold city privileges
which he did not concede. The mob poured through the
narrow, twisting streets, with the banners of the guilds held
high and shouts that shook the city s walled centre, sing
ing their liberty and carrying bits of that parchment stuck
in their caps like plumes.
But now that shout, a hymn to freedom only a few weeks
earlier, was beginning to falter. Swiftly, but in silence, the
artisans returned to their workshops. In the market no one
talked of anything but wool, meat, or fish. For the emperor,
with a great and thunderous retinue, was advancing across
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 189
France. Already the people of Brussels had acclaimed him.
The populace gathered at the city gates, on the roof-tops,
in house cornices, and gothic windows of stone buildings
to look for the measured advance of the troops and the ban
ners of the king waving between their gold rosettes. A wit
ness says that entry was as if God had arrived in the city
from Paradise. The emperor s train took more than six hours
to pass a given point.
"Four thousand lancers, one thousand archers, five thou
sand halberdiers and musketeers composed his bodyguard,
all armed to the teeth and ready for combat," John Lothrop
Motley would say in his history, "The emperor rode in their
midst, surrounded by cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and
other great ecclesiastical dignitaries, so that the terrors of
the Church were combined with the panoply of war to
affright the souls of the turbulent burghers."
Never had such a thing been seen in Ghent At parade
pace this college dressed in velvet cloaks, ermine capes,
golden collars, and cataracts of pearls went penetrating
deep into ther heart of the city. Seen from the roof-tops, the
town looked a fantastic tapestry. The shining arms gave
back the blue of the sky, light trembled and broke against
the standards, the scarlet-clad heralds blasted the air with
their long copper horns, the princes made silk creak under
their silver-plated mountings, and precious stones sparkled
in the nobles hats. This mass of fine cloths, brocades, laces,
was like a great machine which rolled over the voices of
freemen, flattening them, reducing them to a miserable
squeak.
A month after the emperor arrived they hanged nineteen
rebels on the gallows as a warning to the city. Ghent, mean
while, was emptying its warehouses in order to feed this
190 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
army of foot-soldiers and horsemen, kings and warriors,
which went scattering through the streets in search of
amusement. A month after the executions were over, the
decree which punished the city was announced. In order
to repress all future violence they were to have a new con
stitution. The ancient democratic air must be transformed
to a muffled living in humility.
And so that solemn approval of such capitulation might
be expressed, there was to be a symbolic ceremony in which
all would bow the head and bend the knee. On a designated
day the chiefs of the weavers were to present themselves
dressed in black, with uncovered heads, innocent of jewels
or adornment, accompanied by fifty heads of the guilds and
fifty workers, the latter in their shirts, and with halters
about their necks, to implore the emperor s pardon. At the
same time all the functionaries of the city were to fall on
their knees "to say in a loud and intelligible voice, by the
mouth of one of their clerks, that they were extremely sorry
for the disloyalty, disobedience, infraction of laws, commo
tions, rebellion, and high treason of which they had been
guilty, promise that they would never do the like again,
and humbly implore him, for the sake of the Passion of
Jesus Christ, to grant them mercy and forgiveness."
Charles V was always like that. If he muffled the voice
of victory in the shadows of the Cathedral, what would he
not do with the loud shouts for freedom which the burghers
had given? And Spain was like that Even murderers and
gipsies, Moors and Jews, crossed themselves in Spain, and
said the "Ave Maria Purfsima" with which one invariably
knocked at the heavy Castilian doors or replied with the
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 191
"conceived without sin" which was the invariable answer
from the depths of the echoing entrances.
Those days of glory or of worry for Charles V were days
of trial for the conquerors of America. Herndn Cortes was
at court now, humbly begging that in return for the great
achievements of his youth he be given rest for his old age.
Quesada went intriguing like a petty lawyer; Pizarro talk
ing loud and hard against the background of his riches;
Belalcazar claiming the governorship of Popayan, which
the emperor would have to give him if for no other reason
than to lessen the power of the Pizarros; Alonso de Lugo
asking for and getting Santa Marta, not so much because he
was the son of Fernandez de Lugo as because he had gold
and was married to a lady of high degree.
All these personages went rubbing shoulders in the cor
ridors, in the streets, in the taverns, in the house of the
scribes. Those who, with their soldiers and their personal
audacity, had doubled the world s landscapes and extended
its horizons to infinity, now saw their vision shortened to
the capital s narrow streets, the pallid faces of cautious
ministers, and an emperor with a hard hand and a sober
countenance.
Cortes wanted to prove his warrior s fortune in the Old
World as he had in the New. In order to be near the em
peror and reawaken an old affection he resolved to go with
him on his expedition to Algiers. They went off one day
in the same ship, cheered by the hope of conquering in
fidels again and beating the accursed soldiers of Barbarossa.
After the white victory of Ghent it would not be a bad idea
to add to Charles s record a red victory over the hosts of
Algiers.
Twenty thousand men went with Charles in two hun-
192 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
dred and fifty vessels. Cortes felt hope spring again, and he
and Charles argued back and forth like two fighting men
who were old comrades. But this time fate was against
them. A storm rose during the night, and the troops nearing
Algiers were caught on a sand-bar. Cortes s ship f oundered,
and fourteen of the galleys. Cortes and his son got ashore
by swimming. When dawn broke, the shipwrecked un
fortunates stared at one another. The emperor stood shiver
ing like a mongrel pup. Cortes then proposed an offensive,
but between the king s disillusionment and the army s hun
ger it fell to pieces.
From this day forward the old conqueror of Mexico
dropped from favour, and Charles thought of him only as
a person of bad augury who had gone with him on a dis
astrous journey.
Pizarro usually ran across Quesada in the gaming rooms.
In this absurd and contradictory court Quesada was losing
spirit, and he threw himself into the flowery path of pleas
ure, where women hung on his tales and his ducats, and
gamblers coveted his gold. One day he met with Pizarro,
Pedro Almirez, and another man at the gambling table.
Each card went down with an appropriate word of praise or
insult for their various conquests. A smiling maidservant ap
proached the table. Pizarro, who had just won the hand,
gave her a crown. Pedro Almirez and the other man, cap
tivated by the charm of the girl s big eyes and flashing
teeth, followed suit and gave her a crown apiece. Quesada,
taking a diabolical pride in his own defeat, Quesada who
was losing the game to Pizarro as he was losing favour at
court, looked the girl over from head to foot, and picking up
as many golden ducats as his hands would hold, tossed
them into the skirt she so willingly raised, saying, "I lost
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 193
the liand to these generous gentlemen, but I figure that in
the number of ducats I give to you I win."
While the lawyer Jimenez de Quesada was dividing his
time between pleasure and petitions to the king and queen
asking justice, a pile of papers was rising against him in
the Audiencia. He had conquered a kingdom hardly smaller
in size and wealth than Mexico or Peru; as someone said, he
had set a beautiful emerald in the empire s crown; he had
therefore a perfect right to expect not only that they would
listen to him, but also that they would load "him with
honours. But it did not turn out that way; on the contrary,
the pile of papers was threatening to engulf him. In Santa
Marta, in Santa F6, in the very court itself, the scribes spent
day and night filling pages with accusations against him.
The caravels that came from the New Kingdom to the pen
insula carried fat packets accusing Quesada of fantastic
crimes, or making his most necessary acts of discipline look
ugly.
A Santa Marta soldier lodged criminal charges against
him on the ground that he had once put the said soldier in
jail, held him up to public shame, and given him a hundred
lashes while the town crier proclaimed it, without giving
him a chance to exercise the right of appeal. As a matter of
fact, the soldier had been guilty of cowardice, leaving a
cross-bow in the hands of an Indian. The denunciation was
issued in Santa Marta, and Don Gonzalo was at court, but
nevertheless the local judge ordered the constable "to seize
the body of the lawyer Jimenez." The constable sought
him, and came back, naturally, to say, "Sir, I have sought for
the lawyer Jimenez and have not found "him; they say he is
194 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
not in this country ." The judge insisted, and announced
through the town crier that the lawyer must present him
self in Santa Marta in nine days time. As Quesada did not
comply, he was declared to be a rebel.
Meanwhile the residencia charges (a form of impeach
ment) which Don Miguel Diez de Armendariz was press
ing against him in Santa Fe took form. There were also
public demands that he appear before the Audiencia within
twenty-seven days to answer charges. "On behalf of the
long/ announced the crier every morning in a solemn voice
and to the beat of drums, "on behalf of the king do you,
Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, answer before the royal
justices." Don Gonzalo was wandering in and out of Span
ish taverns. The call was repeated from corner to corner in
the new-born streets of the capital of the New Kingdom.
The twenty-seven days passed, and again Don Gonzalo
was, by the mouth of justice, declared a rebel.
The list of charges preferred against the lawyer was a
formidable one. That he took wicked measures against the
Indians, committing many and cruel acts of force, rob
beries, and deaths, "ranching" and taking their farms and
their fields, sending dogs against them and killing them,
both through his own orders and those of his soldiers and
captains. That he had burned many towns, and that through
his cruelty those fertile and abundant lands were now de
populated. That having obtained from the Indians more
than three hundred thousand gold pesos and many em
eralds, he did not show them to His Majesty s officers at
the time, but kept them guarded for a long while, and later
took out what he wanted to keep. That when the booty
was divided he took out a tenth part and the best jewels,
saying they were for Don Pedro Fernandez de Lugo, but
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 195
keeping them for himself. That in addition to this, he took
a ninth part of the booty on the ground that it belonged to
him as lieutenant general. That in addition to the gold
which he took from the chieftains, he carried to Castile
fifty, a hundred, or a hundred and fifty pesos from each
soldier, and no one ever knew what became of these. That
of the gold obtained after the first division of the booty he
gave none to the soldiers. That he took out three thousand
pesos from the royal coffers as a loan to himself which he
never repaid. That he tortured Sacresaxigua until he killed
him, and took for himself the gold which that king had en
trusted to him. That he sowed panic among the Indians
until they fled from the Spaniards. That he gave secret in
structions for the hunting of treasure, and gave nothing of
what was taken in these raids to either the soldiers or the
king. That he was cruel to his soldiers, and especially to
Juan Gordo, whom he hanged, and to Lazaro Fonte, whom
he exiled. And so forth and so on.
The judge of the residencia proceedings published the
charges, and announced that the lawyer must answer
within three days; as the lawyer did not reply, he was
thereby declared to have confessed. Nor were these pro
ceedings in vacuo to stay on the shelf in Santa F& All the
hate and bitter envy which emanated from the accusations
went to court, and at court men erected, with delighted
attention for the most minute detail, a machine whose
business it was to devour Jimenez de Quesada alive. One
by one, the men who had lost went fleeing from the round
table where conquistadors sat boasting of their deeds. And
so Don Gonzalo fled. He fled to France, the happy, friendly,
Rabelaisian France of Francis L And while the conqueror
was pounding on hard cafe tables demanding a glass of
196 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
wine, the justices of Spain were seeking him throughout
the court, for Queen Juana had ordered him to jail.
Those were days of bitterness and melancholy. Don Gon-
zalo, thinking he would find pleasures in France for the
drowning of his sorrows, frequently found himself alone
and badly treated, even though he still kept a fat purse.
And as would happen more and more often from now on,
he shut himself up in a tavern room and limbered his quill
to write histories that no one was going to read.
In France, the web of wars against Spain was being spun
again. King Francis, having played the host magnificently
to Charles V when the latter went to subdue the rebels of
4 Ghent, now sharpened his sword that he might humble
the Spaniard s pride. The history of these two kings is a
tale of continuous watchfulness, veiled from time to time
in courteous phrases. Now Francis supported the Turks,
now the Italians, in attempts to ruin his powerful neigh
bour. With the defeat of Charles at Algiers still fresh, he
now tried to undermine his power in Flanders. In the form
of piracy, the war reached the coast of America. One day
Robert Baal with four hundred Frenchmen appeared off
Santa Marta. The city had no defence. Don Alonso de Lugo,
who should have been in the plaza with his soldiers, had left
for Santa Fe. The French sacked the town and burned it.
Quesada was bored in France. His very restlessness im
pelled him to wander from one country to another, as if he
were trying to touch the interior life of Europe with his own
hands. He watched the course of politics with a growing
interest. In hours of boredom and annoyance he wrote. He
had always had a love for letters. To deny the effectiveness
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 197
of foreign metres which certain poets who loved novelty
were bringing into vogue, he entered into long polemics
with those who wrote verses* For Quesada, verse must be
made according to the old CasHlian metres,
Those -fitting and adapted to the language
Through being born the sons of its own womb.
Quesada was now composing his first books. He polished
and enlarged an account of his conquests, making notes, as
he went along, on details of American life. Perhaps he
edited his first essays on the wars in Europe and America.
For the rest, he went brilliantly dressed, but each day
more solitary in spirit. He now shone not for the court, but
among the people. Perhaps if men hunt some day through
the archives of French jails they will find clearer traces of
his life. The best way to reconstruct the lives of such men
as Quesada is to lend an ear to what the prisons say. When
curious men in later centuries tried to reconstruct Cer-
vantes ? s life they found that the only strong threads were
that scandalous affair of his daughter and the administra
tive duties in which the author of Don Quixote felt himself
buried. If Shakespeare had been less honest, and involved
in more legal proceedings, the men of the twentieth cen
tury would have f ound his life no such mystery as it is. The
most definite thing about Quesada is the account of his
bouts with justice. The rest his books, his adventures
are light things that the wind picks up and forgetfulness
carries away.
Well, then, not only was Jimenez de Quesada bored in
France. Justice pursued him, and it became advisable for
to change his lodgings. He went to Italy.
198 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
This Italy which Quesada now reached was receiving a
daily horde of gay and licentious Spaniards who overflowed
the streets, came to blows in the cafes, made certain
changes in the life of Rome, Naples, Venice, and Genoa.
They were chiefly women of the gay world who took part
in the fiestas of the rich and crowded the churches. One
day in Rome there was given in the house of Cardinal
Arborence a performance of Juan del Encina s farce,
Pldcida y Victoriano, and the Duke of Mantua said that
there were more Spanish wanderers than Italians in the
salons. The courtesans spoke Spanish, and many words of
Castilian origin began to make their way into popular
speech. The glories of Charles V and the American con
quests gave Spaniards the right to carry a certain air of
superiority in the streets, and it was thanks to these man
nered, flippant, and picaresque tourists that both fanfaro
nade and Don Juanism flourished throughout Italy. Those
who found the life of Spain too oppressive, too full of con
vents and crusades, emigrated to the joyous cities of that
other peninsula where the libertine spirit left by the Ren
aissance was reigning triumphant.
It was frequently the friars themselves who left Spain to
amuse themselves in Italy, where they could doff their cas
socks and surround themselves with complaisant women.
These adventurers, who were crafty sneak thieves, robbers
who cleaned out inns and stole from peasants, were held in
horror. Croce, in his book on that period, shows how the
word "cappeare" which means to go about at night stealing
the capes from poor peasants, got into common Italian
speech. "The phrase to steal a cape at night as the Span
iards do* became proverbial." And not only the cape. "Is
that a Spaniard coming toward you?" says the page to his
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 199
master in the play, and the latter answers, "A Spaniard?
Don t come so close! There that s near enough/ And in
another passage, "God grant he is not deceiving us, and
does not catch sight of this gold. Being a Spaniard and a
friar, eh?"
So I say that a flood of Spaniards invaded Italy, and
among them Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada and the friar
Domingo de las Casas, Domingo de las Casas came to spend
the gold he had brought from America. He came to give
free rein to those alms which he had, with such zeal and
astuteness, inveigled from the soldiers of Castile in the
New Kingdom on the plea that he would build for them
that church near the Seville wharves. He became a lay
man with great grace, broke with the rules of his order, and
was never to emerge out of the turmoil of these cities
again. From this time on the chroniclers have nothing good
to say of him. As a matter of fact, this was in accordance
with the temper of the times. What happened with the Bor-
jas and the Borgias was very like what happened in the
Las Casas family, with Bartolome becoming a passionate
defender of the Indians in Spain and in America and
Domingo a spendthrift and a pleasure-seeker.
Quesada saw himself plunged into a whirlpool of pas
sions. Yet American affairs were being listened to with
growing interest. It must not be forgotten that the accounts
of the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci were all published in
Italian, and that they gave the world the first news of the
progress of discovery Book V of these accounts bears this
dedication, "Alberico Vesputio a Lorenzo Piero de Medici,
sakitem" Books like the history of America by Hernandez
200 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
de Oviedo, the letters of Ferdinand Columbus, and the
chronicle of the conquest of Peru by Agustin de Zarate were
soon to be common throughout Italy.
Quesada gossiped in the taverns, made the girls laugh,
and created more of an impression with his great mous
taches and his florid beard which still carried the scent of
American forests than he did with his velvet clothes. Italy
could not resist the flood of gallantries which fell from Span
ish lips when they set out to win the love of women, nor cry
down the chivalrous ceremonies of those who adorned all
this with the flowery speeches, the flattery, the "by your
leave" of the peak of the Middle Ages, nor manage to laugh
quite loudly enough at these swaggering soldiers and bul
lies who lived by flashing their swords but who were in
sober reality the same men who had made the king of
France their own at Pavia. Quesada had about him a bit of
all of this, and it should not seem strange that Italy held
him captive for several years and diverted his attention
from his misadventures at court. Nor, by the same token,
could he cease going over in his mind the scenes in which
people lashed out against Spaniards, for whom there was
very little love in all Europe. There were constant conflicts
in Naples between the Neapolitans and the Spanish. At that
very time "eighteen Spaniards were killed in the taverns of
Chorrillo, torn to bits, and thrown from the windows into
the streets; many Spanish women and old men were killed
in the plaza of the Via Catalana and in the houses on that
street."
