THE GILDED MAN THE GILDED MAN A ROMANCE OF THE ANDES BY CLIFFORD SMYTH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE [Illustration] BONI AND LIVERIGHT NEW YORK 1918 Copyright, 1918 BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC. TO BEATRIX CONTENTS _Page_ INTRODUCTION xi _Chapter_ I. IN WHICH COMET GOES LAME 1 II. IN UNA'S GARDEN 10 III. A CHAPTER ON GHOSTS 19 IV. THE GHOST OF THE FORGOTTEN 30 V. THE SEARCH FOR EL DORADO 41 VI. EMBOLADORES ON THE MARCH 55 VII. LA REINA DE LOS INDIOS 71 VIII. A RIVER INTERLUDE 89 IX. ON INDIAN TRAILS 105 X. AN OLD MYSTERY 125 XI. IN WHICH ANDREW IS FOUND 145 XII. A DEAD WALL 157 XIII. MRS. QUAYLE TAKES THE LEAD 170 XIV. THE BLACK MAGNET 189 XV. AT THE SIGN OF THE CONDOR 212 XVI. NARVA 230 XVII. A SONG AND ITS SEQUEL 251 XVIII. SUBTERRANEAN PHOTOGRAPHY 274 XIX. A QUEEN'S CONQUEST 293 XX. LEGEND AND REALITY 302 XXI. DREAMS 312 XXII. A PEOPLE'S DESTINY 325 XXIII. THE GILDED MAN 344 THE GILDED MAN FOREWORD Two dreams have persistently haunted the imagination of man since dreams began. You find them in all mythologies, and, perhaps most dramatically, in the Arabian Nights: the dream of the Water of Immortality, and the dream of the Golden City. Within recent times--that is, during the sixteenth century--both were lifted out of the region of fairy lore, and men as far from "dreamers," in the ordinary sense, as the "conquistador" Ponce de Leon and Sir Walter Raleigh raised them into the sphere of something like Elizabethan practical politics. Whether or not Ponce de Leon did actually discover the Fountain of Eternal Youth on the Bimini Islands concerns us but incidentally here. At all events, he seems to have died without drinking of it; as death on the scaffold was the penalty for Raleigh's failure to discover El Dorado. So practically had the courts of Elizabeth and James regarded the dream of the Golden City, and so firm had been Raleigh's own belief in it. Though Raleigh's name is most conspicuously and tragically connected with it, of course it had been Spanish adventurers for several generations before--exploring that "Spanish Main" which they had already, and in romance forever, made their own--who had given that dream its local habitation and its name. Martinez had been the first to tell how, having drifted on the coast of Guiana, he had been taken inland to a city called Manoa, whose king was in alliance with the Incas. Manoa, said he, to opened mouths and wondering eyes, on his return to Spain, was literally built, walls and roofs, houses big and little, of silver and gold.