A retelling of the Chibcha Indian legend about how the treasure of El Dorado came to be.

The El Dorado legend of a naked ruler who covered his body in gold dust became an obsession for conquistadores and successive adventurers in search of the sacred gold of the Indians in Central and Southern America. John Hemming, author of Red Gold, tells of the cruelty of the explorers but also of the indescribable hardships they suffered. A beguiling book illustrated with images from the Gold Museum in Bogota.

What ever happened to the legend of El Dorado, the tale of the mythical city of gold lost in the Amazon jungle? Charlotte Rogers argues that El Dorado has not been forgotten and still inspires the reckless pursuit of illusory wealth. The search for gold in South America during the colonial period inaugurated the "promise of El Dorado"—the belief that wealth and happiness can be found in the tropical forests of the Americas. That assumption has endured over the course of centuries, still evident in the various modes of natural resource extraction, such as oil drilling and mining, that characterize the region today. Mourning El Dorado looks at how fiction from the American tropics written since 1950 engages with the promise of El Dorado in the age of the Anthropocene. Just as the golden kingdom was never found, natural resource extraction has not produced wealth and happiness for the peoples of the tropics. While extractivism enriches a few outsiders, it results in environmental degradation and the subjugation, displacement, and forced assimilation of native peoples. This book considers how the fiction of five writers—Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris, Mario Vargas Llosa, Álvaro Mutis, and Milton Hatoum—criticizes extractive practices and mourns the lost illusion of the forest as a place of wealth and happiness.

Was the City of Gold a real place? Treasure seekers and mystery readers alike will love this action-packed Totally True Adventure. Towers of gold! Glittering streets! Jewels, coins, and more! Early Spanish explorers heard a story about El Dorado. It was a lost city in the Americas made of gold. The explorers believed it was real—and they believed they could find it! Soon the story became a legend, and the legend changed the world. But the city of El Dorado has not been found . . . yet. This nonfiction chapter book makes history exciting and accessible for younger readers and features illustrations, photographs, a map, Common Core connections, and additional Story Behind the Story facts. Perfect for readers of the I Survived series and the Who Was . . . ? series, Totally True Adventures are captivating nonfiction stories with not-to-be-missed bonus content.

One of the most persistent legends in the annals of New World exploration is that of the Land of Gold. This mythical site was located over vast areas of South America (and later, North America); the search for it drove some men mad with greed and, as often as not, to their untimely deaths. In this history of quest and adventure, Robert Silverberg traces the fate of Old World explorers lured westward by the myth of El Dorado. From the German conquistadores licensed by the Spanish king to operate out of Venezuela, to the journeys of Gonzalo Pizarro in the Amazon basin, and to the nearly miraculous voyage of Francisco Orellana to the mouth of the Amazon River, encountering the warlike women who gave the river its name, violence and bloodshed accompanied the determined adventurers. Sir Walter Raleigh and a host of other explorers spent small fortunes and many lives trying to locate Manoa, a city that was rumored to be El Dorado—City of Gold. Celebrated science fiction author Robert Silverberg recreates these legendary quests in The Golden Dream: Seekers of El Dorado.

Lake Titicaca and the vast region surrounding this deep body of water contain mysteries that we are just beginning to unravel. The area surrounding the world's highest navigable lake was home to some of the greatest civilizations in the ancient world. These civilizations were created by the ancestors of the Aymara and Quechua peoples who continue to live and work in Peru and Bolivia along the shores of this ancient body of water. This lavishly illustrated book provides a state-of-the-art description and explanation of the great cultures that inhabited this land from the first migrants ten millennia ago to the people who thrive here today. We will also discover the world of myth and legend that has grown up around this mysterious place, including the lost continent of Mu, the land of Paititi, El Dorado and the many mystic ruins of Titicaca. We then explore the results of a century of scientific research that provide an even more fabulous tale than the legends and myths combined. This book is an indispensable guide for any visitor who has an interest in archaeology, history and culture. It is likewise an excellent introduction for the interested reader who yearns to know more about this fascinating place.

A magical retelling of the myth of Eldorado, by Brazil's greatest writer. The Enchanted City has inhabited the fevered dreams of many European navigators and consquisitadores, but all have been unable to find it on the map.

*Includes pictures. *Includes historic accounts about the myth of El Dorado. *Includes a bibliography and footnotes for further reading. Alongside the famous Lost City of Atlantis, perhaps no mythological city has captured the imaginations of people or been the source for exploration quite like El Dorado, the fabled city of gold that the Spanish believed was located somewhere in South America. The origins of the Spaniards' belief in the existence of the mythical city was based on their rumors surrounding the tribal chief of the Muisca in present-day Colombia; the Spanish heard that his initiation included covering himself with gold dust and diving into Lake Guatavita. Of course, if the chief could cover himself in gold, he must have access to a lot of it, and around this figure, the myth of El Dorado sprang up as the location of it. Naturally, the belief in the existence of El Dorado propelled it from being merely a city to an entire empire itself, and this spurred several journeys in the 16th century, including one by Francisco Pizarro's half-brother, Gonzalo, and another by Sir Walter Raleigh. Although none of these journeys actually discovered such a place, they resulted in plenty of lives lost and a lot of exploration of the heart of South America. Moreover, despite the fact none of the explorers actually found El Dorado, the rumors and journeys only cemented the belief that such a place existed, and El Dorado was actually located on maps made by several European nations for centuries. As folklorist Jim Griffith once put it, "El Dorado shifted geographical locations until finally it simply meant a source of untold riches somewhere in the Americas."In fact, it would not be until about the early 19th century that explorer Alexander von Humboldt disproved El Dorado's existence, at least in the spot it was assumed to be located for over 200 years. Although no El Dorado was ever found, the myth still fascinates people today, and it remains a pop culture fixture around the globe. El Dorado is also still used as a metaphor not only for places where people seek to get rich quick but even as a mentality and mindset, much like the notion of the American Dream. El Dorado: The Search for the Fabled City of Gold chronicles the origins behind the myth and the history of the actual journeys that sought to discover the city. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about El Dorado like never before, in no time at all.

"Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope" (Hampton Sides), this masterfully told account of the American West from a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist sets a new standard as it sweeps from the California Gold Rush and beyond. In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame-and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. The West was where riches would reward the miner's persistence, the cattleman's courage, the railroad man's enterprise; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East. Balanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.

Recounts the adventurous life of Ralegh the English explorer who led many expeditions to the new world.