Therein lies the explanation of a thick book which Que
sada would be impelled to write in defence of his home
land, and which begins with gentle bitterness and a thread
of melancholy in the title of the first chapter: "Whether the
PLAY AND GAMING IN EUROPE 201
ill will which many nations bear toward the Spaniard be a
matter of hatred or envy, and whether the causes they al
lege for it be just"
Thinking thus, and looking at the world through its his
tory because he could not look it frankly in the face, Que-
sada grew bored with Italy. And one day he turned his
steps toward Portugal in search of other breezes. Again we
see him magnificently set up, seigniorial and elegant, pur
suing life through the streets of Lisbon. For some days the
Andalusian in him was reborn, and flourished. He carried
the flavour of his province in his bearing as one wears a
brilliant cloak; it shone in his eyes, now hard from his mili
tary life, now luminous with the grace of his character. The
man knew how to stamp hard, and to tread softly. He was
in that maturity between forty and fifty, strong and virile
and hardly come to the middle of his life. Almost as many
years as he had spent wandering about the world still lay
in store for him. His long-suppressed pride was reborn amid
the ruins of his melancholy. He thought about America
again. This Europe, full of envy and misery, was a rotten
world. In America a man might be no worse or no better,
but at least there was still mystery there to be discovered.
The dream of El Dorado filled his mind again. There, come
what might, he could climb to the heights another time,
even though he did it as captain of mutineers, and could
live amid the savage struggle of virgin territories.
Thoughts like these raised his spirits, and his figure grew
taller in the Lisbon streets, so that merely in looking at
him the Lusitanians grew restless. He could not pass
through the city unnoted, even though he were the least
202 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
famous of caballeros, as lie could not pass unnoted in Santa
Marta when a company of soldiers devoured by hunger
sought in him the man who should lead them to the top of
the Andes.
And they arrested him one day in Lisbon,
Finding him with clothes that were embroidered
(For there it seems that they are not permitted).
And on the day they took him out of prison
The jailer s wife requested that he give her
A certain sum that was her jailers fee,
And he at once gave her a hundred ducats
So she with such a generous -fee in hand
Swore nevermore to follow that profession
Nor ever be another s jailer there.
So Quesada went to Spain. And then a knight came into
the world who was to be immortal Don Alonso Quesada,
the Quixote of La Mancha.
IX
Return
The Indies, shelter and refuge for Spain s despairing, shrine
of the mutineer, asylum for the murderer, chips and a green
cloth for the gambler, enticement for unattached women. . . .
CERVANTES
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra . . . humbly implores that
Your Majesty will have the goodness to grant him a post in the
Indies out of three or four which are at present vacant, one of
these being the auditorship of the New Kingdom of Granada,
or the governorship of the province of Soconusco in Guatemala,
or the post of paymaster of the galleys at Cartagena, or of
Corregidor of the city of La Paz . . . for his desire is to con
tinue ever in the service of Your Majesty, and there to end his
days as did his ancestors before him. . . .
CERVANTES
THE RETURN
QUESADA had eight or nine years of wandering
through this wicked European world before the
charges against him began to fade out and he was
able to return to his own country. He entered Cordova like
a man whose life has been pardoned. His uncle Jeronimo
de Soria offered him an exceptional post as head of the
House of St. Lazarus. Gonzalo s pockets were empty, but
still it is more than a little sad that the man who had been
the first to reach the heights of the Chibcha empire, and
who had added so immense a territory to the empire of
Charles V, should now have come to the point where he
was candidate for the directorship of a lepers hospital by
virtue of the fact that his uncle was relinquishing it in his
favour.
In order to understand Jimenez de Quesada s position in
Spain after the conquest of the New Kingdom, and to meas
ure the misery it inflicted on him, one must remember two
things. When he arrived from America it was to meet the
fury of the lawyers, the mounting pile of paper charges in
the Council of the Indies, the cry of Cobos from the win
dows of the palace, "Throw that lunatic out of the plaza!"
the jail sentence, the fines which the ministers imposed
upon him or, to sum it up in a few words, it was to meet
this declaration which that same Cobos, the king s prose
cutor, made against him: "I, Licentiate Francisco de los
205
206 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Cobos, your prosecutor, state that Licentiate Gonzalo
Jimenez, Lieutenant Governor who was in the New King
dom of Granada, and Herndn Perez de Quesada, brother
of the aforesaid Counsellor Jimenez, during the time they
were in the said governorship, did and committed many
and grave crimes to the disservice of God and Your Maj
esty, and injuries to the natives of that territory, commit
ting thefts, burnings, acts of force, death, and other in
juries in order to rob them of their property. I ask and
implore that Your Majesty order the most severe penalties
imposed upon the said Counsellor Jimenez and Hernan
Perez de Quesada, which by their aforesaid crimes they
have incurred; and that these be imposed upon each of
them, their goods and persons alike, that it may be an ex
ample to them and to others, and I swear to God in due
form that I neither state nor ask the aforesaid maliciously."
This was the first thing that greeted Quesada when he re
turned triumphant from America. The other was his un
cle s ofFer of the post in the lepers home, made when he
came back from exile.
But these were the hardships of his trade, and now at
least he would gain the king s ear, and for the first time in
nine years, for the doors of the court were to open to him
by way of the humble doors of a hospital. For the first time
he was going to tell the king about America, and to ask
him for a title. No longer would he waste time thinking
about a Europe that depressed him. Like those old men who
begin to remember their past lives with a precision of de
tail and a flood of incident, Quesada, who was now fifty,
painted for his king the life of America and pointed out
the principles which he thought necessary for good gov
ernment there. I refer to an admirable work, full of op-
THE RETURN 207
portune observations and Christian feeling, having none of
the passionate polemic of a Bartolome de las Casas, but
done with the quiet skill and steady judgment of a man who
can measure the worth of human deeds and who knows
how to appraise the condition of the Indians. Life s elo
quent lessons gave his words depth and dignity. The swag
gerer who fell in and out of Lisbon jails, the conquistador
of the round table who flung an apronful of ducats when
Pizarro s tip was but a single castellano, had become an
austere and simple man whose eyes sparkled with con
tained enthusiasm and suppressed joy at the hope of re
turning to the Indies. To the forest, the hunger, the gold,
the adventure, the freedom of the New World.
Of all that Quesada wrote, only two works were to reach
posterity complete his defence of Charles and his notes
on the proper governing of New Granada, This last is the
most nearly perfect that emerged from his pen. It is a com
pendium of all his experiences in governing, his political
reflections, his circumspect study of reality. It is one of
those sixteenth-century documents in which the reader will
always find an even-tempered flow of Christian charity, a
very rare thing in the flood of Catholic literature which
burst from the depths of the conquest. No excessive demon
strations here, no show of dogmatic reasoning, but a simple
explanation of life as it was lived in America and wise ad
vice on behalf of the Crown s work as a civilizing influ
ence. For writing these instructions for good government,
Quesada had his own experience of conquest and voyages,,
the memory of his own cruelties, of the teeth of justice
snapping at his heels, of the European panorama which he
208 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
had seen with his own eyes, of the history of Charles V and
of the courts of France and Italy which his investigating
eyes had surveyed. He had neither shut himself up within
the Spanish microcosm, nor let himself be deceived by life
in the rest of Europe, nor lost from sight the reality of life
in America. As of that time and place, his work has excep
tional value. His counsels had two facets: on the one hand
he was, as will be said later, a statesman, that is, a man
who enters deep into complex matters of politics and eco
nomics; on the other hand he was a good Christian. How
much do the counsels in this document remind one of those
which Don Quixote was later to give Sancho Panza for the
governing of his island!
His suggestions begin with an assumed humility that
he was speaking primarily as one of the people and only
secondarily as chief captain and conquistador of the New
Kingdom. As one of the people, he had seen how likely
were injustices to be committed in America, how justice
was prone to be laughed at, the Indians to be exploited un
til they died and the land was left unpeopled.
In accordance with the usual order in these documents,
the first thing he asked in his suggestions for good gov
ernment was that there should be a properly established
church in Santa Fe de Bogota, that it be raised to a bish
opric, and that the bishops should always reside in the New
Kingdom. That there be regular religious orders there, so
as to ensure the performance of apostolic labours with the
more zeal. For though there are priests in Santa Fe, there
are not enough for the conversion of the Indians, "the more
so in that they do not bother with this, nor care about it, as
though they had gone there to get rich and for no other
THE RETURN 209
thing." As long as tihere are no better friars, the Indians
"will be left unconverted to our Christian religion only be
cause there are no men to instruct them with spirit and
fervour/*
Quesada then asked that the distribution of towns be
confirmed, according to the boundaries he named. That
grants of Indians be made fixed and permanent, as was
done in Mexico and Guatemala, in order to fix what we
might call the first property map of the New Kingdom. And
that an exact tax-list be compiled showing how much trib
ute each chief was to pay, and taxing them with modera
tion. The Spaniards were levying tribute in bulk, without
any order to it, and thus sowing terror and confusion among
the Indians. It was necessary to take measures against this
and against another custom of the Spaniards, which was to
have no fixed day for collecting tribute, with the result that
many Indians paid two or three times. Often they, "think
ing that gold was going to be demanded of them again, rose
up with their wives and children and went to the moun
tains and left the towns empty and lost."
Quesada maintained that the Indians knew more about
working the emerald mines tiban the Spaniards did. If the
traditional methods of hunting stones were abandoned,
there would be an end of the mines; they would be left
destroyed and forgotten, and men who had always lived
by trafficking in these stones would abandon that region.
The coming of new arrivals into this business had been slow
and inept. In order to set aside the king s fifth, the royal
officers took one stone out of every five, and many times
that one was worth more than the other four put together.
The lawyer proposed that the stones be put up at auction,
210 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
and that the fifth be taken in the form of that due propor
tion of what the sale produced.
At the same time Quesada defended the Spanish entre
preneurs who were beginning to exploit gold mines or to
take out cinnamon of the kinds his brother Hernan Perez
de Quesada had discovered. He thought that in principle
the Crown ought not to claim a fifth of all products but a
tenth, as was done in other parts. That the men who
gathered cinnamon should not be required to come back
through the ports of the New Kingdom, for the purpose
of dividing it into fifths ( or whatever proportion was agreed
on as the king s share), for cinnamon came from a remote
and deserted province which could more easily communi
cate with Spain through other ports, and it was absurd to
regard as cheats or smugglers those who had to take the
natural routes of die country in order to get their loads
out.
But Quesada expressed himself with the most fullness
and precision when he talked about the maltreatment ac
corded the Indians, Later he himself, with the Indians as
signed to him, would give a living example of how they
should be freed from excessive tributes and would become
their defender in the New Kingdom. In the ten years since
the founding of the colony, there had been terrible iniqui
ties. He said it himself: "In the New Kingdom there was
much mistreatment by the conquerors and other Spanish
settlers, deaths, thefts, and cutting off of limbs, to such an
extent that it is terrible to tell of it, and all for the purpose
of forcing the Indians to give up gold and precious stones,
and therefore many towns have been emptied of their in
habitants and a great number of Indians are dead/ The
governors and the justices did nothing to stop this wave of
THE RETURN 211
cruelty. They were afraid of the conquerors, and many
times they were themselves responsible for deaths and
robberies and many other kinds of crime.
Then he talked about the governors. When the governors
knew that an inspector was coming or heard a rumour that
one was coming, they hastened to name ordinary alcaldes
who were their accomplices, and they anticipated justice
by causing charges to be laid before the alcaldes and agree
ing on a punishment When the inspector arrived, the gov
ernor would go smiling to meet him, saying, "If anything
happened here, it has already been taken care of."
Quesada not only condemned all this, but proposed a
measure which, while strange, should not be thought un
reasonable. He would forbid Spaniards to visit Indian
towns which were not under their charge. The fact was
that these Spaniards installed themselves in the towns on
some pretext, such as going to the markets, and made the
Indians feed them and serve them without limit. Quesada
said, "If these Spaniards must go to the towns, let them go
accompanied by a constable or a justice to watch them."
But the Spaniard had invented a whole system of mul
tiplying his profits which extended into the subtlest details
of life. He shortened the calendar so as to levy tribute three
times in every year. He altered weights so as to get almost
five pounds for every one the scales showed. Those who
had land grants near the Magdalena hired Indians as beasts
of burden to bring cargoes up through the mountain ridges
of the Opon. For each of these bits of cunning Quesada
pointed out the remedy he thought just, and he denounced
still other things which shocked his Christian spirit, as, for
212 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
instance, "The Spaniards never go to the New Kingdom
without its costing a great number of Indians who die in
the mountains of the Opon, for, as they come from a differ
ent region, in this other hot country they fall sick and die,
especially when they are loaded down with cargo." The
king ought to forbid this, even though the Indians say
they do it of their own free will, "for Your Majesty knows
what manner of free will the Indians have, and how the
Spaniards make them say this by a thousand methods and
inducements ?
One of the things that most exercised Quesada was the
problem of dogs. They were an important part of the con
quest, and the verb "aperrear 9 (to loose tihe dogs) became
a word in common speech, a word that sent cold chills up
the back. The Spaniards loosed their packs against savage
Indians and the dogs tore them to shreds. The dog was a
terror to all the natives, but as the colony became settled,
the Indians too began to keep dogs. There was already a
pair on every ranch, and no town which did not number five
hundred to a thousand of them. Quesada thought that a
day would come when the Indians might rise up and use
these animals as a living weapon against the Spaniards. So
he proposed that the king order that no Indian have a dog,
except the chief, and that The might have one or two only,
and only males and no females, so there should be no off
spring."
In another paragraph Quesada set down certain argu
ments in favour of Spaniards* marrying, a paragraph which
time would turn against him. He noted how the provisions
of the king in favour of this basic way of populating the
Indies were mocked at and defeated by a thousand subter
fuges, In the New Kingdom, he says, where there are in
THE RETURN 213
my belief three hundred land grants, there are not a dozen
married men." It is therefore necessary that those who do
not marry lose their grants, and that no excuses or exten
sions be allowed.
Then Quesada went into a thousand things in which the
Spaniards contravened justice. In the tariffs, which they
arranged as they chose. In the councilmen whom the gov
ernors named for the town halls, treating all this as though
it were the greatest joke in the world. In the chancelleries,
where they spent in litigation three times what the deal
was worth. In the danger that the Royal Audiencia would
interfere in things which were not within the scope of its
competency. In the annoyance which resulted from divid
ing Indian towns when land grants were made. In the arbi
trary acts which were committed because those who were
at the head of public administration did not visit the towns.
And at the end the lawyer made two suggestions that
on naming ordinary alcaldes there should be no interfer
ence with their election on the part of "any of Your Maj
esty s officers or any titled or otherwise powerful person
or anyone who holds any office of justice"; and, second,
that the royal writs be kept in a safe with three keys, be
cause anything could be lost or mislaid at the pleasure or
convenience of interested parties.
Let us now put aside this political compendium and re
turn to Santa Fe de Bogota.
Santa Fe was beginning to take shape. The main plaza
had its own type of straw house. Down the small streets
leading off from the crossings the pigs, chickens, friars,
Indians, and Spaniards moved lazily along. The back-
214 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
stairs gossip conveyed a certain human sense of the city, a
feeling of social life. The carpenters began to build chests,
wardrobes, beds household furniture which would some
day be receiving clean starched linen in peaceful homes.
One walked across fresh grass, between white walls, under
the eaves of grey roofs. Green, white, grey all of them
town colours, wrapped in the quiet atmosphere of the
high plains. In the plaza, in front of the principal church
which was made also of straw, lay the cemetery. Two
limpid rivers wrapped the settlement in a crystal embrace.
In the afternoons, groups of the curious formed to listen
to the fantastic accounts of a man at once gracious and re
served, suave and hard, and recently come from Europe.
He was the post in human form, bringing news of old com
rades; he told the tale of Naples and of Rome to those who
once had made war in Italy. He talked of Charles V and of
his extraordinary deeds, his entry into Ghent, his defeat in
Africa. The Spaniards listened to him with respect. The
Indians looked at him dully, hardly understanding what he
said. He was Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, marshal of
the New Kingdom, come to retrace his former steps and to
see his friends.
Marshal Quesada! After so many years of lawsuits, of
gay parties, of silent nights, of meditating on the grandeurs
and miseries of power, he had won no great titles, no hon
our and recompense like those accorded Cortes or Pizarro,
not even a governorship as had Belalcazar^ but only the
title of marshal*
Since fish of greater weight he could not catch,
He had to be content with what he marshalled. . . .
Others around him rose high, and with better fortune,
THE RETURN 215
but fate was to leave them lean in their turn. Town life in
Santa Fe grew like the breath of rumour, and the marshal
followed it with eyes that were quiet and serene. His fifty
years, which no one celebrated, had given him a vigorous
body and put into his soul a certain grandeur which he had
learned to temper and to sun in the clear light of optimism.
