CHAPTER II.
META.
As we have mentioned, the conquest of New Granada by Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada concluded, as to the whole of Spanish America, that series of extraordinary discoveries of precious metals in the possession of the natives which exercised so sudden an influence on the value of gold, among European peoples in particular. When the Peruvian spoil was divided at Cassamarca in 1533 the peso, which contains about the same quantity of metal as our dollar, had an exchangeable value nearly the same as that of a pound sterling, or $4.85; but by 1553 its value had declined, according to the learned Mexican student, Orozco y Berra, to $2.93, or about forty per cent. During these twenty years Mexico alone yielded in gold and silver together 1,355,793 pesos. The four ships which arrived in Spain from Peru on the 5th of December, 1533, and the 9th of January and 3d of June, 1534, carried, without including golden vessels and ornaments, 708,590 pesos in gold and 240,680 pesos in silver. The spoil of New Granada amounted to 246,972 pesos in gold alone. These examples, drawn from two years only in South America, show clearly that the great depreciation of the precious metals we have just cited is to be ascribed principally to the findings in Peru and New Granada. The value of silver fell about eighty-four per cent, in Europe between 1514 and 1610, a fall which was caused by the working of the silver mines of Potosi in Bolivia. These yielded, between 1545 and 1564, 641,250,000 pesos or piastres in silver. The discovery of New Granada had an especial effect on the value of emeralds.
It cannot be denied that this sudden depreciation of the metallic media of exchange had a great influence on the demand for them, while it covered the search for them with the mantle of a legitimate want. The need of specie was evident, and the less the material of which coins were made was worth, the more of it must be had. To this was added the fact that the simple necessities of life on which Europeans depended for existence were at first not to be got, for example, in Peru. The first horses sold there brought 6000 pesos (equivalent to at least $28,000 in present values); and in 1554 Alonzo de Alvarado offered in vain 10,000 pesos, or $29,300, for an ordinary saddle-horse. Between thirty and forty pesos were paid in Cassamarca soon after the division of the spoil for a pair of half-boots, and forty or fifty pesos for a sword. The first cow was sold in Cuzco in 1550 for two hundred pesos. Nine years later the price of a cow had fallen to seventeen pesos. Wine began to be cheaper about 1554, when a ship landed at Truxillo with two thousand casks; the first cask was sold for six hundred ducats, and the last one for two hundred ducats. Still, no explanation or excuse can be found in these extreme instances for the reckless, passionate eagerness with which the Spaniards, without waiting to secure one treasure, pursued the visions of others. The transactions and expeditions subsequent to the conquest of New Granada, of which the dorado was the object, depended on such fancies.
Before describing the second period of the search for the dorado, let us return to the fourth decade of the sixteenth century and take a view of a number of enterprises carried out at the same time with the conquests of Peru and New Granada, by the aid of which we may be better prepared in historical and geographical knowledge for the understanding of later events. The regions on which we have to fix our attention for this purpose are the present republic of Venezuela and southeastern New Granada.
While Dalfinger was engaged in his arduous expedition to the Magdalena, considerable attempts were begun to found colonies on the northeastern coast of the South American continent. Antonio Sedeño, contador of the island of Puerto Rico, was a wealthy and prominent man. One of his contemporaries, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, says of him that "under the pretext of serving God and his king he hoped, through what he possessed and through his estates on the island of St. John, to acquire a larger property on the island of Trinidad and on the mainland, and greater honor. But it did not turn out to the advantage of his purse, for while he despised what he had, he pursued the schemes of his fancy. . . . This lust for ruling and for being more than others caused him to lose his property, and, what was more, his time too, and exposed his body as well as his soul to great danger and trouble."[1] Sedeño sought and obtained the appointment of governor of Trinidad, with the design of "building a strong house there" (de labrar una casa fuerte)[2] of which he should be the alcalde. But his concession did not extend beyond the island.
