Sir Walter Raleigh's clues to the City of Gold.
Historybookboy:
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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BitburgAggie_7377:
Historybookboy, interesting question. But then all men are liars (at least some of the time). He could have simply been mistaken, or he could have been passing on hearsay, or he simply could have been trying to pick up investors for his next enterprise.
It would be interesting to know the answers, though.
BA
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seldom:
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:
Sir Walter Raleigh came very near to the vast gold deposits of the Guyana massif.
His descriptions of the region up the Orinoco are accurate when compared with modern knowledge of the region.
He claimed to have been only a few day's travel from the gold region. This is absolutely true, but only around 1850 the first large gold deposits became public knowledge.
Raleigh got his information from the local Indian tribes. They told him about plates made of gold. Very little is known about these Indian tribes.
I have some pictures of Indian Stone Tools that we found during a recent expedition. I will look for them and post the pictures here.
The world's most valuable gold nuggets come from this region. Some time ago a single gold nugget was sold at auction for US$ 630,000
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BitburgAggie_7377:
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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seldom:
Thats interesting Tinkerer tell us some more and please post the pictures when you can.
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Tinkerer:
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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Alan Hassell:
Thanks for the pictures Tinkerer nice one the gold looks like its come from a reef because of the gagged edges. Had it been alluvial it would of come from a river bed and would of had those sharp edges rounded off. Also one of the nuggets has quartz associated with it too which is a dead give away of reef gold. Thanks for sharing alan
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Tinkerer:
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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hardluck:
Hello All
Tinkerer nice gold nuggets. And thank you for the Orinoco version of the El Dorado story.
A lot of the El Dorado legends are based on a map with a mythical lake and city of gold based on reports to a map maker living in Europe. The Map is a highly stylized map with many errors and some items pure fantasy.
That said the fabled site of El Dorado will always amaze and mystify us. And there could be several sites that may fit the description.
Another thing Native quickly learned to get rid of Spaniards they only needed to tell them about gold in the neighboring mountains away from them. ;D
Hardluck ;)
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