Certainly he was one of the people. Perhaps one whom bad
luck had pushed to the edge of ridicule. The chroniclers
made jokes about his title, the marshal. They called him
knave and fool. But when the colony was confronted with
an uprising, all eyes turned naturally toward the "fool"
to ask his counsel and implore the aid of his strong right
arm. And if the "fool" should sound the trumpet for new
conquests, the soldiers would range behind him, bewitched
by the magic call of the conquistador. If you want an ao
count of the way the chroniclers muttered about him, read
these verses by Father Castellanos:
Another also came on this occasion
To that kingdom which he himself discovered
And which with dH his captains he had conquered:
Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada,
More of whose fleece was cropped thanleftto grow,
For what with games and quarrelling and women,
Inventions, liveries, Ues, and empty pomp
And a licentious prodigality,
He had run through the great sum of that money
Which in those provinces he had acquired.
How different was this Santa Fe of 1550 from that which
Quesada had left when it had only the dozen huts of the
216 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
first settlers and when the only faces to be seen were those
of the energetic and greedy captains of the conquest. Now
men of letters were beginning to arrive, and the first stones
to be laid where the building for the Royal Audiencia would
rise. They were about to make the first clay tiles. Sheep
and goats began to appear in the fields. But the most ex
traordinary sight was the Spanish women. They came with
Lebron, Alonso Luis de Lugo, and Doctor Miguel Diez de
Armenddriz. In the list of those whom Diez de Armendariz
brought to the New Kingdom, we read "a barber, a sur
geon, a blacksmith, two tailors, a hosier, tile-makers, scribes,
two carpenters, six Negroes, three married men with their
wives, and two widows to be married, each with daugh
ters." He came "as heavily laden with men as with women,"
says Bishop Piedrahita, "though much discredit followed
Miguel Diez on account of so many women, which con
tinued until the end of his governorship. . . .**
Quesada s old friends had scattered. Almost all of them
lived with Indian women on land grants. In those ten years,
and perhaps because of the cold of those uplands, the hot
energy of virile spirits had cooled and the men of the con
quest had become a lazy colony. This was the colony where
Eloisa Romero made wheat bread, where she prayed in the
roadside chapel, and the first heads of grain began to yield.
Among those who had disappeared were Quesada s two
brotibers. Alonso de Lugo had clapped a judgment on both
of them, more because he wished to have no rivals by his
side than for any other reason. Of Hernan, Don Alonso said,
"Not room for two cocks in a single henhouse." And there
fore one day, well tied with judicial red tape, Lugo and the
Quesadas went down the Magdalena. Diez de Annen-
ddriz was just reaching Cartagena in his role as royal in-
THE RETURN 217
spector. The Quesadas thought they might get justice from
him. They set out for Cartagena in a small boat. They were
all ready to weigh anchor when a storm arose. The Que
sadas were on deck, playing cards with Captain Suarez and
Bishop Calatayud. Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck. The
Quesadas were both hit. Suarez had an arm crippled and
the bishop a leg.
Of the death of Hernan Perez, Ocariz says, "The bolt
burned his hair and beard and all the hair on his body, for
he was very shaggy; and it burned all his clothing and he
was left naked, and part of his clothing was left in bits no
bigger than grains of salt, all burned, and likewise his en
tire body, apparently without a blow, and black as a -Ne
gro s."
Thus in one fashion or another all the men of these con
quests vanished from the stage, while Quesada, from a
corner of the colony, watched the years go by without re
ceiving any signal from death that it was time to bow his
head. All the misery and the grandeur of the conquest had
passed before his eyes; now all the grandeur and the misery
of the colony were passing in front of him. Anyone who
could succeed in penetrating the mind of the old conqueror
would gain a most ample picture of the first half of the six
teenth century. The men who contended with him in Spain
for glory became only a thin line of shadows. The hounds
of justice followed them to the very tomb, not like peaceful
old dogs moving in their masters* footsteps, but barking
and furious, loosed against them as they once loosed hunt
ing dogs against the TWIiflTYg,
Sebastian de Belalc&zar, accused of having unjustly
killed Marshal Jorge Robledo, was condemned to death
by the Audiencia. Belaldizar appealed to the court, was
218 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
granted a rehearing, and left on his way to the peninsula
just as Quesada arrived in Santa Fe. When he reached Car
tagena he sickened and died. A friend of the conqueror,
who was his executor, bought four yards of Rouen cloth
for a peso and two reales, and had a shroud made for him.
A woman charged a peso for cutting the shroud and pre
paring the body decently. Twenty pesos were paid to the
church for the funeral. Thus for twenty-two pesos and two
reales, and without further ceremony, they dispatched from
this world one of those who had had his hands in Atahu-
allpa s treasure, the man who was Quesada s competitor in
Santa Fe and who founded many cities which were to grow
famous with the passing of the centuries.
Another was Don Alonso de Lugo, the robber son. He
too went to the capital to answer the accusations that were
raining on his head. There Quesada had seen him on the
road to disgrace. And now it became known that he, vir
tually in exile, fighting with the king s troops in Mallorca,
Milan, France, had died like any miserable soldier while
Quesada was tightening his hold on this second chance
which life had given him in the New Kingdom.
A colony s first days are never very peaceful. There is
no lack of scandals, assassinations, thefts, excesses of all
kinds. We are not exactly in a fool s paradise or a fool s
court. But Santa Fe did not suffer from that wave of tur
bulence which, down in the lowlands and in Peru, stirred
up serious trouble among the Spaniards themselves. La
Gasca and the Pizarros fought in Peru, and Belalcazar
hanged Jorge Robledo; down in Santa Marta French pi
rates seized the town; but the uplands had only individual
THE RETURN 219
cases which justice handled as best it could. The new laws
of the Indies were proclaimed, and a great outcry followed.
No one was in favour of protecting the Indians. Diez de
Armendariz told the king that this Terra Firma had caught
the contagion from Peru and that, seeing himself abandoned
by everyone in his desire to put the laws into effect, he had
decided to suspend them for two years. And that if the
long did not find this measure to his liking, he would have
no other recourse than to end his days of service to His
Majesty. . . . All of which did not prevent Diez from in
forming the king that the laws were justified in that the
Indians of Hontib6n, Guatavita, Bogota, and Sogamoso had
been forced to work their eight months stretch in the mines
or be put in prison, set upon by dogs, and punished in
other ways too ugly and immoral to be written down.
About the priests let us say nothing. They were the first
to rebel against the new laws. If, they said, you take from
us the means we have been employing for our support, we
will abandon the churches. Diez de Armendariz, terrified,
left things as they were. But the priests went on asking for
more. Those who earned fifty thousand maravedis said that
if they were not given one hundred thousand, others must
be found to carry on their parishes. The rise in salaries was
approved, and the sacristans were then raised to fifty thou
sand maravedis. The worst of it was that religion did not
advance. One day they made the experiment of examining
a group of Indians to see if they knew the Ave Maria, and
not one could say it. Lawyer Gongora, who arrived during
those years, wrote the king saying that in suppressing In
dian idols and sacrifices the churchmen did less than was
ordered. Their prelates are occupied more with other
things than with doctrinal matters. The custodian of the
220 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Franciscans was an old man and sick, and he resigned in
favour of a restless priest who was deaf from birth. The
Dominicans and Franciscans have ordered other priests to
be brought; it would be better if they were men of forty
years or more." Some time later. Doctor Venero de Leyva
would be forced to insist on this same theme, telling His
Majesty that he should put some order into the clergy, who
come and go with a great deal of money, but without saving
any of it, "for they spend it in raising dogs and fine horses/
At the bottom of all this disorder the malicious author of
El Carnero always found some question of women. He
took it upon himself to tell posterity all the tales of a city
newly born. Why the judges fought among themselves,
why the captains kept a jealous watch over their wives and
daughters, why the friars lived in a state of perversion. It
was remarkable that so few women could stir up such a
scandal in the town. Jimenez de Quesada had reason for
asking that all Spaniards come married. El Carnero has very
curious notes on the trouble Anton de Olalla Quesada s
old friend who was with him through all the conquest cam
paign had with the judges. There had been installed in
Santa Fe a girl of the type that, as they say, can always
start a war. A judge and a friar were in love with her. The
two met in the woman s house one night. The wrath of the
judge could hardly be contained, and on the following day
he had the Audiencia exile the friar. The friar was an in
timate friend of Anton de Olalla, and Olalla quarrelled with
the Audiencia. When the judges left for Spain, Olalla went
with them, but not in the same boat for fear they would
kill him on the voyage. That was the tone colonial life was
taking.
In a letter to the king, President Diez de Armenddriz
THE RETURN 221
announced that for Lent he had taken much care to find
out about the married Spaniards and to make sure they
went to live with their wives. This moral gesture was new
in him. It had not been that way in Cartagena. For the rest,
this struggle for morality was to last three centuries, more
or less.
The great conqueror who had dominated the almost
fabulous stage whereon the discovery of the New Kingdom
had developed was now reduced to being a mere spectator
of a simple and picaresque life. It was the greatest contrast
that could be obtained in a single lifetime. Diez de Annen-
dariz, formerly fierce and ardent, was now a royal inspector,
a gentleman playing the leading role in this comedy of man
ners. This was the period of the Negress Juana Garcia, the
first witch whom the bishop condemned one day to be
burned as an impostor and a procuress. Jimenez de Quesada
intervened, and the bishop contented himself with exhibit
ing her on a platform at the hour of High Mass with a halter
around her neck and a lighted candle in her hand. The
Negress, who knew all that went on inside Santa Fe, did
nothing but moan and mutter, "We all did it, all of us, but
I alone pay."
Diez de Armendariz bought an adobe house which was
being thatched with straw, so that he might live as be
fitted the foremost authority of the nascent republic. He
was to be censured for this purchase later, and forced to
cancel the deal. The poor man began to be heaped with op
probrium and complaints. Envious rivals sprang up about
him like weeds and the dirty waters with which they
drenched his good name did not fail to reach Spain through
222 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
the postal waterways. He wrote his uncle Luis to defend
him before the court because he knew that Governor Here-
dia was accusing him of many ugly things unworthy of a
Guinea Negro. Lugo, too, accused Diez de Armendariz of
having made away with seventy thousand castellanos. At
this new affront, Diez wrote the king, kissing his feet, and
asking that he send someone to come and impeach him for
his so-called "wicked life/ as though he were a highway
robber.
Meanwhile as inspector he did only the good which oc
curred to him. The Indians of Hontibon, Guasca, and Soga-
moso, who had risen up to protest against bad treatment,
he brought under the king s easy yoke. When the chief
came on a visit of peace, he dressed him in Spanish cos
tume shirt, shoes, and the rest and even a coat of scarlet
satin. While Diez was putting these gifts upon him, the In
dian, uncomprehending, laughed. And Armendariz laughed
too in as kindly a fashion as if he were not the same man
who, a short time before,, in Mompox perhaps, because
Juan Rodriguez did not want to give him a horse had had
him dragged from the temple and garrotted until he died.
But here in Santa Fe, even wild beasts turn into domesti
cated animals, into barnyard fowls. It is, I repeat, the cold.
If this were all there was to the Santa Fe colony, it might
well go down to posterity as an agreeable gathering of gos
sips which the marshal would watch from his observatory
with the same interest that the comedies of Lope de Vega
or La Celestina might have aroused when he had the chance
to see them in Italy. But no. That Don Miguel Diez, more-
THE RETURN 223
over, had another side. It was with much reason that Bishop
Piedrahita said that coming with women did him much
harm. Diez was one of those highly sensual gentlemen who
had come to America to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh
without restraint. Never in Cartagena did he bother himself
with the king s instructions that married men be brought
together. From the time he entered the kingdom, he be
haved like the gallant in a musical comedy. He dressed in
purple silk, with a short close-fitting jacket and a longer
one over it, and he went through the streets of the port on
horseback with great display. He raced across the fladands
amid the jingle of bells, said his enemies. And, they added,
at night he went forth disguised, many times in a white
blouse and wide breeches, with bare legs.
They said that the neighbours took their wives with
them on their night watch, for they feared that if they left
them alone in the house the lawyer would pay them a visit.
They said he carried on love affairs with Dona Ana, the
wife of Sebastidn de Heredia, and with La Pimentela, and
with Lucia de Alvarez, and with La Sotomayor de Alcocer,
who belonged not only to Alcocer but also at times to Pedro
de Orsua. And he laid hands on Catalina Lopez when she
went to beg freedom for her husband, the carpenter Jero-
nimo. And the wife of Alonso de Olmos, a half-breed, had
to let herself down by a rope from the window of Armen-
dariz s house, and fell to the street half dead. Once, says a
certain illustrious historian, Juan Escalante did not want
to go on watch; the lawyer had him seized and ordered Trim
to walk guard through the whole town. He then took ad
vantage of this opportunity to enter the house, where Es
calante found him, and stuck a knife into his wife in pun-
224 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
ishment Hie chronicler adds, "Out of respect for history
I will not reproduce other details of the scandals created
by Armendariz."
But the wave of loose living did not end here. In the ac
cusation against Armendariz it was alleged that he robbed
Christians as well as Indians, that he sold justice, that he
trafficked in merchandise stolen from the ships. In an ac
count by Restrepo Tirado, that erudite historian says, "The
pen would blush to transcribe the scandals which occurred
in Cartagena daily, and the list of those of high position in
the clergy and in public posts who kept concubines."
Also the cruelties committed against the Indians in
creased. Baltazar de Parraga, the adelantado s lieutenant in
Tolu, had forty of these unfortunates put into a hut, and
Tiad their hands, arms, and noses cut off; and the Indians
were knifed, and set upon by dogs, and the dogs ate them/*
This is the atmosphere of a colony in its early days. A suit
against Gomez Carvajal accused him of having taken the
free and Christian Indian woman Luisa to a rocky knoll
and having lashed her to a tree and given her so many
blows that her body was flayed and made all bloody, and
had beaten her many other times at home because she
did not pay him as she had promised for a machete, and
had burned her belly with oil and fire. Of this same en-
comendero it was said that he killed the Indian Juanillo
with a single blow, that he lashed and beat another to
death, that he loosed the dogs on many others, and burned
them with oil. These folk were hard and cruel as the soul
of the Middle Ages. So hard and so cruel that saying so is
enough, and better not to insist on these dramas.
Bit by bit the cold of the high uplands, the frozen wind
from the south that numbs the people of Santa Fe, and
THE RETURN 225
those dawns when the frost whitens the pastures and makes
men shiver., tempered the Spanish spirit. At times Miguel
Diez de Armenddriz seemed but a simple fool. His adven
tures were carried on in secret. A night lit by the frozen
light of a round and simple moon does not invite one to go
forth masked for adventure as do the warm airs of Carta
gena. When Armendariz left Santa Fe, everyone mourned
his departure: that, they said, was indeed a good man.
But the colony kept growing. The sound of hammer on
anvil began ringing in Santa Fe at daybreak. For the first
time the song of iron fell on the ears of the Andes. Clang,
clang, clang . . . the iron s cry rang out from the black
smith shop without let or respite.
The sparks fly up like musical stars to adorn a sky as
blue and diaphanous as the banner of the Pure and Holy
Virgin. The Indians stand in line, blowing the enormous
flame. The bars, growing white hot, seem strips of taffy.
The horses tied to the hitching posts stamp and whinny.
Why so much work in the blacksmith shop? What new em
prises make blacksmith and helpers sweat?
It was, alas, the affairs of justice. It was Counsellor Mon-
tano who ordered fetters forged and prison bars. For weeks
they did nothing but forge link after link of a great chain
metres long which was to be the pride of the prison. Santa
Fe must recognize that they had entered on a new phase
of C9lonizing activity. Jimenez de Quesada watched, though
always from a secondary plane, the movements of Mon-
tano, who now was sending people to the gallows for trivial
causes and having whipped at street corners men who had
been discoverers and conquerors of the kingdom. When
226 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Montano crossed the plaza with his train of slaves, every
one fell silent, which exasperated him the more. In vain
his wife made suggestions which were meant to be to his
interest. No Montano desired that no one should disre
gard the tone of his rule.
Cruelty to the Indians increased. The Spaniards beat
them, kicked them on any pretext, and robbed them when
they brought their poor merchandise in to trade, "paying
the miserable beings in the coin of blows, if they tried to
charge any other," pretending that whatever was taken
from them was for Montano s house.
Everybody trembled. If the bishop managed to preach
moral sermons at all, it was to empty air. Conflicts arose
between the bishop and the Audiencia. One day a certain
priest arrived from Peru whom the Audiencia at Lima
claimed on the charge that a criminal judgment stood
against him. The priest took refuge in his right to ecclesias
tical asylum. The Audiencia set aside legal formula and
seized the priest. The bishop was indignant, he protested,
they did not listen to him, and he resolved to leave the
diocese. There was a wave of terror in Santa Fe, for if the
bishop went away, they would all be left without that sym
bol of protection. The Audiencia itself was disturbed, and
the judges rode out several leagues to implore His Rever
ence to return. They kneeled to kiss his ring and ask his
pardon. The bishop acceded to their request, but signified
that, as penitence, they should return to Santa Fe on foot,
and he went back to look after his flock.
But this did not mean that things would be much
changed. The judges did not dare cross Montano. Briceno,
worst of all, trembled like a whipped pup whenever Mon
tano raised his voice, and humbly signed whatever he asked.
THE RETURN 227
Men in the streets insulted Briceno and called Kim op
probrious names; the name by which he would go down
in history was "Montano s mistress."