Nevertheless, having left San Lúcar de Barrameda on the 18th of September, 1530, with seventy men, Sedeño's first act after reaching Trinidad was to take formal possession of it and then pass over to the mainland. There, on the Gulf of Paria, he built, outside of his province, and contrary to his commission, the "strong house" which he had contemplated building in Trinidad. This act, apparently insignificant in itself, was of great importance for the future. Sedeño left a small garrison in the "strong house," and sailed to the Antilles to procure reënforcements. He hoped that he had in the meantime secured undisputed possession of the mainland, even though it was without higher sanction. But without his knowledge a former companion of Cortés, Diego de Ordaz, the same person to whom is ascribed the first ascension of the Mexican volcano Popocatepetl, had obtained in Spain a concession for the colonization of the then very indefinite district of Marañon on the mainland. This concession was granted in 1530, and included permission to occupy the coast from the territory leased to Welser & Co. to the mouth of the Marañon, and to erect four fortresses. An allowance of 725,000 maravedis a year was set aside for him, while he had also an assured income from Mexico of between 6000 and 7000 pesos. Ordaz fitted out two ships and a caravel in Spain at his own cost, and sailed from San Lúcar de Barrameda with four hundred and fifty men on the 20th of October, 1531. Although an additional caravel joined the squadron at the Canary Islands, and the aggregate force was increased to six hundred men, yet, in consequence of heavy storms, the Admiral's ship was the only vessel that came in sight of the South American coast, near the mouth of the Amazon.[3] Ordaz sailed on thence northward along the coast to Paria, where he found the fort built by Sedeño. He captured this post by assault, regarding it as belonging to his concession, and kept it for a further base of operations. Ordaz thought so little of the region of the mouths of the Amazon and. of the coast of southern Guiana that he abandoned all attempts there and decided to turn to the nearer lying mouths of the Orinoco. He fitted out a flotilla of seven galleys from Paria, with which, with two hundred and eighty men and eighteen horses, to explore the thickly wooded labyrinth of the delta of that river.
The fleet was worked with great difficulty through one of the numerous channels up into the principal arm of the river. The relations of Ordaz with the Arnaks,[4] the scattered inhabitants of that swampy, unhealthy wilderness, were for the most part of a tolerably friendly character. But when the tribe of Baratubaro refused to furnish him provisions he punished them severely for it. Sailing up the principal stream, he at length came to the falls of the Orinoco, near Atures and Maypures, since made famous by Alexander von Humboldt, where the miles of rapids and small cataracts by which the course of the river was broken made further navigation impossible. Before this the officers of the expedition had vainly tried to persuade Ordaz to abandon his boats and press into the interior. Now it was necessary to leave the boats. On the right extended a broad savanna, on which a hostile encounter took place with the Indians. They informed Ordaz that the river flowed from a large lake which lay in the midst of high and rugged mountains. The way thither lay through a province called Meta, which was thickly populated and rich in gold. Silver, which the Spaniards showed the natives, was not known to them, but they recognized gold at once as the substance that was abundant in Meta. They pointed to the west as the direction in which this land was to be found. Unfortunately, the river was falling so rapidly that Ordaz would not venture to march inland. Unwillingly he had to embark again and begin a dangerous and laborious retreat. Eighty of his men died from the hardships of the voyage; with the rest, ill and despondent, he reached Paria. His purpose was, since the Indians near the falls of the Orinoco had spoken so highly of the wealth of Meta, to march overland thither from the northern coast of Venezuela the Gulf of Cariaco. He left a little colony of a hundred souls at Paria, and sent a part of his force under Alonzo de Herrera to Cumaná, following it himself eight days later. To his surprise he was received at Cumaná with cannon-shots, and was informed that his men were on the island of Cubagua, and that the post belonged to that jurisdiction. Greatly astonished at this unexpected communication and at his hostile reception, he crossed over to Cubagua, where most unpleasant information was imparted to him.
