The City of Gold Myth Takes Hold
As the years went by, many Spanish Conquistadors and other European adventurers who heard the El Dorado story version describing a city of gold, came to believe in its existence. Wishful thinking took hold and ran with them, and the lust for gold and fabulous riches said to be found in the mythical city ended up fueling various expeditions and searches in the 1500s and 1600s. None of them managed to discover the nonexistent city of gold. However, seekers who stuck to the original version of the story, about tribal chiefs dropping golden gifts into a lake, had some success. They set out to drain Lake Guatavita, and lowered its level enough to recover hundreds of golden artifacts from around the lake’s edges. However, whatever treasures had been tossed into the deeper waters remained beyond their reach.
The Search for El Dorado
Other than the partial success at Lake Guatavita, the only results of the search for El Dorado were numerous lives wasted in fruitless treasure hunts. One of the more jinxed searches was carried out by the English courtier and adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh, who conducted two expeditions in Guiana in search of El Dorado. In the second expedition, in 1617, an aging Raleigh grew too feeble to endure the rigors of the search. So he set up a base camp in Trinidad, and sent his son, Watt, up the Orinoco River to find El Dorado. The attempt ended in utter disaster, and in the death of Raleigh’s son in a battle against the Spaniards. Things did not end much better for Raleigh himself: upon his return to England, its king, James I, ordered him beheaded for defying his orders to avoid conflict with the Spanish.