There was only one person who dared defend those
whom Montaiio in his madness attacked. That was Jimenez
de Quesada. Again the conquistador became the town s ad
vocate. Again his quill was exercised in drawing up long
documents in defence of conquerors and Indians. In all the
town there was only this one strong voice to ask justice,
though without swerving from the plain path of law. Mon-
tano watched him with growing jealousy, but there was in
that captain who had won these lands for the king a certain
grandeur which intimidated him. Defeated in the depths
of his soul, he tried to belittle the marshal s importance. As
a rule Quesada s defences went unheard by the Audiencia.
There was always some good Spaniard, some poor Indian
who moved slowly about the jail, making Montano s chains,
Montano s fetters, Montano s bars ring. It was sad that the
voice of iron in Santa Fe should come only from the harsh
throat of the prison.
From the depths of the hot country there reached Santa
Fe the shouts of certain mutinous captains, who were fill
ing the kingdom with their sinister voices. As we already
know, the colony had, in addition to its other functions,
to serve as stage for the bandits whom Spain had thrown
out on the high tide of conquest. One day twenty-five Span
iards left Santa Fe bound on adventure. Two years later
they came back like savages, quite naked. Diez de Armen-
dariz wrote the king, "There are many vagrants whose sole
ambition is to have three or four Indian servants and go
228 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
from ranch to ranch stealing whatever they can find. I have
told them to seek a job and an employer or I will throw
them out of the country. Some have fled, and others have
gone to the mountains to become highway robbers. I had
one given three hundred lashes, but I did not have him
hanged because he had taken nothing from Your Maj
esty s treasury, but only from private persons."
But now something more serious arose. It was announced
that a SevUlian, Alvaro de Oyon, had headed an uprising
on the banks of the Cauca, had knifed the alcaldes and
others who had attempted resistance, and with sixty ban
dits was subduing towns. Even one of Quesada s nephews
had died under the weapons of Don Alvaro. The Audiencia
received this news with terror. Everybody enlisted to go
in pursuit of the rebel. Montano summoned to a council of
war all the captains except one Marshal Jimenez de Que-
sada. His exclusion was so absurd that even poor Judge
Briceno ended by voting for Quesada and putting an army
corps under his leadership. But Montano had his way again :
Briceno wavered, and it was arranged that Montano should
go at the head of the troops. The expedition left, though it
was unimportant, for Don Alvaro had already been caught
and hanged from the gallows which his treason against the
king had prepared for him.
But it was clear that, if Santa Fe had one figure of moral
value, even in the humiliating position to which he was rele
gated, it was Quesada. Montano had put the former in
spector Diez de Armendariz in jail. He had made him come
from Cartagena to answer charges that had piled up against
him. After Armendariz had been in prison several months,
THE RETURN 229
Montano decided to continue the case in Cartagena. The
day came when Armendriz had to leave the Santa Fe jail
in order to go back to the prison in Cartagena. Although
Armendariz had been accused of robbery and extortion,
he had not one centavo. The jailers charged him for the
food they had given him. He had nothing to pay them with
and said so. The clerk advanced and with plebeian hand
plucked from Armendariz s shoulders the great-coat he
wore, leaving the former governor of the kingdom in his
shirtsleeves. Seeing this. Captain Lanchero felt indignation
rise within him. Lanchero was never a friend of Armen
dariz s and had even suffered from his persecutions, but the
clerk s act and Montano s unnecessary cruelty moved him.
And taking off his own coat of fine scarlet, he placed it over
Armendariz s shoulders. The old governor turned to see
who had given him this unexpected gift, and Lanchero
asked, "But, sir, are there none of those favoured in former
times who would assist Your Grace now?" And Armen
dariz, melancholy, answered, "No, Senor Lanchero, for dur
ing the time I was making friends I chose the worst."
Could Montano continue to act that way as long as Mar
shal Jimenez de Quesada was there to watch him with wide
and tranquil eyes? In all his violence, his imperiousness,
his cowardice, something kept tormenting Montano. It
was Jimenez de Quesada. A man, nothing more: one of the
townsmen, who sometimes sent a pen scratching across
paper and sometimes was silent. One day Montano decided
to send him into exile. Without any other crime," says the
chronicler, "than that of befriending the conquerors in the
lawsuits that dogged their every step." Quesada was or
dered to leave Santa Fe and not show himself within a ra
dius of six leagues. The marshal said nothing, and left. But
230 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
his absence was harder for Montano than had been the
marshal s presence. If he could kill him, if only he could
wipe out that accursed shadow . . . But it was useless,
for the more shadowy grew Quesada s silhouette, the deeper
the shade it cast on Montano; it pursued him the more in
sistently when it was not present.
The decree of exile did not stand. Quesada began to be
stronger outside of Santa Fe than he had been inside. His
friends made him come back. Montano did not enforce his
order. Santa Fe was already conspiring against him. A flood
of petitions reached Briceno, asking that Montano be jailed
and that his impeachment follow. Briceno trembled like a
frightened woman and tried to resist. He knew he could
not withstand the tyrant s hard voice. At last they made
such a fuss that he said he would act if he should receive
a paper signed by the bishop, the prosecutor Maldonado,
and Jimenez de Quesada. The conspirators turned at once
to them.
The bishop and Maldonado agreed immediately. They
said the patience of the kingdom had reached an end. If
lack of jurisdiction should give the boldest subject pause,
they added, it was also true that the extreme need for the
remedy should of itself convert him into a legislator against
the tyrant. The amount of law and theology which the
lawyer and the bishop handled with such art and skill was
designed to make legal the imprisonment which they so
greatly desired. But the truth is that it would not have been
legal. Quesada knew it, and thought that the tyrant would
eventually be mired in the mud of his own misdeeds. Que
sada knew the art of waiting; he was in no hurry, and he
had more faith than the others. When they asked him for
his opinion, he gave it with cutting frankness:
THE RETURN 231
"I cannot accept this plan. We ought to let heads be
sacrificed to the knife rather than raise a hand in resist
ance. Though M ontano cut off all the heads in the kingdom,
and mine the first, and though in the course of such mis
fortune everything be lost, I will never assent to the seizure
of a judge of the high court without express order from
the king."
Speaking from the obscure point of view of one of the
townspeople, as a soldier in the ranks, Quesada was show
ing himself to be as jealous of authority as he had been
when he was captain of the conquest and held the soldiers
in check with the hard law of his sword. There was a great
difference between this self-contained marshal who saw the
kingdom he had won being sullied by other hands and the
Pizarro gang that knew no law other than their own greed,
or the figure of Belalcazar who left Robledo dangling in
the disgraceful noose.
X.
Adventures of Don Quixote
in America
Then Don Quixote gave orders to gather moneys together,
and by selling one thing and pawning another, and getting poor
prices for all of them, a reasonable amount was secured. He
himself adjusted a round buckler which he had begged a friend
to lend him, and, mending his broken helmet as best he could,
advised his squire Sancho of the day and hour he thought to set
forth, so that he might make ready all he saw necessary for
them; above all he charged him to carry saddle bags.
CERVANTES
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE
IN AMERICA
THE Quesada family had always been like that. I have
already told in the proper place how in times past
the Princess Palomela had two blue doves on her
shield as an emblem. But as time went on, the doves became
ambitious, perhaps through dipping their beaks in Moor
ish blood. Or perhaps because the village of Quesada,
which changed the family name, turned the heads of these
ingenuous men and set them on the road to madness. Or,
better still, because the accursed sixteenth century infected
them with its spirit, made them dream of unknown lands,
of fabulous governorships, of fantastic ladies. We have seen
them embark in small uncertain boats, throw money about
with both hands, fluctuate between arms and letters as
though trying to put a sense of romance into steel and tem
per the alphabet with ideas of valour and chivalry.
Gonzalo, the lawyer with whom this history is concerned,
held the middle place in the trio of sixteenth-century Que-
sadas. The first was Caspar, who left Andalusia in Ma
gellan s expedition when Gonzalo was about twenty. The
last was Alonso, who was to go out from La Mancha, a man
of fifty, when Gonzalo died an octogenarian in Mariquita.
To a certain extent Gonzalo was disciple to Caspar, and
Alonso disciple to Gonzalo.
The history of Caspar is not well known. It is known that
he left Seville with Magellan in 1519, to go as the king s
confidential man on the first trip around the world, and
235
236 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
he commanded the Conception, one of five ships allotted
to the enterprise. Magellan was a hard man, and reserved.
Even the captains did not know where they were going.
They sailed for more than six months without the adrnkal s
confiding his secrets to them.
Finally, desperate, they decided to rebel against that
silence. After begging Magellan to hold a round-table con
ference with the men in command of the separate ships,
and receiving his refusal, they resolved to carry out their
plan. One day Magellan invited them to hear High Mass
aboard the flagship and to take breakfast with him. The
captains did not come. They stayed on their ships, and
jeered at the admiral. Only one ship, the San Antonio, re
mained faithful to Magellan. At night, with a thick fog
dimming the ship s silhouettes to mere blurs in the mist,
Quesada and a few companions lowered themselves into a
small boat and moved cautiously to the San Antonio s side.
They climbed to the deck. The boatswain, Juan de Eloriaga,
started up at the sound of their footsteps and advanced
toward the conspirators, demanding an explanation. With
six blows of his fist Caspar de Quesada disposed of him T
Then all was quiet. And when Magellan s sailors came over
to the San Antonio the next morning, expecting to find her
still loyal, the soldiers called down from the deck, "Admiral
Magellan is not in command of the San Antonio, but Caspar
de Quesada, who is our captain."
But this Caspar who was, like Gonzalo, a captain of
mutineers was also, like Gonzalo and Alonso, a literate man.
Also he was circumspect and discreet. He sent the admiral
a letter couched in the humble form of a petition and rais
ing the question of command. Neither he nor his compan
ions wished to risk the ships further in an enterprise which
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 237
seemed bound for no good end. If Magellan would grant
this petition they would obey him faithfully. And if, up to
that point, they had called him "Your Honour," from then
on they would add "we who kiss your hands and feet."
Magellan, who was quick in decision, and silent, laid a
trap for the captain of the Victoria, caught him, and knifed
him. Soon he was again in a position where he could dom
inate the situation. The rebel captains fell into his hands,
and he clamped fetters on them. Quesada he condemned to
death. He also condemned Quesada s body servant, but told
him, "If you carry out the sentence against Quesada, I will
pardon you." The servant severed Quesada s head with a
single blow. Stuck on a pole, which became the centre of a
buzzards merry-go-round, the head of Caspar de Quesada
marked in its day the point reached by certain Spaniards
who had set out to go around the world.
In his youth our Gonzalo must thus have received teach
ings and inspiration in which sordid adventure was mixed
with daring and with death. There, too, the lawyer must
have learned how fate seemed always to veil or to cloud
the family escutcheon. Gonzalo, who advanced along the
ways that we have seen, also wanted to hold the world like
a ball in his two hands, to make it spin with a philosophic
air, or to drop it at his feet and gaze down at it with that
careless melancholy which Albrecht Diirer was to depict,
but for Gonzalo as well as for Caspar the world slipped from
between his fingers just as love slipped away from all the
Quesadas. Love always kept its distance from their lives.
Charity alternated with the clash of arms. A never-ending
fantasy called him to adventure and thrust spurs into his
horse s flanks. Ah, this is the family s fate, a fate which was
to see itself raised to the verge of madness in the austere
238 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
figure and broad, dreaming forehead of Alonso. Alonso
Quesada came into the world as Gonzalo his father? left
on his second voyage to America. His life as a vagrant and
a trouble-seeker would be unknown to no one, for a famous
man of letters would write about it, a man who, if he
failed to embark for America, failed through no fault
of his own. This unfortunate writer was Don Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra.
The reader will forgive the fact that it is not possible for
me to seat Don Gonzalo in a broad leather armchair facing
a stone-arched plaza, where files of holy women pass slip
ping noisy beads through their bony fingers. Or that I do
not have him curling his long moustaches while the musi
cal murmur of the bells echoes in the quiet air. This colony
is very poor and very new to have broad leather chairs, or
holy women with their rosaries, or stone arcades, or jan
gling bells. The scenery is necessarily reduced to the adobe,
the straw, and the grass which we have already seen, the
poor women who light the flames of jealousy in conquerors
breasts, two or three sullen friars, and the subject Indians
who tread out clay in the tile works or carry loads of po
tatoes.
Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada will have to sit down many
times on a block of stone to talk with the townspeople,
while Montano is combing his beard before the pigs and
chickens in the corral of his house. But the gentleman who
thus sits and talks will not be so much aware of the stone
that freezes his rear as he is of that Terra Firma on which
the stone rests. To be on Terra Firma, to have America un
der his feet, represents the first step in his journey, his first
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 239
adventure, the success of his first sally. His mind now wan
ders restlessly amid new plans for conquest. His long arm,
the long arm of a knight and a gentleman, is stretched
above the weak like a protecting wing. His dark and tran
quil eye looks again toward El Dorado.
It is not in him that madness lies. It lies in his period, in
that turbulent sixteenth century which turns all values up
side down. And he is so much a part of that world that
though we see him assailed by hunger, envy, misery, though
we watch him cross rivers and mountains like a wraith es
caped from an insane asylum, his words really give an im
pressive sensation of practical wisdom and common sense.
Which is rather like what will happen to Alonso, called Don
Quixote. Like the helmet made out of a barber s basin, these
deluded men sometimes make one laugh and sometimes
weep.
The king gave Gonzalo a coat of arms. First, there was
on his escutcheon a mountain looming out of the waters
of the sea, and many emeralds scattered on the waters "in
memory of the mines which you discovered," and at the
foot of the mountain, and crowning it, great trees on a field
of gold, and a golden lion on a red field with a sword be
tween his paws "in memory of the spirit and energy you
showed in going up by river to discover and conquer the
New Kingdom." Then a castle and a border of four gold and
silver moons on a blue field, and for a seal a closed helmet,
and for a device a black-winged lion with a naked sword
between its paws, and cords and accessories with orna
ments of blue and gold. . . .
There never was a more fantastic vision of the New
World than this. Nor greater waste of enamel, nor more
highly decorated poetry translated into the world of arms.
240 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
If only Alonso of La Mancha could have had one as fine.
. . . But Gonzalo was no less under the spell. This escutch
eon was never to be carved in stone at the entrance to a
house, nor would its colours ever be seen except on a paper
which the marshal guarded in his strongbox and which
time would turn yellow while the letters turned brown
and the moths and mice and worms made it into dust and
powder.
One day the king s courier reached Santa Fe with a
dispatch which gave Quesada the right to use the title
"Don." (I suppose that Quixote would inherit it from here,
because where does Cervantes say that the king authorized
Alonso to use it? But let us not digress.) This was that
three-lettered decree of which the chroniclers speak and
which must have struck Montano like a dart through the
heart. From now on Quesada would be Don Gonzalo in
the New Kingdom, as they would be saying Don Quixote
in La Mancha.
But while these honours brought a certain distinction,
they were out of keeping with the surroundings. Montano,
finding himself powerless to demote this hidalgo whom
everyone loved, tried to get rid of him through another
form of exile he named him governor of Cartagena. And
again Gonzalo, with a stream of honeyed words from Mon
tano sounding in his ears, seeing himself overwhelmed by a
flood of petitions, accepted this exile in silence and obedi
ently.
When the news sped through the town there was no one
who failed to deplore it, no one who did not watch with
anxiety the marshal s departure, his flight, so to speak. The
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 241
bishop decided that Gonzalo should not be allowed to go
while the synod was engaged in studying the conditions of
ecclesiastical government and while reform was under way
"in the irregularities in the Indians catechisms, both ec
clesiastical and secular, which pervert the very means by
which faith should be implanted in them/ In this struggle
Don Gonzalo was the bishop s effective counsellor. It was
with his help that the synod was called together. Here is
the short account that Piedrahita would give of this affair :
"Bishop Barrios, seeing that eighteen years after the con
quest of the kingdom the Spaniards were still divided into
separate factions, that the priests, far from minimizing such
internal jealousies, kept fanning their flames, and that
scarcely any of the Indians had been instructed in the first
rudiments of the faith, though all of them could have held
professorships in the subtleties of Spanish greed, convoked
a provincial synod for the reform of such abuses."
The synod brought to light many things which hurt
Montano. Don Gonzalo took the road to Cartagena; and,
though the agreements which were reached fell to pieces
in the bishop s hands because of the opposition of the
judges, it is said that something was gained in restraining
the unbridled greed of the encomenderos and in forcing the
priests to recognize that the Church had punishments for
the weakness with which they had administered their of
fices. And time continued its march. . . .
Though decorated with the title of governor, Don Gon
zalo found his exile in Cartagena harder than the one which
had decreed that he stay not less than six leagues away from
Santa Fe. The hot Caribbean sun stifled him. A sickness
242 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
wliicli was eating at his skin seemed to gain new virulence
at the seashore. For the first time the strong man, who
had seemed unaffected by the sudden reverses native to
America, felt himself weaken. Not even in La Tora, where
he had gone out at the head of an army ravaged by f ever,,
had he let misfortune sway him. Now, however, there may
have been some connexion between his deep melancholy
and the fevers that were devouring his flesh.
But his spirit still stood guard. One day he received cer
tain documents from the court and, seizing on them as a
pretext, decided he must take them personally to Santa Fe.
He left the affairs of the governorship in the hands of a
subordinate. It was the last time Quesada would ever look
on salt water. That Terra Firma which had always drawn
him, the heart of the Andes which claimed him, now took
him back again. He looked at the bay once more, but with
out affection, then left it, and went up the Great River of
the Magdalena, past the scenes of his great undertakings
and great misfortunes.