During the period of nearly two years which Ordaz had spent on the Orinoco Sedeño had been informed of the occupation of the post he had established at Paria. He at once appealed to Spain against what he styled a violent attack on his rights. He cited the terms of Ordaz's concession, which, indeed, confirmed to him the coast from the Marañon to the limits of Welser's leasehold, but defined the length of the coast-line as two hundred leagues from the mouth of the Maranon. Sedeño insisted that under the latter clause Paria was outside of that concession, and therefore contested the right of Ordaz to occupy the post there. The contention was in many respects characteristic of the times. It especially illustrates the vagueness of the geographical ideas of the period, which estimated the distance from the easternmost point of the German concession in Venezuela to the mouth of the Amazon as only two hundred leagues. The Crown decided in favor of Sedeño so far as to order Ordaz to restore to him the property he had seized, and to satisfy himself with the prescribed two hundred leagues of coast, which he could choose either "from the Cape of La Vela toward the Marañon, or from the Marañon toward the Cape of La Vela," as he might prefer.[5] Ordaz was further ordered to restore to the jurisdiction of the city of New Cadiz, on the island of Cubagua, the coast of Cumaná, which he claimed. The inhabitants of Cubagua had joined with Sedeno against Ordaz, and when the latter came upon the island he found that his people had been dispersed, and his lieutenant, Alonzo Herrera, was held a prisoner. Ordaz all at once found himself alone, and grieving bitterly over his loss, sailed for Spain, in order to contend there for his claims, and if possible to organize a new expedition. Death overtook him on the ocean in 1533, and the waves were his grave. Of all their laborious enterprises, there was left to the party of Ordaz only the post in Paria. Sedeño seized this also, and thus seemed to make himself sole heir of the scanty acquisitions of his unfortunate rival. The chief of them was, so far as the interests of the time were concerned, a name—Meta; signifying the intangible, enticing vision of a land of gold, which was to be found west of the Orinoco. But before Sedeño could enter upon the pursuit of this vision a bitter quarrel arose between him and his confederates at Cubagua over the ambiguous decision of the Crown already mentioned. The control of the island of Trinidad cost him much labor and a large sum of money, and when he landed at Paria on his return thence he found that the island of Cubagua now claimed that post.
It is aside from the purpose of this sketch to consider the controversies and contentious, continuing till the end of 1534, between Sedeño and the administration of Cubagua, of which the "strong house" in Paria, called by Oviedo "the house of discord" (casa de discordia), was the object. In consequence of them Sedeño was put in prison. Nothing was accomplished on the mainland, because each party alternately stood in the way of the other engaging in any important enterprise; but man-stealing was carried on on the northern coast of Venezuela, as before from Cubagua and Margarita, without hindrance. Notwithstanding the complete miscarriage of the enterprises of Diego de Ordaz and his death, a number of men and officers at Paria remained faithful to the memory, at least, of his plans. They had indeed to submit to the authority which was exercised alternately by Sedeño and the people at Cubagua, but they never gave up the hope of making use on their own account of the information which they had collected on their memorable campaign to the falls of the Orinoco. Alonzo de Herrera, the former prisoner at Cubagua, afterward Sedeño's associate, finally acquired and maintained the command of the "house of discord" on the mainland at Paria.
Among the few comrades who had sailed with Ordaz was Geronimo D'Ortal, his treasurer, who reached Spain, and obtained from the Crown a concession, as successor of the deceased Ordaz, to occupy and administer Paria. The report of this arrangement soon reached the West Indies, and produced no little commotion there. Sedeño, leaving Trinidad, sailed for Margarita, but his former allies of Cubagua pursued him there and compelled him to go back to Puerto Rico. In revenge, he determined to join with D'Ortal, as soon as he should arrive, against the people of Cubagua. D'Ortal arrived in Paria with two hundred men in October, 1534, and was joyfully received by Alonzo de Herrera and his company of about thirty men. He at once began preparations to explore the Orinoco, and "find there that province of Meta, of which he had learned through the natives that it was a land of great wealth."[6] But, mindful of the experience of his predecessors, he sent thither only a part of his force (one hundred and thirty men) under the command of Alonzo de Herrera, with nine galleys and a caravel. Herrera was to establish himself at the upper end of the delta of the Orinoco, among the Aruas (Waruas or Aruaks), while D'Ortal should wait in Paria for the arrival at the West India Islands of the reinforcement of a hundred men, which Juan Fernandez de Alderete was to bring him from Spain. The reinforcement came to Cubagua, and D'Ortal went there to receive it. Then, in the year 1535, he returned to Paria.[7] Thence he went to Trinidad, and sent a detachment of his men back to the coast to unload a ship that was waiting there with provisions. Ten leagues from Trinidad they found three small boats, and in them, to their no little surprise, the dwindled remnant of the expedition of Alonzo de Herrera.
