The New Student's Reference Work/El Dorado

El Dorado (ĕl′dō̇-rä′dō̇), meaning the golden or gilded land, was a country supposed by the Spanish discoverers of America to exist somewhere in the New World. Their imaginations were fed by stories of the natives, and after the voyage of Orellaña down the Amazon in 1540 the report was greatly enlarged, and the locality of the fabulous region was placed near the headwaters of the Orinoco. Many a soldier of fortune perished in the search for it, and many a troop of adventurers came back with only a small part of their original number, before the city of gold was reluctantly looked upon as a fable of greedy minds, which liked to dream of greater rewards than the riches of Mexico and Peru. The most famous expeditions were those of Philip von Hutten and of Sir Walter Raleigh; a subsequent quest was that of Antonio Santos as late as 1780. See Von Langegg's El Dorado.