Sir Walter Raleigh's clues to the City of Gold.

In the 1600's, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a journal, claiming to have found Manoa (called "El Dorado" by the Spaniards) on Lake Parime in Guyana. This lake was later proved fictional, but Raleigh does leave a clue to it's location. I have a copy of the journal and it reads:

"It is founded upon lake of salt water of 200 leagues long unto mare caspiu."

I have no idea what this means but he seems pretty sure of it. He also says:

"It hath more abundance of gold than any part of peru."

I'm starting to agree with the academics. Was Raleigh a liar? 

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he simply could have been trying to pick up investors for his next enterprise.

Think BA is in the right ballpark here. Raleigh  believed in what he was searching for and if he had to make up a story or two to keep finessing in place so be. Lots of story's that we look at as fact are just 100+ year old story's told to make the teller feel important or to get a grub stake. Thats why we do this it's so much fun figuring out whats true and whats bull. RIGHT 

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Tinkerer, thanks.   I've always been fascinated/impressed by both Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake (and especially impressed by the intelligience they were able to gather from locals)

BA

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Here is the picture of the ordinary gold nuggets found during the 2006 expedition.
Sorry, wrong picture, that was the pre-historic stone tools.

So here are the gold nuggets.

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Here is the picture of the world's most valuable gold nugget.
It came from this region.
Check out this site, where gold nuggets from the Roraima Shield were auctioned.

 

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The prices were impressive. Many of the nuggets, if found by the natives, could have been hammered into plates of considerable size.

Raleigh got to the foot of the Roraima Shield, just a little bit further and he would have been in the gold region.

It would be interesting to make a modern day expedition equipped with GPS and metal detectors into the region Raleigh described.

Some previous research would probably produce quite a few interesting historic sites to search for and many CLUES TO THE FABLED ELDORADO.

One interesting aspect to search for, would be the elusive lake PARIMA that was on all the earlier maps of the region.
As time passed, the lake was drawn smaller and smaller on the maps and finally disappeared.

Did lake PARIMA really exist? 

Where was it located?

What happened to it?

Could it have been a blockage of the Orinoco, or the Caroni, caused by an earthquake that was slowly carried away by the yearly floods of the river, until the lake was finally gone?

Today, with Google Earth and GPS, there are new possibilities to finally uncover the great city of gold, the ELDORADO. 

Lake PARIMA plays an important role in the old legend of ELDORADO.

 

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