That valiant and adventurous officer, of whom Oviedo says that "he knew much better how to kill Indians than to govern them," had gone up the Orinoco to the Rio Apure (Carao), and thence—where he was assured that "Guiana lay behind him and Meta before him," and the reports of the wealth of the latter region were confirmed—" to a bay or arm of the sea, which empties into the same river Huyapari, and is called the bay of Meta."[8] In twenty days he reached "the mouth of that bay," which seems to be nothing else than the mouth of the Rio Meta. It was the rainy season, the streams were very high, and the boats had to be drawn with ropes. The water often came up to the breasts of the towing men, and it was only with extreme toil that they succeeded in advancing in forty days twenty leagues westward up the Meta. Oviedo, a contemporary whom we have often cited, says of this incident: "I do not believe that any of those who took part in this expedition would have taken so much trouble to get into Paradise." By the end of the forty days the current had grown to be so strong that farther advance on the river, even by towing, became impossible. The whole country was inundated;[9] yet a hundred men left the boats and tried to press, through these plains converted into a series of lagoons, farther west to Meta. Most of the scattered inhabitants had fled, but they at last met an Indian woman who understood the dialects they had so far heard. She promised to conduct the Spaniards to a large village, but warned them that its inhabitants would certainly eat up the Christians, seeing they were so few. When she had told enough falsehoods to the whites, Herrera had her hanged "in thanks for her work, and since he was groping around, as it were, in the dark, he thought he might find the way better by means of this kind of holy torch, or by this good act. No wonder that an equally speedy and still sadder death fell upon him and others."[10]
The country assumed a more favorable aspect fifteen or twenty leagues from the point where the boats were left. The dry spots, which had hitherto only rarely shown themselves out of the boundless waters, became more evident, and upon them were vestiges of food plants, such as maize and yucca. The troops halted at a group of twelve huts, and sent thence some provisions to the sick and dying who had been left on the boats. The rest at this place was, however, of short duration, for the Indians soon attacked the camp by night. The assault was repulsed, but Alonzo de Herrera and three other Spaniards were mortally wounded, and died soon afterward in violent delirium from arrow poisoning. All the horses but one were killed in the fight, and the men were obliged, after returning to their boats, to use this one for food. The return voyage was speedily made, and they reached the Orinoco in fourteen days. Their leader was Alvaro de Ordaz. Willingly complying with the wishes of his men, he decided to leave this river as quickly as possible and return to Paria. Hunger and privation of every kind, hostile attacks and illness were diminishing the company nearly every day, so that the remnant, which, as already mentioned, met D'Ortal's men at the seashore, formed only a little band of haggard sufferers. Their accounts showed that D'Ortal had abandoned the Orinoco in order to approach Meta overland from the north, from the Gulf of Cariaco. The conflicts of which the post at Paria was the occasion were renewed this time about the coast-land between Cumaná and the Rio Neveri. Three parties were jealously keeping watch upon one another, and, wherever it was possible, barring one another from the interior. Sedeño had at first united with D'Ortal, and then separated from him. Opposed to both were the "men of Cubagua," whose chief interest was to hold the coast for the preservation of their own existence, and for the prosecution of the traffic in men.
The expedition to the south, begun by D'Ortal in 1535, entirely miscarried. He tried to reach Meta, first by single reconnaissances, and then in a general campaign. But his men rose against him on the Orinoco, which he possibly struck below the Rio Apure.[11] A part of them wandered away, and we shall find them again later on in Federmann's following. The rest went back to the coast, where they delivered their commander up to justice. He remained a prisoner sixteen months, although his only crime was misfortune; and when he was released he had lost all desire for further campaigns, and "determined to marry." "And as his purpose was a good one," Oviedo says, "God gave him a good wife, a respectable and virtuous widow of suitable age, who had means. . . enough for him to live decently in our city of San Domingo on the island of Hispaniola, with more security and fame than could come to him in all these wars, or in hunting the fabulous riches of Meta, of which no one knows anything to this day, or can find the way there without its costing yet more human lives and leading to other troubles. To this point has our story come, this month of August, in the year one thousand five hundred and forty-five."[12] This event took place in 1536.
The map which Oviedo made about 1545 of the regions successively traversed by Ordaz, Herrera, and D'Ortal defined the results of all these expeditions better than any description could do. The fancied golden empire had not been found north of the lower course of the Orinoco and east of the territory given to the Welsers. It was the fortune of the Germans in Venezuela to determine what was the foundation of the myth which had thus transplanted itself into the eastern region of northern South America.