Marshal Quesada was watching the life of Santa Fe un
roll before his eyes. Once again Montano must suffer the
torment of his presence and this time hear the citizens
name him captain general. There were new judges in the
Audiencia, and a secret document, which Quesada had
brought, for Montano s impeachment. This document was
in the hands of Tomas Lopez, a shivering, cowardly lawyer
who thought more about becoming a priest in the service
of God than about taking part in the affairs of the Au
diencia. Of him, Quesada said there was no minister better
at drafting laws in favour of the Indians and no one worse
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 243
when it came v to executing them. Montano became aware
that there was plotting against him. Wishing to take the
others by surprise, he invented a fantastic conspiracy which
would, by making people believe his life was in danger,
allow him to flee on pretext of fidelity to the king. Secret
murmurs went about which put everyone on guard. No one
dared to go out at night, and for greater strength the
hidalgos to whom Montano wished ill met in one another s
houses. Finally Tomds Lopez plucked up courage, paid
Montano a surprise visit, and notified him of his impeach
ment. Amid general satisfaction he went to wear the chains
which he himself had forged for his enemies.
Fropi the doorway of one of the big houses which were
beginning to go up, leaning his still strong shoulders against
the door-jamb, the marshal watched the evening light fade
amid great golden clouds, while the twilight air wrapped
trees, houses, mountains in a gilded violet mist. News had
come from Spain about Montano he had been executed
in the public square at Valladolid while a crier proclaimed
his disgrace. A citizen arrived from Venezuela with a tale
of how the tyrant Lope de Aguirre had flouted the author
ity of the king and was imposing his own will wherever he
went. These events were passing through the marshal s
mind as he watched the golden sunset, and he thought
about sallying forth again. Many years had passed since
he had come back to Santa Fe, and with a new access of
youthful ardour he had begun to dream about new con
quests. The dream took shape in the person of his brother
Hernan Perez, who, searching the eastern plains for El
Dorado, had found cinnamon forests. There, beyond any
244 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
doubt, lay the real source of gold winch lie had vainly
hoped to find in the land of the Chibchas. It was there that
the tyrant Aguirre was roaming. What more brilliant crown
ing of Quesada s long life than a discovery which should
eclipse not only his first achievement but also those of the
Pizarros and Cortes?
But the clash of Aguirre s arms came closer every day.
Crossing the cordillera, the news from Venezuela took on
fantastic colour and detail. No one in Santa Fe talked of
anything else, and all began to arm. A military committee
was formed. There was only one man who could head the
troops. As when they had felt the threat of Alvaro de Oyon,
so today there was no doubt that only Quesada could be
captain. The business of war-making had been somewhat
forgotten in Santa Fe. Setting up an army was a novelty
which surprised everyone, pulled them up out of the round
of daily gossip, set them to thinking suddenly, much to
their own surprise, of the hazards which lay in adventure.
The veterans of the conquest, their eyes long drowsing
over the petty struggles of small-town love affairs, took on
new briskness. There was a polishing of steel, refurbishing
of saddlery, racing of horses through the streets. Even the
women enjoyed the novelty, for once again they saw in
the men of Santa Fe those intrepid creatures whom they
had known in the high pride of the old days. Everyone was
eager to discuss what should be done. Should they go forth
to meet Aguirre through Cerinza valley or through Cucuta?
This problem of major strategy soon split the soldiers, and
two bands formed which kept arguing and gesticulating
into the small hours of the night. Some said Cerinza valley
was ideal for a battle. Others insisted that by going as far
as Cucuta they could trap and crush Aguirre.
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 245
The marshal sat through these debates with the air of a
man only half there, his mind fixed on the actual encounter,
his thoughts straying at times, perhaps, to another high
emprise the search for El Dorado. But the noise and lie
shouting reached a point where he had to intervene. The
soldiers came to defend their own points of view with such
passion that they began to challenge one another. Then
the marshal published an edict that any return to that
argument would be punishable with death. The respon
sibility for command of the troops was his, and the squab
bling ended.
Quesada had been in Santa Fe for twenty years. He was
nearing seventy. But his hard-muscled legs could still hold
a young horse in check. "What you thought age, was rest
ing/ But to start out at seventy on an enterprise more risky
and difficult than the discovery of the New Kingdom it
self was madness. Yet there is something superior to the
common run about this type of man whose mere presence
draws other men to him.
He was eager to free himself from the press of stupid
things. This life of petty gossip and small plots, of the witch
Juana Garcia and Armendariz s love affairs, of the vagran
cies of Ines de Hinojosa and the fights between the bishop
and the priests he wanted to fling it all out the window.
It was time to put a final period to his own efforts to get
them to give him, first., a sure income of three thousand
ducats and then either an assignment of Indians or an
adelantado s title. How many memorials he had had to send
the king, reminding him of Cortes and Pizarro, who were
never absent from his own mind! On one occasion he had
246 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
asked the king to raise his pension from two to three thou
sand ducats, and to assure its continuance to his heirs; he
offered this sad reminder, "On a certain occasion at court
there was talk of giving me a reward for my services, and
after some discussion it was agreed that I and my heirs
should be given subsistence in perpetuity so that memory
of my services might endure as did similar services of the
Marques del Valle [Cortes] and Pizarro, to each of whom
were given twenty-one thousand vassals and fifty or sixty
thousand ducats of pension, and very important titles,
though they had discovered and settled provinces no bet
ter and no richer than those I have brought. . . /
Santa Fe had grown. And other towns had grown. When
Quesada obtained permission to go forth to discover El
Dorado he issued a call for good soldiers and horsemen. A
throng of Spaniards offered themselves to follow this for
midable old man who raised money, got horses ready,
gathered weapons and supplies, and recruited Indians with
a diligence and an energy that had not been known of him
in Santa Marta when he had had no more than half the
years that now weighed on his shoulders.
The capitulation which Quesada signed in order to go
forth to El Dorado could scarcely have been conceived in
the mind of a youth of thirty. Now he was contracting for
the future. He went ahead as though he were a millionaire.
Before his eyes a fabulous vision beckoned.
Listen well this is the inheritance he will leave his son,
the stipulation says. Ah, it is a phantom son who must be
going about Spain now, but who will some day sally forth
in search of that El Dorado which his father is never to find.
He is to equip the army at his own expense. The troops
will go under his command. He guarantees to the Audiencia
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 247
that he will raise four or five hundred men, completely
equipped with arms; eight priests; supplies for everyone;
horses, mares, cows, pigs, and hens; he will not load him
self down with untrained Indians; "of all my conquests
will I take possession in the name of the long. And when
I found towns, which will be within four years* time, I will
put into them no less than another five hundred Spaniards,
and I will take married men, and officers and workers, and
five hundred cows and three hundred mares, four hundred
horses, a thousand pigs, three thousand sheep and goats,
five hundred Negro slaves, both male and female. . . "
All this is hardly credible. But the Audiencia accepted it,
the Spaniards believed it, the Indians came to offer their
services. Quesada authorized Rodrigo Suarez, captain of
cavalry, to have banners displayed and drums beaten in
Tunja, so that everyone might get ready for the conquest
of El Dorado. According to the terms of the agreement, if
Quesada succeeded he would be given the title of marques
for himself and for his son. In short, the fact is that in the
month of February 1569, very early of a morning when
cold pierced to the bones, all Santa Fe got up to bid the
marshal farewell. When the Host was elevated in a Mass
sufficiently solemn for the occasion, the silence and the
piety were deeper than usual, and there were those who
remembered when a fever-ridden General Quesada had set
out from La Tora to the discovery of the New Kingdom.
Three hundred Spanish soldiers were already mounted.
Fifteen hundred Indians, both men and women, followed
carrying hammocks and supplies, driving pigs and other
livestock. There were eleven hundred horses and other
pack-animals, and six hundred head of cattle, and eight
hundred pigs. There was a multitude of Negro slaves, both
248 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
men and women. How much greater all this seemed than
the Santa Marta expedition, when Quesada was merely
a lieutenant for Fernandez de Lugo! This was the rebirth
of conquest within the colony itself and, like all renais
sance, more optimistic and ebullient. It knew from experi
ence that in the end victory crowns all the marches.
The enormous train of men and animals, white, black,
and copper-coloured, moved slowly, first along easy up
land roads which wound like a serpentine river, then across
the rocky spurs of the cordillera and through the dense
growth of underbrush. Drums and banners set the pace. At
dawn the bugle woke the warm mass of men and women,
who stretched themselves and made ready to go forward
again. For the first few days there was whistling and sing
ing as when boys out of school go forth on vacation. Later
the hardships of the march mufHed voices, and hunger and
lowland heat tempered pleasure. They had forgotten what
it cost to go forth on discovery in America. Adelantado
Jimenez de Quesada remembered his marches of thirty
years before, but also he was remembering that at the end
of those thirty years he had won the title adelantado
which had now put him at the head of his own troops.
Their first contact with the Llanos, those plains which
were to be the beginning of this conquest, was full of ad
venture. One day fire spread through the wild grass sur
rounding the camp. The spark that caught fire and fled
crackling under the rapid hand of the wind got as far as
the very canvas that covered the adelantado s supplies.
There followed a terrifying blast which made the voice of
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 249
conquest heard through all the flatlands a barrel of pow
der in Quesada s stores had exploded.
Then came acquaintance with another new world the
boas ("culebras bobas" silly snakes), which swallow a
deer whole and turn it into delicious juices as it travels the
long dark channels of their bodies (the first of them meas
ured twenty-seven feet long ) ; the Indians who burned their
huts before the Spaniards got there; the marches in which
hunger kept pace as they walked, and the soldiers were
forced to chew palm shoots in order to keep going. After
many days of nothing to eat, tibey found a town with good
fields around it; they named it Matahambre (Hunger-
Killer). It was all as it had been twenty years before.
One night three soldiers fled with three pack-horses. It
was absurd, they thought, to embark on conquest when
Santa Fe was back there, safe and peaceful, waiting for
them. This example soon infected the others. One night
six or seven more tried to flee, but the guards were warned
and stopped them. The adelantado decided to hang Juan
Gil in order to maintain discipline and so that those who
were meditating desertion might know the risk they ran.
Notwithstanding that, the suffering was so intense that
forty more tried to escape in a single night. They were sur
prised, and ten of them taken prisoner. But morale went on
weakening, among the captains as well as among the sol
diers. Captain Gonzalo Macias tried to flee, in company
with several Negro men and women. Caught, he killed him
self.
The march went on, not any longer to the beat of drums,
but at the pace set by hunger and by death. At times they
gnawed even the leather on their shields, There were no
250 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
pigs left, and it was hard to protect the horses. An unknown
fever began to undermine the lives of men and animals
alike. The thick underlip of a horse would start trembling,
and the soldiers came to recognize it as a sure sign of death.
When they struck camp, arms, clothing, jewellery would
be left behind because no one bothered to pick them up.
How many weary months had these soldiers been wander
ing behind that mad old adelantado!
Months? No, years. Two years had passed since they left
Santa Fe, and they had got nowhere. The enthusiasm they
had once had for the adelantado was weakening. Stubborn,
imperturbable, unconquerable, he alone went armed in
search of mystery. But the troop could do no more. Those
who had pressed kisses on his stirrups in Santa Fe, who
were so happy that a song about his banners bubbled on
their lips, now marched with dry mouths, their wounds
festering, their vitals gnawed by the fangs of hunger. And
in many a tormented mind there was only one solution
knife the adelantado. Kill Quesada in order to get back, if
that was still possible, to land that belonged to Christians.
They were weary of slaying Indians for no good end, of
reaching towns and finding them in ashes, of watching those
slow-moving prairie rivers which flow on into infinity and
which must be crossed with water to the waist and wild
animals lying in ambush. There was no remedy but to kill
the adelantado.
The conspirators met at the ranch of a certain Don Ga
briel. The decision worried some of them, but the saving
of their own lives was more important than the faithful fol
lowing of a madman. They argued as to whether it would
be better to stick him with a dagger or to behead him with
a sword. Someone remembered the terrific powder explo-
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 251
sion at the start of the expedition, and they decided to do
something similar "to burn him alive with powder/* It
was a hard decision for soldiers who all knew what point
Quesada had reached in his struggles; how, in his matur
ity, he had softened the harsh life of the colony, and how
ardent and able had been the good right arm of this gen
tleman in defence of the humble. Perhaps the very diffi
culty of carrying out a plan which gave them such sorrow
made for a certain vacillation in its execution. The fact is
that the plot was discovered, and justice done to Francisco
Gomez and Juan de Hermosilla, and a Portuguese, Caspar,
not to mention fetters for Don Gabriel, at whose ranch they
had met.
But Quesada recognized that it was absurd to insist on
keeping tied to him only those who followed through terror.
He had to play a last card, and free the troop so that they
might follow him of their own will or go back to Santa Fe.
He knew only too well that there would be few who would
follow. It was all so uncertain, and so mad, that there was
no room for doubt as to the future of the undertaking.
There was a certain Juan Maldonado who did nothing but
argue night and morning with Quesada about going back.
In order to save his sanity, Quesada said to him one day,
"Senor Camp Master, if Your Grace wishes to return to
Santa Fe, there is no one to stop you/ And the camp master,
who was only waiting for this, took the road to Santa Fe
in company with Father Guisado and Friar Muruena, who
were also bored by this adventure. The adelantado decided
to get some advantage from those who deserted him, and
so he took over six women whose husbands had fled.
252 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
In the face of the old conquistador s stubbornness, no
argument was of any use. He explored here and there, as
though seeking acquaintance with every hand s-breadth
of his future kingdom. He met none but miserable Indian
tribes > but this did not matter. The same thing had hap
pened when he conquered the New Kingdom. He must
reach the authentic El Dorado. There was only a handful
of loyal men left. Those" who had fled would be sorry some
day. And torn by brambles, their eyes red with hunger and
fever, the leaders sought new trails, sometimes cutting
through heavy forest lianas, sometimes swimming the cur
rent of broad rivers. The horses were all scabbed and
mangy; the soldiers, full of parasites which caused their
death.
Suddenly they heard the sound of drums. The scouts an
nounced that a great army of Indians was coming. The ap
proach of battle gave Don Gonzalo new strength. With
nine other horsemen he lined up to conquer a thousand
Indians who came on in good formation, with a display of
arrows and shields to defend them. They sought better
ground for combat. The soldiers made ready for battle.
Behind them a confused tangle of sick men, women, ani
mals allowed no passage, and their cries of "God give you
luckl" were lost amid the clash of arms. The adelantado,
armoured in quilted cotton, his bearded face showing stains
of white., lifted his lance on high and invoked St, James, as
knights were wont to do.
And St James was with the men from Spain. The horses
broke across a gay little brook on whose opposite bank the
Indian army was gathered. They were lively and treacher
ous Indians, whom wrath had made boisterous. Quesada
advanced first. But the battle was reduced, as in a tale of
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 253
enchantment, to a loud noise and a cloud of smoke. Ro
driguez Perez de las Islas shot an arquebus against the In
dian leader, and his death sent the others fleeing to the
mountains, without leaving even the murmur of leaves to
mark their going.
That was the last heroic stand on the march. The troop
continued to be ill, and weakened more by undernourish
ment than by fever. On hard nights they had stewed the
very coverings of their shields in order to sup on the sof
tened leather. Almost never did they stumble on cultivated
fields which would nourish them. When they dropped from
the cordillera to the plains they saw an endless prairie cov
ered with sunburned grass where the afternoon sun rolled
down like a great blood-red wheel. At night it was so still
they could almost hear the rising moon brush her silken
skirts across the meadows, or the snakes slip imperceptibly
amidst the grass. How far away from all this was the white
bell tower of Santa Fe! Some of them even became home
sick for the music of the chains which Montano s idea of
justice had had forged. The adelantado resolved that no one
should feel himself kept prisoner by his wishes, and now he
opened wide the doors to returning. He himself was going
forward, but anyone who wanted to go back had only to
come to his tent and say so.
Let enter here who will; this is the door,
For my part it stays wide for evermore.
And ten, twenty, fifty came in. Don Gonzalo never weak
ened. He went on giving all of them leave. He had sworn
to give it to them, and no one was to suffer lack of confi-
254 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
dence. Don Gonzalo was first and foremost a knight and a
gentleman. Those who were to go back were now grouped
together. As there were many of them, it would be best
for them to have a captain and a priest. Don Gonzalo ap
pointed these, and gave them military orders. Those com
panions of so many days of bad fortune took their leave
with much emotion.
And the marches went on. The Indians killed the horses,
and one day seven more Spaniards asked leave to return.
Quesada gave it. Of these, only one reached Santa Fe alive.
There were only twenty-five men left now. You remember
how many went out with him from Santa Fe? You remem
ber that splendid train that milled about his harsh, com
manding voice? Out of all that only a handful of people
were left, and they now besought Quesada to turn back in
his tracks. If he wished, they would go on with him to the
end of their days, even to the end of the world. But it was
absurd that he, torn by the evils that beset them, should
force himself to go further, in order to die tomorrow. He
needed to regain his health in a good climate. He owed it
to his country and his friends. They had had three years
of this journeying, and there was not a pig left, or a dozen
horses. Twenty-five of such friends as Quesada never would
see again gathered about him to implore him. There was
nothing more that a knight could do. And so he went back
to Santa Fe.
The final upshot of the journey could not have been sad
der. Of three hundred Spaniards, only sixty-four remained
alive, and almost all of them died on the way back to
Santa Fe. Of fifteen hundred Indians, only four were saved.
