that the empire of El Dorado is infinitely rich in mines." It seems probable that there was something in the ceremonies of the worship introduced by Bochica which gave rise to a tradition so generally spread. The strangest customs are found in the New World. In Mexico the sacrificers painted their bodies and wore a kind of cape, with hanging sleeves of tanned human skin. On the banks of the Caura, and in other wild parts of Guiana, where painting the body is used instead of tattooing, the nations anoint themselves with turtle-fat, and stick spangles of mica with a metallic lustre, white as silver and red as copper, on their skin, so that at a distance they seem to wear laced clothes. The fable of the gilded man is, perhaps, founded on a similar custom; and, as there were two sovereign princes in New Granada, the lama of Iraca and the secular chief or zaque of Tunja, we cannot be surprised that the same ceremony was attributed sometimes to the prince and sometimes to the high-priest. It is more extraordinary that, as early as the year 1535, the country of El Dorado was sought for on the east of the Andes. Robertson is mistaken in admitting that Orellana received the first notions of it (1540) on the banks of the Amazon. The history of Fray Piedro Simon, founded on the memoirs of Queseda, the conqueror of Cundirumarca, proves directly the contrary; and Gonzalo Diaz de Pineda, as early as 1536, sought for the gilded man beyond the plains of the province of Quixos. The ambassador of Bogota, whom Daza met with in the kingdom of Quito, had spoken of a country situate toward the east. Was this because the table-land of New Granada is not on the north, but on the north-east of Quito? We may venture to say that the tradition of a naked man covered with powdered gold must have belonged originally to a hot region, and not to the cold table-lands of Cundirumarca, where I often saw the thermometer sink below four or five degrees; however, on account of the extraordinary configuration of the country, the climate differs greatly at Guatavita, Tunja, Iraca, and on the banks of the Sogamozo. Sometimes, also, religious ceremonies are preserved which took rise in another zone; and the Muyscas, according to ancient traditions, made Bochica, their first legislator and the founder of their worship, arrive from the plains situate to the east of the Cordilleras. I shall not decide whether these traditions expressed an historical fact, or merely indicated, as we have already observed in another place, that the first Lama, who was the offspring and symbol of the sun, must necessarily have come from the countries of the East. Be it as it may, it is not less certain that the celebrity which the expeditions of Ordaz, Herrera, and Speier had already given to the Orinoco, the Meta, and the province of Papamene, situate between the sources of the Guaviare and Caqueta, contributed to fix the fable of El Dorado near to the eastern back of the Cordilleras.