While Ambrosius Dalfinger was still lost on his campaign towards the Magdalena, the Welsers sent to Coro to his support a division of soldiers, with twenty-four German miners, under the command of Nicolaus Federmann, a burger of Ulm. This reinforcement probably arrived at Coro in June, 1530. Immediately afterward came another reinforcement upon three ships, and with it an agent of the Welsers, Hans Seissenhoffer, who was made governor in Dalfinger's absence. Federmann, who seems to have been a capable, crafty, and energetic man, became Seissenhoffer's lieutenant. On account of these changes the Spanish officers were withdrawn from Coro, an act which seems to have produced a great bitterness, especially against Federmann. When Dalfinger unexpectedly returned a short time after this, Seissenhoffer resigned his position, but Federmann remained—"as lieutenant of the governor and captain general, as which the whole army recognized me."[13]
Dalfinger brought back only vague accounts and a relatively considerable quantity of gold. He had not found the dorado, and had again withdrawn from the northeastern border of Cundinamarca. He did not tarry long at Coro, but sailed to San Domingo for the recovery of his health, leaving Federmann in his place. Federmann says: "Finding myself now in the city of Coro with a number of men who were unoccupied, I determined to undertake a campaign into the interior toward the south or the Southern Sea, in the hope of finding something profitable." He left the coast on the 12th of September, 1530, with "one hundred and ten Spaniards on foot, and sixteen on horseback, and a hundred Indians." His geographical notices are so extremely vague that we can follow him only a little way on this remarkable campaign. His estimates of distances are entirely untrustworthy, and the names of the Indian tribes which he met are often hardly recognizable. He reached the Rio Tocuyo in northwestern Venezuela on the 1st of October, crossed it, and went south in search of a tribe of dwarfs called the Ayemanes. He met these little people,[14] who, he says, averaged five "palmos," or three and a half feet in height, and were well shaped.[15] Thence he went south, from tribe to tribe, across the district of Barquicimeto, to the Cuybas, near Truxillo, and the Cuyones, against whom he could not make headway, and was obliged to turn toward the west. The farthest point he reached was Itabana, situated on a river which he calls the Coaheri, and which was perhaps the Apure. Here he turned back, and arrived again in Coro March 17, 1531. The material results of his journey were small. The country he passed through consisted by turns of rugged sierras and savannas. The tribes, warlike and partially cannibal, were nomadic or half-sedentary people, and his contact with them was usually of a hostile character. He obtained some gold (3000 pesos) from a tribe near Barquicimeto; and there, too, a report was current of a country rich in gold in the direction of the "Southern Sea." The whole campaign was a mere reconnaissance, but was at the same time to Federmann himself a preparatory school for his subsequent great expedition. Federmann went to Spain from Coro, and on the death of Dalfinger, shortly afterward, obtained the position of governor of Venezuela. But the Spanish colonists there protested most earnestly against his appointment, and in order to satisfy them without offending the Welsers the Cardinal de Siguenza recalled him after he had started, and Georg von Speyer was sent as governor to Coro. Federmann followed him privately, and Von Speyer, appreciating his energy and knowledge of the country, made him his lieutenant, about the year 1535.