Of eleven hundred horses, eighteen survived. But the ade-
lantado was the adelantado,
ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA 255
Arrived, then, at the kingdom, Don Gonzalo
With lack of health and money both, alas,
There rose a war with natives, the Gualies,
Headstrong and rebel Indians of the place
Near to that city known as Mariquita,
And the kings mandate gave him total charge
Of bringing peace to that unruly land
And he, although he ached and felt age-weary,
Would not refuse to meet the kings command
And so made preparations for the battle.
XL
Sunset and Evening Star
Letters say that arms could not stand without them, for war
also has its laws and is subject to them, and laws fall under
letters and the men of letters. To this, arms reply that laws
could not stand without them, for it is by means of arms that
republics are defended, kingdoms held, cities guarded, roads
made safe, the sea freed from pirates, and finally, that, if it were
not for them, these same republics, kingdoms, monarchies, cities,
and highways on both land and sea would be subject to the
terror and confusion which war brings with it during the time
it lasts and is allowed to make use of its privileges and its
forces.
CERVANTES
SUNSET AND EVENING STAR
ALMOST always after Mass, or as prayer rose in the
/\ afternoon, and the main plaza, which was also the
__/ Vonly one, filled with pious old women, judges and
encomenderos, Indians and slaves, a stout old hidalgo set
out, of whom years, labours, illness, and fatigue were be
ginning to take their toll. Seldom did he follow the king s
highway. Rounding the corner of the church he took a
higher street, then zigzagged toward the north and went
on climbing until he reached a poor house cared for by In
dians and a housekeeper who regarded the adelantado s
white hair with respect. A few steps beyond, the street lost
itself among the mountain underbrush. One or two lean
horses moved lazily in the paddock, and a dog or two in
the archway flicked at flies with his long tail. The hidalgo
was sparing of words. Asthma overcame him, and he fell
heavily into a leather chair. He might spend half an hour
covering a few blocks, dragging his feet and leaning heavily
on a stout stick. Whole weeks would go by without his being
able to move from the house.
The hidalgo passed hours, long days, in a wide room
which held a single table heaped with books bound in
parchment, one or two armchairs, the image of Our Lady
the Virgin with a candle almost always burning before it, a
lance and a sword in the corner, a coat of mail hanging
from an ornamental hook; the indispensable stag s head
which was lost beneath the brim of a broad hat and a
cape with many folds that almost touched the floor* Air
259
260 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
and light entered through a not very large window, air
from the mountain, cold and fragrant, light that was milky
blue. There were no panes of glass yet known in Santa Fe,
and the doors were made of hide with the hair left on.
The city was increasing in size. Two leagues roundabout
it the Indian towns were forming, ruled by the corregidors,
but having a certain city shape, with streets well laid out
and church bells hung at some high point. The houses had
well-cultivated gardens and fountains of pure water. Wheat
grew in many places, and herds multiplied in the pastures.
Groups of friars kept arriving to found monasteries. Under
their straw roofs, new churches guarded images brought
from Spain, lighted with small lamps burning vegetable oil
or with candles made of tallow. Manzanilla and yerbabuena
perfumed the patios.
Before setting out for El Dorado, and when the ingenious
gentleman of this story was writing short memorials to the
king, he filled in the long closing phrases of the letters with
a rapid "etcetera" and signed them proudly "The Marshal."
Now, when he wrote long supplicating communications to
the king, he did it in these terms, "The humble servant and
vassal of Your Royal and Catholic Majesty, who kisses your
royal feet and hands, the Adelantado Don Gonzalo Jimenez
de Quesada." Nevertheless, he kept a certain suppressed
pride which came out now and then between the lines.
After all, he had conquered a kingdom, and would conquer
it twice more if need be, for the day it was necessary to
give battle again he would shake off his sickness and be
come again a knight mounted on his battle charger. There
fore, when he sent his last service report, after calling him
self captain of the hazardous adventure which was the
conquest, he said, "After conquering and settling the New
SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 261
Kingdom I returned to Spain to beg Your Majesty for the
recognition of such a service, and this will be my hope
until I draw my last breath."
People watched with respect and sorrow the solitary old
man who shut himself up in his house to scratch at reams
of paper with a badly sharpened quill. Now he was in a
fever to write books. He had written some before he set out
for El Dorado. First came the Ratos de Suesca (Suesca
Moments ) , with notes about the natural history of the New
Kingdom, the customs of the Indians, the rare and curious
things which he had been observing since he first touched
American soil. Something like the letters of Cortes, and the
first descriptions of America. Then La Refutation a Paulo
Jovio (Refutation of Paulas Jovius). In this refutation he
reaffirmed his Spanish pride. He recalled how badly Span
iards in Europe were regarded, and tried to set forth a de
fence of his country. His feverish imagination dreamed in
terms of literary and historical polemic, and he cleaned his
arms and unsheathed his sword as though making ready f or-
single combat. The mere plan of the work shows its broad
scope, and in the first chapter, as I have said elsewhere, is
a breadth of bitterness which gives the polemic shape and
form.
That first chapter is the one which treats of Whether
the ill will which many nations bear toward the Spaniards
be a matter of hatred or envy, and whether the causes they
allege for it be just." Then Quesada sets out to review
Jovius s entire history. He was a bishop of Nocera, and fond
of reviling Spaniards. Quesada sets before him the real
achievements of Charles V and his kingdoms. He refutes
262 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
the Italian in what lie says about the Comuneros of Castile,
tells in what state Charles V received the crown of Spain,
talks at length about the visits which the kings of France
and England made in the first half of the century, shows
what Spain s conduct was toward Luther s heresy, recalls
the taking of Geneva and the election of Clement VII, re
lates how the battle of Pavia and the capture of the king of
France took place, how Suleiman s wars in Hungary went,
and the capture of Tunis by Charles V. All this he knows
through the quantity of reading he did in Europe and
America, and through what he gathered in the camaraderie
of the New Kingdom from the lips of soldiers who them
selves were in those campaigns. That is to say, this is a com
pendium of European history, done with the critical sense
of a Spanish patriot and the forcefulness of a fighting hi
dalgo.
This book against Bishop Jovius the adelantado dedi
cated to Luis Mendez de Quixada, and Don Gonzalo wrote
"Qftixada" because, as Cervantes will note later, no one ever
knew when the Quixanos were Quesadas or the Quesadas
spelled Quijadas. But the initial tone of the work deserves
to be remembered, for it gives a good picture of the adelan
tado. "There remained," he said at the end of the prologue,
"the need for pardoning the faults of this book on account
of the short time in which I wrote it, which was a little more
than five months, and the barbarity and crudeness of the
people with whom I had talked for so many years. . . .
The honest indignation which I feel on seeing the Spanish
nation so unjustly accused was the reason I hastened to
get this book out, even though it be not as polished and
finished as is required in this period when all arts and letters
are almost at their peak."
SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 263
Now Quesada was composing Ids historical works at the
same time as others which were touched with frank mysti
cism. This Christian spirit became tempered in him with
the years. If as a general he had found it not inconvenient
to have his orders obeyed under pain of death, as a man
he had a certain background of pity. The last years of his
life were full of contradictions at one moment we see him
moving about, scarcely able to drag one foot after the other,
at another he is setting out at the head of his own troops;
one day he has Indian towns burned, the next he is begging
that the Indians be treated with benevolent tenderness. He
is like lamplight about to go out: the flame goes up and
down, now burns with disproportionate brilliance, now
folds its wings into black butterflies of shadow.
Quesada wanted to leave a complete history of all his
conquests, and started on the great work of his Historical
Compendium. He devoted the first book to the period of
his discovery, his entry into the country of the Chibchas;
the second to his return to the colony, to the synod which
was meeting in Santa Fe before he left for Cartagena, to
the disastrous conquest of El Dorado. As his work went on,
history became confused with the actuality of his latter
days. More than with anything else was he preoccupied
with the ordering of his accounts with God. He criticized
the greed of the enterprises which he himself had com
manded. Telling, for example, about the sack of the palace
of the king of Tunja, he said, "Certainly it was something
to see Christians carrying loads of gold on their shoulders,
they who also professed to carry on those same shoulders
the cross of Christianity."
Quesada also wrote a collection of sermons which were
to be preached at the feasts of Our Lady. On all Saturdays
264 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
in Lent, even after his death, he wanted a Mass sung with
music, a sermon, and responses for all the conquistadors,
living and dead. And for many years Santa Fe would listen
to those mystical discourses by the founder of the king
dom from the lips of priests who garbled and distorted
them. . . .
So Quesada went back over his own footsteps, retraced
his history, examined his conscience, and, in a manner of
speaking, prepared to leave this world. He was already old
and tired, as the chroniclers keep saying, and yet he still
thought about returning to El Dorado. He had promised
the soldiers that he would come back to Santa Fe to regain
his health, but so help us Heaven! on his honour he
would not fail to return to the Llanos.
All looked at him with respect, respecting even his mad
ness, except the president of the Audiencia. This was Don
Andres Diez Venero de Leyva, who had taken a dislike to
him and of whom Quesada was to write words in which
bitterness was mixed with resignation:
"It was a heavy blow to me, though not all that my sins
warranted, that he should come forth from his study to
wage cruel war, under the title and colour of justice, on one
who before he was born (or at least before his beard ap
peared) had gained white hairs in the service of Your Maj
esty."
Before leaving on the El Dorado campaign Quesada kept
saying that he had not strength to climb a stair or to go
ten steps on foot except with great effort. He declared then
that to oblige him to marry in order to acquire the right to
an encomienda was to open to him the tomb. What can be
SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 265
said of the old man now, impoverished and infirm as he was!
As someone said, he went bent double, leaning against the
wall and loaded down with debts.
But alarming news kept coming from the hot country.
There was an uprising among the Gualies Indians. A chief
tain stole a half-breed woman who had turned his head
and who belonged to the encomendero Francisco Jimenez.
To make a long story short, the chieftain killed Jimenez
and his two nephews and took the woman off to sleep in
his own hammock. The rape of the half -breed, the killing of
the three Spaniards, the terror of the whites, had given the
Gualies extraordinary courage. These Indians who lived
near Mariquita, in an ardent and stimulating climate, not
far from lands rich in gold, were not docile and tractable
like those of the uplands. On the contrary, they carried
treachery to the point where, not content with doing
shameful things to the Spaniards on the banks of the Mag-
dalena, they climbed to the tableland of Santa Fe and com
mitted all sorts of daring deeds. A group of chiefs federated
themselves with their towns, and again the vision of war
rose before Spanish eyes. But who could serve as captain
for the men from Spain? Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada.
Farewell books, farewell all care for one s health. Enco-
menderos and soldiers gathered at the call "To arms!" The
adelantado, though he had to be carried in a litter, was in
command. The hot lands would be good for his worn frame,
and it could be said almost that he was filled with the en
ergy of other days. Amid the jingling of horses and the clat
ter of arms the sons of St. James entered the rebellious
towns. They killed without pity, they burned whole settle
ments, they took gold as in the good old times. Quesada s
spirits rose to such a point that he founded a town just as
266 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
in his good days Santa Agueda, which should be a sort
of fortress for the Spaniards defence while they were
"skimming" the mines they had discovered.
Quesada went to the land of the Gualies merely to "put
down thievery/ as the foremost authority of the kingdom
wished. The army reached the town where lived the chief
tain who was responsible for the uprising, and resolved to
surprise him by night. When the Indians woke, the town
was already on fire* The chieftain, leaving the half-breed
woman in his bed, leaped to his weapons. The fight became
a matter of single combat, and the chief perished. Broken
and leaderless, the Indians fled. The Spaniards followed,
"ranching" a town one day, following the fugitives through
the mountains on another. They found agreeable climates
and a land of gold in which the conquerors established
themselves. As these conquests went on, not an Indian was
left alive. It is the hard way natural to war.
Quesada summed up his whole campaign in a report
which gives a perfect picture of his character: "Wishing
to strengthen myself, though completely out of health, so
as to go ahead with my plans for El Dorado, it happened
that Briceno, your president, to whom be honour, found
this kingdom much wrought up on account of the upris
ing in the sierras, where the natives had rebelled against
Your Highness service, and the matter was of such nature
that the rebels left the lowlands in order to rob, and in such
manner that it was no longer possible to work the gold
mines in this province, nor to do anything here (especially
in the hot country) which demanded peace and quiet; and
then your president and judges, seeing this, and the urgent
need for remedying it, turning me aside from the work I
had in hand, commanded me to undertake this other, and,
SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 267
because I had discovered this kingdom, ordered me to re
store it and to gain it back again, for it might almost be
said that that was what was meant by pacifying the said
sierras and quieting this province. And I, like another Her
cules ( I say this without boasting, well knowing that I do
not deserve this name, nor do I by any means assert that
I was born for the labours of the Indies or for being to this
New World another such as he whom I have named was
for that other ancient world, although all that be invention
rather than a world, but let us call them thus), then took
charge and raised a force and went to the said sierras car
ried on the shoulders of other men (for I could not go on
foot on account of my indispositions) and in this way I
began the said pacification, and completed it, though the
savages lolled many of my men in the process, among them
my nephew Jeronimo Hurtado de Mendoza y de Quesada,
the one on whom my hopes in this kingdom were cen
tred. . . /*
Through the burning lands of Mariquita and Tocaima
ranged the old conqueror, circling around his death. "He is
poor and needy," said Marshal Hernan Venegas, "and has
no possessions, nor house of his own in which to live in this
city of Santa Fe, nor in the town of Tunja." Captain Tafur
said, "He is poor, and much encumbered with debts." Gon-
zalo de Martos declared, "I do not know of any goods or
chattels which belong to the adelantado, nor even a house
to live in, save for the tribute which he has from Indians in
this kingdom as is well known, and this is pledged on ac
count of the heavy expenses of the recent expedition. . . ."
Apart from the conquest, the adelantado was a man who
268 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
looked upon the Indians with sympathy, and who would
not dare to stain his estate with Indian blood. How many
times he begged Montano and the priests for the welfare
of the aborigines, how often he insisted, in the Santa Fe
synod, on a little Christian pity, how many bitter words he
directs in his history now against the encomenderos, now
against the priests. But this was not mere literary exercise
or a desire to quarrel; it was because his conscience, the
conscience of a good man, moved him voluntarily to pro
ceed thus, even against his own interests. When he was
given the encomienda of Chita, and went to collect the
work tribute due him, he found, and so told the king, that
the tax levied against the Indians was excessive. "They
are/ he said, "too heavily burdened because, being fewer
than five hundred Indians, they are taxed fifteen hundred
mantas, and so far as that is concerned they should be re
lieved of this, and until this is done I shall cease to charge
them the work tribute, even though this be to my own
detriment."
Quesada s petitions were growing fewer. Scarcely did he
beg that they would not oblige him to marry. That they
make life a little more agreeable for him. His life was slip
ping into an atmosphere of resignation. His skin was crack
ing, and his legs could scarcely carry him, with the weight
of his eighty years heavy on his shoulders, through Mari-
quita s two or three streets under the vertical fire of the
tropics as far as the straw church. There in the light which
shone beneath the Virgin s image his dreaming eyes, al
ready dimming, watched the last golden ray which would
take him to that El Dorado in which none could fail to be
lieve, the El Dorado which no one would snatch away from
him, the El Dorado of the Christian God which he sought
SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 269
no longer with the fury of his lance but only with tearful
love.
More than a conqueror, Quesada had been a discoverer.
First among valiant captains though he was, he had known
how to be silent, how to still the clatter of his steel, to in
cline his head, to listen to the voices of the Indians and dis
cover the secrets of their hearts. How different his attitude
from that of the purely sensual soldiers who squeezed the
heart of America until their hands dripped blood. About
him had risen men fortunate and men disgraced, whom
the push of ambition had placed on the crest of the wave
and the envy of imitators had cast into the trough of misery.
Every day new gentlemen of dubious habits appeared in
Santa Fe, and with their lewdness dragged life and honour
into the dust. "At least," thought the adekntado, "may this
light which gleams beneath the Virgin s image envelop
them in its divine clarity some day/*
The realities of American life reduced the discoverers
to beds of misery and rendered the conquerors proud and
blind. In that long twilight when the wild deer stands clear
against the horizon and the sun of America drops between
his spreading horns, Quesada advanced toward the shades
of night with the same melancholy certainty which had
moved Columbus s lips to prayer. How alike were those
two lives as they faltered in the porticoes of death.
When Columbus was old and ill we see his son Diego
negotiating at court that his father may be allowed to go
from Seville to Toro and from Toro to Segovia on mule-
back. The roads of Spain were bad, but from the time of
King Alfonso XI on the use of a mule was forbidden except
to a certain small portion of the population. Ferdinand the
Catholic forbade its use to laymen, and decided that only
270 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
children, women, and clergy could make use of this mode of
transportation. Columbus wished, therefore, to be given
the same consideration as a child, a priest, or a woman in
order that he might travel on a saddled and bitted mule,
and the time Don Diego had to spend and the trips he had
to make in order to acquire this dispensation were not a
little humiliating. Thus the man who had discovered the
endless routes of the sea, who had put them under the ban
ner of the Catholic monarchs, who had mounted the fren
zied back of the mad Atlantic in order to tame it and put it
at Spain s service, had, now that he was old and ill, to beg
the king s permission to be allowed to mount a mule. . . .
