[1] The performance of these ceremonies is vouched for by Lucas Fernandez Piedrahita, Bishop of Panama; Pedro Simon, and other early Spanish historians, translated and quoted by A. F. Bandelier in his work, "The Gilded Man (El Dorado)." This version agrees with that described in the volume written by the modern historian, Dr. Liborio Zerda, professor of the University of Colombia, _El Dorado, Estudio Historico, Ethnografico, Y Arqueologico_. [2] Translated by A. F. Bandelier. [3] Oviedo, or Oviedo y Valdéz, royal histriographer, who witnessed the first return of Columbus to Spain in 1493. He was later a treasury officer at Darien, governor of Cartagena, and _alcaide_ of the fort at Santo Domingo. He wrote the first general account of the discoveries in America, and it has remained a standard authority. His principal work is _Historia natural y general de las Indias_ in fifty books. [4] For the convenience of the reader the spelling has been modernized in this and the following extracts from Hakluyt. [5] Martinez was the gunner or officer "who had charge of the munitions." [6] Commonly spelled Huascar and Atalualpa. [7] "Her father loved me, oft invited me, Still questioned me the story of my life From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have pass'd. I ran it through, even from my boyish days To the very moment that he bade me tell it: Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving incidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery,'of my redemption thence, And portance in my travel's history: Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose head touch heaven, It was my hint to speak,--such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline." --Shakespeare. (_The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice_.) [8] The date of the first English edition of Sir John Mandeville's book of travels was 1499. According to his own account he discovered this and other wonders in the kingdom of Ethiopia. The book was widely read, very popular in several languages, and was one of the earliest printed books, being published in Germany about 1475. Recent investigations have shown that almost the whole of the matter was cribbed from other authors, and that as a genuine explorer, Sir John Mandeville was the Dr. Frederick Cook of his age. [9] Cayley's _Life of Raleigh_. [10] Translation of J. A. Van Heuvel in his "_El Dorado_. Being a Narrative of the Circumstances which gave rise to reports in the Sixteenth Century of the Existence of a Rich and Splendid City in South America." (1844.) CHAPTER XIV THE WIZARDRY OF THE DIVINING ROD