A dispute was then going on between the provinces of Venezuela and Santa Marta concerning the possession of the valley inhabited by the Pacabueyes Indians, south of Cabo de la Vela, between the lake of Maracaybo on the east and the Sierra Santa Marta on the west. In order to put an end to this contention, Georg von Speyer despatched Federmann thither, with instructions to occupy the country, hold it by force of arms against "the people of Santa Marta," and then proceed farther west. After Federmann's departure on this errand, Georg von Speyer himself began a campaign southward. He seems to have been led to this enterprise by some indefinite reports, and to have considered the expedition to the west, which he entrusted to his lieutenant, as a secondary affair. He had doubtless heard of Meta. Georg von Speyer, following a vanguard which he had sent forward, left Coro May 13, 1535, and reached the vicinity of Barquicimeto by the middle of July. He there found his vanguard in full retreat, it having been beaten by the Cuybas Indians, the same whom we met on Federmann's first journey holding the country around Tucuyo. They were a warlike tribe, and, according to Herrera, cannibals, but also gave some attention to agriculture. Von Speyer, whose whole command now consisted of three hundred and sixty-one men, with eighty horses, easily overcame the Cuybas, but his men soon felt the effects of the unhealthy climate of the country, with its rivers everywhere out of their banks, so much that he was obliged to give up the march to the south and proceed southwesterly, along the mountains on his right. Thus he followed Federmann's former route. The health of his men became so critical when among the Cuyones Indians, eight days' journey from the Cuybas, that he could go on with only one hundred foot soldiers and thirty horsemen. He left the rest of his men behind, as being in no condition to march, under Francisco de Velasco. The country east and south being flooded, he could do nothing else than follow the southwestern slope of the sierra. Occasional raids into the mountains procured maize and salt. In a short time he was joined by most of the men he had left behind, who had recovered; but soon afterward he had to leave one hundred and thirty sick under the command of Sancho de Murga. The place where this occurred was, according to Oviedo, about one hundred and seventy leagues from Coro.
With a hundred and fifty foot and forty-nine cavalry, Von Speyer reached and crossed the Rio Apure, the great northern tributary of the Orinoco, on the 2d of February, 1536. To that point we hear of no clue leading him, of no new accounts brought to him, which might have excited the hope of a liberal reward. Like Quesada, he pursued with iron tenacity a vague purpose, that of searching the south. His experiences were all discouraging. The country, though rich in its profusion of tropical vegetation, gave him no gold. The western sierra was dreary and rugged, the eastern plains were unhealthy wastes of flooded marshes and inundated woods and prairies. The vast region was only sparsely inhabited by wild Indian tribes. While the endurance, the careful direction, and wise leading which he displayed during this first period of his campaign stamp him as one of the greatest captains of the time in America, his mild and discreet behavior toward the aborigines likewise marks Georg von Speyer as a man of honorable disposition. Even the Spanish writers agree in this. Although, unhappily, too little appreciated, he is one of the noblest figures of the Spanish conquest. Pursuing his unhopeful way toward the southwest, he crossed the upper part of the Casanare. The Zaquitios Indians inhabiting the slope of the sierra were friendly and well disposed, and told him that on the other side of the mountains, on an unwooded plateau, dwelt a tribe rich in gold, who had tame sheep. Two moons farther in that direction was a chieftain named Caziriguey, who ruled over many people, and had a great temple. While the direction in which this rich land was said to lie (west) undoubtedly pointed to Bogota, the story of the "tame sheep" makes it certain that knowledge of Peru had penetrated to this place, which was in northeastern New Granada. The Zaquitios offered to show Georg von Speyer the pass through which he could reach that plateau, and he eagerly accepted the service. Oviedo says: "This information gratified, strengthened, and encouraged the governor and the Spaniards so much that all the hardships they had endured were forgotten, and the way lying before them appeared as safe and easy as the streets of Valladolid and Medina del Campo." But they searched for the pass in vain. Having arrived at the foot of the sierra, they were attacked by night in a village. A desperate battle took place, and although after two hours victory rested with the whites, they gave up further advance in that direction, and again followed the slope of the mountain toward the south. They had now entered the territory of a powerful tribe of Indians, which was then widely spread between the sources of the western tributaries of the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare, but is now confined to the shores of one branch of the Bio Negro. This tribe was that of the Uaupés.
No other branch of the South American aborigines affords so complete an example of that peculiar form of social organization which Mr. Lewis H. Morgan has shown to have existed among the Indians of the whole United States, as the Uaupés. They are, and were in the sixteenth century, village Indians of a low type. Their houses, built of wood, with gable roofs supported on upright posts, form large parallelograms, one hundred and fifteen feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and thirty feet high. The entrance, eight feet high, on one of the gable sides, is curtained with a mat. Several families inhabit a communal building of this kind, and choose from among themselves the "tushaúa" or chief of the house. The Uaupés were divided into a number of gentes (probably about thirty), and the names of twenty-one of them are well known.[16] The Uaupés plant and cultivate maize and manioc, and have in later times raised besides sugar-cane and tobacco. They are skilful fishermen, and their canoes, hollowed out of logs, are often forty feet long. Both sexes go entirely naked, but the men wear a crown of feathers on their heads. Their houses are also used as burial-places for the dead. They received Von Speyer in an unfriendly manner, painted in black, and opposing the Spaniards with spears, bows and arrows, and clubs, under the protection of large shields of tapir-skin; but they could not resist the firearms and cavalry of the white men.