And Quesada, who had conquered a New Kingdom, who
had found the emeralds of Muzo and put them into the
king s hands, who had spent a hundred and fifty thousand
ducats in the conquest of the Llanos, suffering in a thousand
ways, "I and my people such labours, such misfortunes, and
such strange and extraordinary happenings that it terrifies
the mind to bring back such unhappy memories, for even
though they have been told it seems impossible that they
should all be believed. . . ." Quesada, I say, was forced to
get down on his knees and beg that his creditors should be
appeased and that he be allowed to die in peace. It was ex
actly the same as Columbus, of whom Humboldt would
write on ending the history of his life, "The man who had
given Spain a new world asked only a corner of earth in
order that he might die in it peacefully/
When Quesada turned his attention to the matter of an
estate which he might will to his heirs, he found himself
SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 271
poor and without any fortune. What Bishop Las Casas
wrote of Columbus might be said of him "He passed from
this life in a state of deep anxiety, bitterness, and poverty,
and without a roof in this world under which he might
crawl to rest or to shield himself from the damp." Quesada
had merely a few vague rights which would not bring in
enough to pay his debts. And his books. His library which
became a recreation for his mind when his body would no
longer work for him. The parchments which piled up on his
work table, mixed up with the papers which his own genius
had created. The conqueror who had presented himself at
court with gold and emeralds for the king, had on his sec
ond voyage returned to America with chests of books. Now,
at the end of his life, he went over those volumes for the last
time, and willed them to a monastery in Santo Domingo.
Let the priest, and if so it be, the barber, do with them
what they pleased.
What else had he to will? His titles constituted a treas
ure that was strictly personal. He had always regarded
them with affection, first because they carried the signature
of his king, second because they marked long notches in
the measuring rod of his life, and third, perhaps, because
among those who had certified those titles appeared one of
His Majesty s ministers whose name was indissolubly linked
with the name of the most illustrious lawgiver of Spain, the
finest of the poet kings, and the most scholarly prince that
the peninsula had ever known. That king was Don Alfonso
the Wise, and the minister, Gregorio Lopez, copyist of the
Siete Partidas and their most authoritative commentator.
So the monarchs had given nothing to Quesada but a
few titles. How different the treatment Cortes and Pizarro
272 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
had received! At the end of his life Quesada might well
have written something similar to this, which Columbus
left in his will, "To our lords the King and Queen I gave,
when I handed them the Indies, something which was as
though mine own, and I might well call it so, for I besought
it of them when the Indies were unknown and the way to
them hidden; and when they were located and discovered
Their Majesties spent, aside from the gift of my information
and of my person, nothing nor wished to spend anything,
except a sum of maravedis, and I had to spend all the rest."
Quesada, too, gave the monarchs a kingdom without their
having staked on the hazard anything more than a banner.
And now, with the kingdom in their hands, they had no
eyes for the discoverer, who was left without even the
shade of his own roof.
But there is the flame burning before the Virgin to mark
the way. God grant that his debts may be paid with the
income from the encomienda, that just as his creditors will
forgive him, if they do, so will God save him from his debts.
He has no one on earth to pardon, but he must ask forgive
ness for his own lacks. His words are veiled in tenderness.
He thinks of what does he think? His son? But does he
know anything of his son? There is no reason for naming
him may God guide him from on high. On the other hand
he thinks, as Quixote will think, of his niece.
There is an extraordinary likeness between Quixote s will
and that of Quesada. Both declare that their madness has
passed, and that they are in the full possession of their fac
ulties. Quesada begins by talking of the kingdom he has
conquered, thus, 1, Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada,
adelantado of this New Kingdom of Granada, which I as
captain discovered, conquered, and settled in these West-
SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 273
era Indies along with many soldiers and gentlemen of the
said armada who came with me . . . believe in the Most
Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost . . ?
Of Don Quixote, Cervantes says that after having writ
ten out the heading of his will and ordered his soul with
all those Christian sentiments which were required, he re
ferred to the kingdom he had conquered, and, turning his
eyes toward Sancho, exclaimed, "If, as in my distracted
state I procured him the government of an island, I could >
now that I am in my senses, procure him that of a kingdom,
I would readily do it."
The same return to reality occurred with Quesada as
with Don Quixote. Says Quesada, "At present I find myself
very ill of body, though sane of mind to dispose of whatever
is fitting."
And Don Quixote, "Sirs, let us go softly, for there are
not this year s birds in last year s nests. I was mad, and am
now sane; I was Don Quixote de la Mancha, and I am now,
as I said, Alonso Quijano the Good/
Quesada turned his eyes toward his niece and said, "As
Your Majesty has done me the kindness of allowing me to
name a successor to the grants of lands and Indians which I
hold in trust in this kingdom, I hereby name as my succes
sor, in accord with the said decree, Dona Maria de Oruna,
daughter of the late Colonel Hernando de Oruna and Dona
Andrea Jimenez, his wife and my sister, both deceased, and
I hereby direct that all my debts be paid, those which I
seem to owe in the Indies as well as in Spain and other
places, and if my estate is not sufficient for this, I order that
my successor pay them out of the bond-servants and the
work tributes and the proceeds of Indian women and the
grants that I leave."
274 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Don Quixote says in his will, "I bequeath to Antonia
Quixano, my niece, here present, all my estate, real and per
sonal, after the payment of all my debts and legacies, and
the first to be discharged shall be the wages due my house
keeper for the time she has been in my service, and twenty
ducats besides for a suit of mourning."
Says Quesada, "I name as my witnesses and executors in
this kingdom the most excellent archbishop of -the said
kingdom, and the most illustrious gentleman who is or was
president of the Audiencia."
Don Quixote says, "I appoint for my executors Senor the
Priest and Senor Bachelor Sanson Carrasco, here present."
And, as Cervantes says of Don Quixote, "The will was
then closed, and, being seized with a fainting fit, he
stretched himself out at length on the bed, at which all were
alarmed, and hastened to his assistance; yet he survived
three days; often fainting during that time in the same man
ner, which caused much confusion in the house. Neverthe
less, the niece ate, the housekeeper drank, and Sancho
Panza consoled himself, for legacies tend much to moderate
grief that nature claims for the deceased. At last, after re
ceiving the sacrament, and making all such pious prepara
tions, as well as expressing in strong and pathetic terms
his abhorrence of the books of chivalry, Don Quixote s last
moment arrived. The notary was present and protested that
he had never read in any book of chivalry of a knight-errant
dying in his bed in so composed and Christian a manner as
Don Quixote, who amid the plaints and tears of all present
gave up his spirit I mean to say, he died."
XII
Quesada and Mankind
In his last years he was afflicted with leprosy, which made it
necessary for him to stay in a desert place near the city of
Tocaima which they call the hill of Limba, where there is a
stream of water whose unpleasant odour comes from passing
over sulphur deposits, and he rested amid its fumes. He left a
sum of money with which to keep a jar of fresh water on that
hill for wayfarers, for there was none near and the site was hot;
and at last, without having married, and being poor, and owing
more than six hundred thousand ducats, he died in the city of
Mariquita. . . .
FLOREZ DE OGABIZ
QUESADA AND MANKIND
FOUR hundred years had passed since the day on which
Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada founded Santa Fe de Bo
gota. The city put on its finest clothes to celebrate that
event. It was agreed that the remains of the founder, which
were reposing in an old cemetery, should be taken to the
Cathedral.
God forgive me, but homage of this sort brings to mind
a ridiculous situation which Pirandello recounts in one of
his stories. Two men died in a small town near Rome on
the same day. The first was one of those great personages
to whom fame is accustomed to render posthumous tribute.
The other, a poor devil, some town barber of the sort to
whom earth bids farewell with four spadefuls of dirt. The
two bodies were taken to the town undertaker to be made
ready for burial, and while their relatives were preparing
the last honours word reached Rome that the great man had
died. There were obituaries in the press, meetings in the
academies, flurries in the ministries. The dead man had be
longed to all the illustrious societies, and he had filled, in
his own manner, three or four pages of Italian history. Ob
viously the undertaker would soon receive instructions for
sending the corpse to the Romans, while the corpse of the
little man would remain in the funeral parlour with his
arms crossed, awaiting the judgment of God.
In a special railroad car hung with crape the famous
corpse left for Rome. The poor corpse, followed by two or
277
278 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
three weeping relatives on foot, took the road to the town
cemetery, feet foremost, and was put into his small stone
house.
In one of the outlying stations of Rome the ministers
and the academicians climbed into the mortuary car and
then, unbuttoning their overcoats and lighting their cigars
with all the ceremony proper on such occasions, they ap
proached the coffin and looked at the dead man s face. Hor
rors! The undertaker had erred, and it was the little dead
man, the village fool, who was sleeping on the silken
cushions. How he would like to have seen himself, even
after death, travelling first class with the gentlemen, and
received as a member, even though a dead one, of the best
academies! The sages and statesmen anxiously exchanged
ideas. In a few moments they would arrive in the city of
the Cassars, where the Prime Minister, the newspaper men,
and Parliament in a body awaited them. At a time like that
they, who were accompanying the dead man, were to play
as important a role as the corpse itself, if not a more impor
tant one. In their tortured imaginations they saw the whole
crowd of photographers and newsreel men waiting at the
station entrance. The matter was clear. It was not possible
to slip the poor little corpse out and away from ceremonies
like that. What the devil! There was nothing to do but to
take it to the Basilica, pour out all the speeches over it,
hang the laurel wreaths on it, and lay it away for ever in
a marble chapel. . . .
When the procession of notables, and the town of Santa
Fe en masse, took charge of the remains of Don Gonzalo
Jimenez de Quesada, or, if you prefer, of the Adelantado
QUESADA AND MANKIND 279
Licentiate Gonzalo Ximenez Quijada, I asked myself anx
iously, "Whose remains are these? Whose are the dust and
ashes travelling thus amid clouds of incense, leaving the
Catholic cemetery, which belongs to everybody, in order to
enter the Cathedral, which is the pantheon of the very few
elect?" For it is well to know, in spite of all I have written
here, that we have very little information about the death
of Don Gonzalo Jimenez remember that four hundred
years have passed since then and are scarcely even cer
tain that he died in Mariquita. Once the curious editors of
the Illustrated Journal asked their readers, "Is it possible to
see the remains of Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada? Is it cer
tain that they lie in the presbytery of the Cathedral, on the
Epistles side?" And from then on that question has been a
puzzle to all honest historians, for the identification of a
corpse is a more delicate problem than are the legendary
tales of great deeds.
The founder of Santa Fe wished, and so declared in his
will, that the stone which covered his bones should not
contain his name, nor any sign of his identity, but only this
Latin legend, "Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum" He
wanted to be the anonymous dead who arises on Resur
rection Day with his Quixotesque soul seeking bones with
which to reconstruct his lean and discoloured figure. With
out pretending to be skilled in these matters, I think that
this is the way the dogma of the resurrection explains it.
For my part, I believe that when the resurrection comes,
and in case those bones are still enjoying their temporary re
pose in the Cathedral, Don Gonzalo will do well if he gets a
thumb-bone or a poor lost vertebra out of them. His tor
mented shade will go wandering from Mariquita to Vera
cruz, from Veracruz to a dark corner of the Cathedral, from
280 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
the Cathedral to the cemetery, and in the cemetery he will
go reeling like a drunkard, snatching up a skull here, a
femur there, a set of ribs out of a common grave, until, ex
hausted by fatigue and disconcerted at noting an incom
plete hand or a cheekbone missing, he will put an index
finger to the cranium that held his memory and making a
recount will go back to the Cathedral, set aside a certain
rare marble statue which they say is his likeness, and mov
ing aside the slab which says, "Expecto resunectionem
mortuorum" will find and what a great feat! his lost
thumb, the poor forgotten vertebra, the cheekbone which
his admirers had juggled.
Returning, then, to the tale in the Illustrated Journal, let
me say that its editors were accustomed to formulate curi
ous and intriguing questions which supposedly stimulated
the mental activity of their readers. "Which is the elephant
that carries towers on his enormous shoulders?" "Is it pos
sible to see the remains of Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada?
Is it certain that they lie in the presbytery of the Cathedral,
on the Epistles side?" I do not know whether the reply to
the last question may seem amusing or tragic to my readers,
but here jt is:
Quesada died in Mariquita on a Monday in February, or
perhaps in the month of June, of the year 1579. For ten or
fifteen years his remains stayed in the cemetery which the
Franciscan friars had in their church there. Don Juan de
Castellanos recalls the matter thus:
And now, having -forsaken confidence
In the deceitful strength of being human,
He left behind the struggles of this life
QUESADA AND MANKIND 281
With pious offices of dl good Christians,
A man respectable and understanding.
And he adds:
But his will was badly carried out.
The heat in Mariquita was terrific. Dead bodies began to
decompose within a few hours. The process of becoming
dust and ashes, or food for worms, was a matter not of years
but of days. When the precentor of the Santa Fe Cathedral,
one Dean Clavijo, took the matter up in Mariquita and the
tardy hands of the Spaniards went to pick up Quesada s
bones, there were no bones. But that did not matter. And
in truth, what did it matter? A few bones more or less are
mere trifles in the hands of death. So they brought that dust
to Santa Fe, and put it into a hollow in the church of Vera
cruz.
Five years later the city notables said, "Why not take the
remains to the Cathedral?" No sooner said than done, and
they laid the dust on the Epistles side.
Two hundred and eight years later the Cathedral was on
the point of going to pieces. There was suspension of serv
ices for years, rebuilding, etc. On excavating the presbytery
twenty years later "they found," said the archbishop, "on
the Epistles side, certain remains of Marshal Quesada." To
add to the confusion, certain relatives of Quesada had,
through privilege, been interred in that same crypt. But
even though they were dust, though they had been moved
about, mingled with others, there should have been some
remains of the founder there. Then the editor-in-chief of
the Illustrated Journal, fulfilling the mission proper to us
282 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
journalists, resolved to plumb the puzzle, and he himself
went to see the crypt which ought to contain something
which, to our way of thinking, would be what was left of
the remains.
At half-past ten on the morning of a day in the 1880 s
after having lifted a heavy slab, Senor Urdaneta, editor of
the Illustrated Journal, Don Lazaro Maria Giron, Don
Manuel Maria Narvaez, the Cathedral sacristan, and cer
tain of the curious, went down an improvised stairway
into the crypt and began to search. Here is the result, as it
appeared in a March 1883 number of the Illustrated Jour
nal:
"After the natural confusion produced by the sudden
change from light to shade, we were able to distinguish
at the bottom a vault six metres long, three metres wide,
and two metres high, and in the bottom of it a coffin whose
remains were dressed in velvet and purple silk, showing it
to be of archbishop s dignity and belonging, we understand,
to the most Illustrious Senor Doctor Fernando Caicedo y
Florez, Archbishop; in the corner were two smaller coffins
with remains of the same clothing, and many bones belong
ing to at least two skeletons, all mixed, and without the
least sign of military dress. We also descended to the crypt
on the opposite side. There, in good condition were found
the remains of Doctor Margallo in the centre of a vault like
the former, and in the corners two small boxes and another
of a child of ten or twelve. They seem never to have been
touched. We will publish our carefully studied opinion on
this matter in the following number."
In the following number nothing was said. Nor in the
one after, nor in any one of those published for two years.
Perhaps it was thought, as in Pirandello s tale, that the best
QUESADA AND MANKIND 283
thing was to bury the corpse, without identifying it, but
to bury it.
I have carefully read the notes in the Illustrated Journal
which followed the announcement that the conundrum
posed at the beginning of these paragraphs was to be
solved. They contain the information that Paris newspapers
describe a concert in which our compatriot "Mile. Teresa
Tanco a joue avec autant de talent que de sentiment? That
"our friend the estimable gentleman Senor Don Ricardo
Becerra, his charming wife and gracious family have been
back in Bogotd since the beginning of the month." And
finally, "Giving thanks in advance to the charming sefioras
and senoritas, we propose a new enigma by the famous
poet Schiller: Who is it that takes us thousands of leagues
away, and yet remains where he is? Having no wings to
spread, he draws us rapidly through the air. It is the swift
est boat that has ever borne any voyager, and carries one
across the width of the seas with the speed of thought. All
this in the opening and shutting of an eye/
I judge that the lines transcribed above will be most
informative for the reader concerning the adelantado s re
mains, and I do not think it necessary to continue a history
which would have three new chapters the moving of the
remains from the Cathedral to a small park in front of the
Catholic cemetery, another trip from there to the interior
of the cemetery, and, finally, the splendid, the magnificent
demonstration of affection for the founder, the quadricen-
tenary, with a new transfer from the cemetery to the Cathe
dral. . . .
For a man who for eighty years ranged through Europe
284 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
and Terra Firma to have moved in three centuries and a
half through such small adventures does not seem much.
I have some doubt as to whether it was really he who made
these posthumous voyages, or a minor friar of Mariquita,
or some one of the Berrios who, because they were rela
tives, crept, after they were cold, to lie beside what was
left of Quesada s remains. At any rate, the end of the dis
coverers was always the same. What survives is not so much
the consequence of their audacity; it is the memory of those
great achievements which their spirits, dogged by the envy
of contemporaries, rendered fruitful. I think that Quesada,
at least while he was opening a way through the tangled
brush of the Op6n, took more care to go ahead with the
soldiers than to keep his beard combed. Yet for a painter,
the adelantado s beard is more important than his deeds.
It is a matter of taste and opinion.
