Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
"No words incorporated into the English language have been fraught with
such stupendous consequences as El Dorado. When the padres attempted to
tell the story of the Christ, the natives exclaimed 'El Dorado'--the
golden. The ignorant sailors and adventurers seized upon the literal
meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don
Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on
one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El
Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an
inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a city, or a priest who anointed
himself with a fragrant oil and sprinkled his body with fine gold dust,
must always remain one of the blackest pages in the history of the white
race. The great heart of humanity will ever ache with sympathy for the
melancholy and pitiful end of the natives, who at the time of the
conquest of Mexico were confidently expecting the return of the mild and
gentle Quetzalcoatl,--the Mexican variant of this universal myth. * * *
The Golden Hearted came from an island in the East, and to this he
returned, in the legend. In all variants, he gave a distinct promise of
return. This accounts for the awe inspired by Europeans in the minds of
the natives, causing them everywhere to fall easy victims of the
unscrupulous adventurers swarming into their country. Fate never played
a more cruel prank than to have one race of men speak and act constantly
from the standpoint of tradition, while the other thought solely of
material gain."
Interesting, too, is Mrs. Edith Woodman Burroughs' conception of the
Fountain of Youth. (p. 53.) The beautiful central figure is a girl child
standing without self-consciousness by blooming primroses. Modeled
faintly on the pedestal are the parents, from whose upturned faces and
uplifted hands the primroses seem to spring. In the friezes, wistful old
people are borne onward to Destiny in boats manned by joyous chubby
children, unconscious of their priceless gift of youth to which their
elders look back with so much longing.
Fountains in the Court of the Universe.--Passing through the Tower of
Jewels into the great court where themes become universal under the
circle of stars above the surrounding colonnade, we come to the
Fountains of the Rising and the Setting Sun, by A. A. Weinmann, one at
either focus of the elliptical sunken garden. In the East, the Sun, in
the strength of the morning, his wings spread for flight, is springing
upward from the top of the tall column rising out of the fountain. Walk
toward him from the west and you get the effect of his rising. (p. 69.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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