Von Speyer was forced to make a slow retreat, more by the violent rains than by the resistance of the Uaupés. Raging torrents pouring down from the mountains in the west often prevented his movements for days at a time. He heard again there, however, the name of Meta, and learned that he was near the source of that river. He was assured that civilized tribes having much gold dwelt there, and he determined to seek those tribes first of all.
Having returned to the country of the Zaquitios, he sent a detachment farther back to bring up the rest of his troops, whom he had left in the rear, sick. But they were not found. Following the route of their commander, they had gone on to the Apure, and
then, giving him up, had returned to Coro. There were left to Von Speyer one hundred and forty men and forty-four horses. With these he went forward again to the Uaupés, and finally reached the sources of the Meta. The Uaupés who inhabited this region had some gold of twenty-two carats and some fine silver, but he was told that the rich tribe he was looking for dwelled beyond that country, on the other side of the western mountains. He tried in vain to push into the mountains; their inaccessible cliffs repelled every effort. He heard here of white men who some time before had tried to reach the Meta from the east with boats.[17]
Georg von Speyer was persuaded by his captain, Estevan Martin, to go farther south. Bloody conflicts took place with the Uaupés before he crossed the Rio Guaviare (or Boayare). On the other side of this river, Diego de Montes, "cosmographer and a man skilled in the use of the astrolabe," determined the latitude—2° 40′. The western mountain range here took a southwesterly direction; Von Speyer was on the borders of Ecuador. The hope rose again that by proceeding along that chain he could find a pass. Estevan Martin encouraged his hopes, and the Uaupés pointed thither to the strange tribe of the Chogues as being at the gateway to the land of gold. But after crossing the Rio Caqueta (also called the Japura) in northern Ecuador, a detachment sent out under Estevan Martin to ascend that stream was attacked by the Chogues, and its leader was slain. Von Speyer at once avenged the death of his associate, and explored the course of the river to the mountains, but was not able to cross them anywhere. His men were now exhausted, and yielding to their entreaties and remonstrances, he began a retreat on August 10, 1537, with one hundred and thirty men, of whom hardly fifty were fit for service. He had got to one degree north of the equator, and his road, if he had succeeded in crossing the mountains, would have led him to Pasto, between Quito and New Granada.
The advance had been continued through twenty-seven months; the retreat over the same road occupied more than nine months. The Guaviare detained him several days. He was surprised to learn when near the Rio Apure that his lieutenant Federmann had been there two months before, a fact he could not account for, because he had supposed Federmann to be engaged in the northwest. Without delaying longer he continued his march, and finally arrived at Coro, May 27, 1538, after an absence of three years.
While the material returns of this extraordinary campaign (5518 pesos in gold) were so small that it must be considered a total failure as to that object, the geographical results were of great value for later times. Besides visiting all the western tributaries of the Orinoco, the llanos of Casanare and Zaguan, the northwestern branches of the Amazon, and the eastern slope of the Cordillera of Pasto, Georg von Speyer's expedition gives us our earliest data concerning the ethnography of these regions. The campaign was also of the greatest importance for the special object of our research. Ordaz, Herrera, and D'Ortal had heard the story of the riches of Meta on the lower and middle Orinoco and in western Venezuela, and had sought for them. The result of their arduous campaigns was that the treasure was not to be found in those districts, that its seat was to be sought farther west, in the mountains in which the river rises, near a great lake. Georg von Speyer had now traversed the whole of western Venezuela and western New Granada, had reached the source of the Meta, and had thereby made it evident that the story of Meta referred to the treasures of New Granada, and was the echo, in another shape, of the legend of the dorado, which had been transported to the lower Orinoco. The gilded chieftain had vanished from the picture, and only the indefinite idea of a tribe in the highlands rich in gold was left; to this was joined the recollection of a lake, afterward transformed into the great "lagoon of the dorado," which we shall find again in "Parime." While Georg von Speyer was thus unwittingly determining the true character of the myth, his able but faithless lieutenant had found the real home of the dorado the plateau of Cundinamarca.