But as I said before, four hundred years had passed, and
everything is confused. I see nothing sure and certain in
the details about Quesada which come to light today. I do
not know whether his portrait is truly his, or whether his
remains are really his remains, or whether his beard was
full or thin. The most erudite and reasoned work which
was written about the founder of Bogota for his quadri-
centenary was a book by Don Enrique Otero D Costa, an
incomparable expert in minute investigations. That book
proves that everything about Quesada and his whole his
tory is uncertain. From a practical point of view, it estab
lishes the triumph of the novel over history as such. Which
is a very good thing. It is far more discreet to take refuge
in the novel, the romance, the fabliau when you are paint
ing the lives of gentlemen who undertook such fabulous
enterprises as discovering a land of butterflies (Muzo was
QUESADA AND MANKIND 285
the first step in Quesada s explorations ) at the cost of scores
of unfortunate lives, or putting a whole army underground
on the search for the mythical land of El Dorado. It is only
that the romance of Quesada is a sad and melancholy one;
this matter of not knowing who is who, this uncertainty
which veils his whole history, is merely the mirror which
reflects the final passion of his own life.
I do not know what anyone who was eager to put his
likeness into marble or bronze could possibly do. There
would always be hesitation as between the energetic linea
ments of the soldier and the wistful smile of the disen
chanted, between the cruel leader who had the rebel soldier
hanged and the soul that carried on imaginary dialogues
with the Virgin in Suesca or busied his pen writing sermons
for the priests to recite at churchly festivals. When Quesada
reached eighty his life struck a balance between the years
of high adventure and the years of melancholy, without
counting those he had passed in Europe among books and
amorous adventures. Thus his figure is completely human
and complex, and eludes the simplified versions which his
torians writing in an heroic vein make ornate and cloying.
Going back to the book and the writings of Don Enrique
Otero D Costa, we find that Quesada s departure from
Santa Marta when, as Fray Pedro Simon, Fl6rez de Oca-
riz, and Rodriguez Fresle, the fathers of our history, affirm,
he set out to discover the New Kingdom in 1537 really
took place in 1536. That the 162 soldiers with which he
emerged from his great adventure were, according to one
conqueror, 162, according to another 165, according to
three conquerors 166, according to two conquerors 167, and
according to four conquerors 170. That the Lazarus fever
which ate at Quesada and has surrounded his memory with
286 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
a tormented legend that he was a leper was not Lazarus fe
ver at all, but a simple skin irritation very frequent in those
days of filth and licence, which was commonly called, and
as the quick way out of further argument, leprosy. That the
charming ballad by Father Lescamez, that group of admi
rable verses in which he relates how Quesada
. . . had to leave Granada
For some miscreant deed . . .
was not written by Lescamez in the sixteenth century, but
in the twentieth century by one Franco Quijano, and that
the portrait of Jimenez de Quesada . . . Well, in this mat
ter of the portrait it is better to go a little slowly. . . .
In this ineffable homeland of mine there is no one who
does not carry in his mind the image of the founder of the
New Kingdom. It is a noble portrait of "a mature man, with
black and luxuriant beard, dreaming eyes, an aquiline nose,
and dressed in a gold-braided doublet." It does surprise
one, of course, that a person so vigorous and hard-working
should give such an appearance of freshness and fashion.
Nevertheless, we all see him with these identical features
in the first pages of our country s history. This is the way
the hero of the conquest looked. Very well, that portrait
happens to be of one of the kings of France Francis I.
The matter could not be simpler. This fate befell not only
Quesada, but all the other personages who came to Amer
ica in the sixteenth century. Not very long ago there was
erected in Call a most noble piece of sculpture commem
orating Don Sebastian de Belalcdzar, founder of that city.
It was the work of the Spanish artist Victorio Macho. It
QUESADA AND MANKIND 287
represents the conqueror as a figure of elegance, chest
high, military garb resting well on his masculine shoulders,
and facing the wind, the face of ... the famous scientist
and Nobel prize winner Don Santiago Ramon y CajaL Ev
eryone knows that the great Macho made one of the most
beautiful monuments in the world, dedicated to the wise
Cajal, and standing in the Park of the Retiro in Madrid.
Macho, a man who knows how to see, fell in love with the
head of the sage and, finding nothing better to serve as
model for a conqueror s head, reproduced it.
Quesada s fate was similar. Don Constancio Franco, ad
miring the patriotic ardour of the editor of the Illustrated
Journal, who was keen to glorify the fathers of our nation,
once gave him an oil portrait of the adelantado, and from
then on this portrait, and the wood engraving which Ur-
daneta had made from it, became the basis of Quesada s
whole iconography.
Don Constancio Franco was a celebrated historian, to
whom Colombian letters owe great finds. He was, more
over, in charge of the National Museum. He was most of
all preoccupied with the fact that there was one lack in the
museum which it did not seem possible to supply. There
was no viceroy, judge > or president of whom future genera
tions would have a true picture. With this praiseworthy
ambition in mind, he contracted for the services of a painter
and began to form the gallery. The artist in his service
and the service of the nation finished a likeness of Viceroy
Sebastian de Eslava. When he reached the museum with it,
the director looked at it with infinite approval How much
humanity there was in that face with its fine rosy colour,
and in that wig of whitest cotton! For some moments the
director examined it with delight, and then he ordered,
288 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
"The portrait is magnificent. Unfortunately, we already
have Eslava. Let s have this for Amar y Borbon, who is miss
ing, and put his name on it and his titles."
In the case of Quesada s portrait, the trick happened to
be discovered a great many years after he died, but, as in
the case of the dead man himself, what was there to do
if the documents in the history of the matter had already
been set in print?
The reader already knows what there is left to tell about
Quesada. His books were all lost. Mixed in with histories by
Hernandez (or Fernandez) de Oviedo, by Piedrahita, or
by Plaza are bits which may or may not be part of those
works of his which, going from the Indies to the peninsula,
from the frozen hands of the king s ministers to the parch
ment-like hands of old book merchants, ended by falling
to pieces in the white hands of forgetfulness. Out of them
all there are only phrases now and then, uncertain words
floating in mid-air, which historical research tries in vain
to make exact. Quesada himself had a certain genial divina
tion of all these things, and with that penetration which
at times illumines the judgment of men nearing the grave
he penned that solemn epitaph which contains an infinite
disdain for what men do. An epitaph which is the mortal
leap of one who rises above all human falsity to enter the
blessed meadows of eternity: Expecto resurrectionem mor-
tuorum. . . . All pride and vanity are ended there, and his
stubborn hope is shattered as he sees the fickleness of the
world through the clear light of faith.
It is necessary to go back over Quesada s last experiences
in order to see what depths his life reached when the greedy
QUESADA AND MANKIND 289
profiteers of the colony had deprived him of all privileges
and had stolen from him the power for whose holding he
had little ambition. There was a substantial difference be
tween the sensual appetite of a Pizarro, an Almagro, an
Alvarado, and the careless, unworried life of a man who,
returning from conquest to Spain with the rents in his
clothes mended, and cloaked in velvet, went gaily through
France and Portugal, amused himself in Italy, and, like the
quiet sun of Santa Fe, scattered gold dust over life and
over women. And who then sought in solitary places the
silence and the peace which are die need of candid or for
getful souls, in order that he might carry on dialogues with
the Most Holy Virgin Mary, She who is without original
sin.
Let us now return to something which was implied some
pages back. In Quesada s last days there was an intimate
and internal tragedy which gives a clue to much that would
be otherwise hidden in his life. In tardy acknowledgment
of his merits, the Crown conceded him a coat of arms, the
status of marshal, and honorary titles which obliged him
to live with decorum, but which put no lining into his vel
vet purse. Then began the interminable struggle to have
himself allotted a grant of Indians who should be subject
to his orders. His memorials, in which humility is mingled
with pride and hope with desperation, went from the New
Kingdom to Castile while he was enduring anguished hours
of great poverty, and not knowing how he, a marshal of
Spain, could appear in ragged clothing. But then fortune
imposed an even greater humiliation. And in a way Que-
sada was to be the victim of his own invention, for in his
290 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
instructions for good government he had continually coun
selled the king that Spaniards who asked for land grants
should be made to marry "so that the land may be popu
lated and held in perpetuity." He marry! Quesada, now
that he was nearing seventy and when all the passions and
powers of youth had left his body!
In his instructions for good government, Quesada had
said., "Let Your Majesty be pleased to order that within the
said kingdom all those who have grants of lands and Indi
ans shall marry within a period Your Majesty shall name,
and that when that is past, their grants shall be lost, or given
to others who are married, or put under Your Majesty s
charge; to the end that they shall clearly understand they
are to marry within the said period and that this period be
adequately long for them to comply, without Your Majesty
here or die judges there having to accept delays or excuses/
So then, how humble was the allegation with which the
adelantado, old now, prostrated himself at the feet of Arch
bishop Juan de los Barrios, begging that he would open
the ecclesiastical court to the hearing of testimony which
should prove that he, the adelantado, was in no condition to
marry! "I am the encomendero" he said, "of the grant of
lands and Indians at Chita, and of an age which makes it
impossible for me to marry. To take up married life with a
woman now would be, as is well known, to open to me the
door of the tomb/ The original text of the allegation says
it all with a realism that makes one weep. And after the al
legation came the proofs, the testimony, the slow labour of
that sturdy soul who had once climbed the ridges of the
wild Andes and who now, trembling and withered, laid
himself bare to the gaze of his companions and the city he
QUESADA AND MANKIND 291
had founded, and did it with a desperate prolixity. Here
are some of his words:
"I am not of an age to be able to marry, nor have I the
necessary health for it, for I have for more than twenty
years been ill of asthma, a disease which is notoriously in
compatible with the married state. . . . And though my
age and this impediment are both well known, for my ap
pearance is that of a man of sixty more or less, and my ill
ness quite as obvious, so that I am not able to ascend a
staircase, or to walk ten steps without great effort, yet am
I ready to give a greater abundance of information con
cerning all die aforesaid/
But there was something else. In Spain there was the
son he could not acknowledge. The son who scarcely ex
isted as more than a shadow in a single line of the contract
concerning El Dorado. The son whom no one then named.*
* The author s implied identificaton of this unacknowledged son with
Alonso Quixada, known to die world as Don Quixote, is an interesting
example of literary intuition. What is known is uiat Cervantes, ransomed
from a Moorish prison and returning to Spain about the time that the heirs
of Jimenez de Quesada were trying to get to America to claim their in
heritance, met and married a relative of theirs, Catalina Salazar. When he
came to write his most famous novel, he named his hero Alonso and said,
"Some . . . have concluded that his name was certainly Quixada, and
not Quesada as others would have it." The assumption, supported by
evidence which is at least provocative, is that the original possessor
of that name was a gentleman of uncertain status named Alonso Que
sada, "tall, lean, romantic, slightly mad like all the Quesadas," and
a great talker, whom Cervantes met in the home of his wife s family;
that this "cousin or uncle" was the son of Jimenez de Quesada, born of
one of those love affairs of which he never spoke; that Cervantes was
amused by his character and fascinated by his tales of the family great
man. So, says Senor Arciniegas, Cervantes, who tried to get to America,
would have liked to write about Don Gonzalo and lay his novel in Terra
Firma, but failing that, and with Spain as his locale, "let Don Alonso
become the prototype of Don Quixote, a character half child of the imagi-
292 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
Quesada reached the heights of eighty years and, turning
his eyes toward the past, watched his various enterprises
move past him as on some infernal moving-picture film. He
remembered the labour and the hunger suffered in the
ascent of the Opon. He thought of those days when the
troops, their insides gnawed by hunger, ate, as one of his
comrades said, lizards and rats and bats and many other
reptiles, and for very hunger chewed on our leather shields,
and ate straps, and dogs, and other dead animals." And
more recently, when his steps were coming close to the por
tals of death, there was that adventure of El Dorado, and
the sufferings in the Llanos, where the soldiers, worn with
misery and suffering, tried to flee and even thought of doing
away with the adelantado, if his death would free them
from the spell which had carried them forth on the road
to an imaginary paradise. And he thought of the burning
plains, and the fiery forests of the green inferno.
But soon his fever-driven imagination, his memory which
was retracing its steps, as they say of souls in the other
world, stopped to remember a hill browned by the sun. Up
there was nothing but the dry rock, the hard tropical heat,
and no shade from the trees, trees that had no compassion
on men, that spilled no single green drop of freshness
out of the inverted bowls of their foliage. The old wanderer
who had disciplined the souls of those greedy men mad
dened by thirst, who had put all their pleas to the test, felt
his throat grow dry and his tongue thick as he remembered
the hill of Limba, which was in the land of Tocaima, and
he felt that it was there that his shadow, from the limits of
the other world, should provide relief for wayfarers. That
natioh, half mirror of that passionately human life of the great dreamer,
Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada." TRANSLATOR.
QUESADA AND MANKIND 293
he who had led the men of Spain and the Indians of the New
Kingdom across such miserable crags, through such inhos
pitable flatland, such wild uplands, should redeem his soul
from the sin of such mad undertakings by some such act
as extending the hollow of his hand forth from eternity to
give a draught of water to the thirsty. And out of this desire
came his will, touching the depths of melancholy and re
flecting his life much better than the haughty escutcheon
with which the Spanish monarch had decorated him, which
orders in a slow clause that on Limba hill, in the land of
Tocaima, there be always kept a large earthen jar full of
water in which travellers might quench their thirst.
It is clear that the will was lost. Not one of Quesada s pa
pers was to pass intact to posterity. Loose, without a bind
ing, the will wandered through the archives of Spain. And
concerning the attention which was given it, Castellanos s
phrase would come down in history, "But his will was badly
carried out." Nor was the earthen jar even once filled with
water on Limba hill. His heirs, much less enthusiastic than
Quesada, would content themselves with construing the
direction to mean setting up a little fountain on a Santa F6
street. This is the old Calle de los Plateros, which appar
ently takes the place of Limba hill.
If the things of this world turn to dust, smoke, and ashes
in any one person it is in Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada.
Out of the great volume of his life there remain only neg
lected leaves which turn yellow in the autumn of history,
while the little breath of irony takes them as a toy to play
with and scatters them gaily throughout the world. In the
lawyer s case, as in that of Christopher Columbus, there
is ever the double play of truth and falsehood. The shades
of the two heroes flee through its labyrinths and all the
294 THE KNIGHT OF EL DORADO
rich human accents that filled their lives are lost there.
The Spaniards have always known how to fix the level
ling power of death in mighty phrases. Philip II was very
right when he said that he issued the decree for reform
ing burial abuses "so that what had been spent in vain
demonstrations and appearances should be spent and dis
tributed in what was for the service of God, and the in
crease of the divine cult, and the welfare of the souls of the
deceased." In the Dance of Death, written by an anony
mous poet of the fourteenth century., Death calls the two
maidens:
They came unwillingly and with bad grace
To hear my songs., for they are mournful ones.
But flowers and roses will not save them now,
Nor all the gewgaws they were wont to use.
If they could, they would avoid me ever,
But that cannot be; they are my brides.
For their acquired graces, these and all
Shall in another life have ugliness
And I will trade them nudity for clothes
For evermore a very sore vexation.
And for their palaces Til give just measure
In darkened tombs that foully smell inside,
And -for their tastiest viands, gnawing worms,
Which from within shall eat their rotted flesh.
Like that of the two damsels became the flesh of Quesada
and of Columbus. Little Gonzalo, the lawyer, well knew
that his armour was falling from him, that his head was
seeking the warm hollow of the pillow earth provides. That
the conquests of this world were slipping and this time
for ever from between his fingers. And that men would
QUESADA AND MANKIND 295
not carry out his last wishes as set forth in his will, nor give
his bones repose. And with a bitter disdain, mingled with
vows of charity, placing no faith in men, he took leave of
them until a later day Expecto resurrectionem mortuo-
rum. . . .
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299
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Restrepo Tirado, Ernesto: Historia de la Provincia de Santa
Maria
Descubrimiento y Conquista de Colombia
De Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada a Don Pablo Morillo: docu-
mentos in6ditos sobre la historia de la Nueva Granada
(Documents from the Archivo General de Indias, Seville)
Rivas, Raimundo: Los Fundadores de Bogotd
Rodriguez Fresle, Juan: El Garner o
Sim6n, Pedro: Noticias historiales de las Conquistas de Tierra
Firme en las Indias Occidentales
BIBLIOGRAPHY 301
* Torre y del Cerro, Jos6 de la: Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada
(Boletin de la Academia National de Historia, Bogotd)
Triana, Miguel: La Ciuilizacidn Chibcha
Velasco, Juan de: Historia del Reino de Quito
Vergara y Vergara, Jose Maria: Historia de la Literatura en
Nueva Granada
Zavala, Silvio Arturo: El Derecho de Indias en la Conquista de
America
Zweig, Stefan: Conqueror of the Seas: the Story of Magellan
GERMAN
ARCINIEGAS
( Hair-mahn Ar-seen-yaygus )
is on two grounds one of the most dis
tinguished men of Colombia, His books
have raised him to the position of one
of the two outstanding critics in his
country, and he has pursued for some
years an influential career in that re-
publics affairs, He has been in the
diplomatic service until recently and
is now Minister of Education.
By family tradition and by personal
conviction, Arciniegas has always iden
tified himself with the progressive ele
ment in Colombia. In his student days
he was a leader of the campaign for
educational reform, and many years
later fought in the Legislature for a
new University. In his writing, he has
consistently concerned himself with the
human aspects of the great historical
events of South America. Arciniegas
has visited the United States and ex
pects to return for a series of lectures.
The Knight of El Dorado is his first
book published in English.
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