Instead of proceeding westward, as his commission required, Nicolaus Federmann had hardly learned that Von Speyer had gone south when he followed in nearly the same direction, but more toward the southeast. Arriving in the vicinity of the Orinoco east of the Apure, he met the mutinous soldiers of the troop of Geronimo D'Ortal, and incorporated them with his own company. Then he turned toward the west, crossed the Meta, went on to the foot of the mountains, and after he had ascertained that Von Speyer was retreating, pressed boldly into the sierra. Where his chief had failed, he succeeded; he crossed over the steep mountain, and, as we have recorded in the first part of the "Dorado," reached the plateau of Cundinamarca. But he had come too late. Quesada, as we know, had anticipated him. Federmann bitterly deplored the fact in his letter of August 1, 1539, from Jamaica to Francisco Davila. He charged the dead Dalfinger, as well as the then still living Georg von Speyer, with incapacity and want of courage, because "they might otherwise the one eight years, the other three years before—have secured the wealth which now the people of Santa Marta had taken." In this letter, which Oviedo has preserved in abstract, Federmann wrote: "The stories about Meta are not wholly false, for that river does rise in the mountains that border the plain; and the House of Meta which was sought for so long is the Temple of Sogamosa, the holy objects in which the people of Santa Marta have now carried away in sacks." These words of an important eye-witness prove that it was the legend of the dorado which, transferred to Meta, distorted and diluted in many ways and spread throughout eastern South America, stimulated the bold enterprises we have sketched. If we dwell a little longer on some of these enterprises, it is, first, because they are so little known—in no case so well known as they ought to be; and second, there is associated with them, especially to the German public, a direct interest in the deeds of the Germans in South America. We shall, in the third part of the "Dorado," again, and for the last time, meet Germans in pursuit of the gilded chieftain.
- ↑ "Hist. gen. y nat. de Indias," lib. xxiv. cap. i.
- ↑ Herrera, dec. v. lib. ii. cap. i.
- ↑ The knowledge of this river was so imperfect at this time that we cannot be sure this statement is correct, although Herrera says (dec. iv. lib. x. cap. ix.): "Diego de Ordás reached the Rio Marañon with the intention of beginning his explorations there."
- ↑ From arna, tiger.
- ↑ Herrera, doc. iv. lib. x. cap. x.
- ↑ Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. vii.
- ↑ According to Oviedo there were two San Miguels: the "house of contention," where D'Ortal landed, "en aquel golpho é costa de Paria" (lib. xxxiv. cap. viii.); and the later San Miguel de Neveri, east of Piritú. Oviedo and Herrera do not agree concerning the latter post.
- ↑ Huyapari was one of the many names of the Orinoco. It is also written Biapari and Uiapari.
- ↑ The height of water in the Orinoco in the interior of Guiana varies from twenty-eight to thirty-four feet annually.
- ↑ Oviedo.
- ↑ Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. xv.
- ↑ Oviedo, lib. xxiv. cap. xvi.
- ↑ "Relacion de Nicolaus Federmann le Jeune," cap. ii. Translated by Ternaux-Compans. The original was printed at Haguenau in 1557. We here follow almost exclusively the story of Federmann himself. Oviedo does not mention Fedennann's next campaign, but says that he was in Coro during the rest of Dalfinger's life. Herrera also says nothing about it. Hence his own account is our only authority.
- ↑ Probably near the present Barquicimeto.
- ↑ We should add to this that nobody but Federmann mentions these dwarfs.
- ↑ They are: Ananas; Cobéus (man-eater); Piraiurus (fishsnout); Pisas (net); Tapurus (tapir); Uaracus (fish); Tucunderas (ant); Jaeamis (trumpet-bird); Mucuras (opossum); Taiassus (hog); Tijucos (mud); Arapassos (woodpecker); Tucanas (pepper-eater); Ucearras (crane); Ipecas (duck); Gis (axe); Coua (wasp); Corocoro (green ibis); Armadillos (armadillo); Tatus; Penimbucas (ashes). These names are somewhat similar to the designations which the Iroquois chose for their gentes, and prove, by the use of the names of peculiar animals, that, the tribe of the Uaupés was certainly formed or divided up within tropical America.
- ↑ This story related to the unfortunate expedition of Herrera.