The scientific history of to-day has fully shown how foolishly false is the idea that the Spaniards sought merely gold; how manfully they provided for the mind and the soul as well as the pocket. But gold was with them, as it would be even now with other men, the strong motive. The great difference was only that gold did not make them forget their religion. It was the golden finger that beckoned Columbus to America, Cortez to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru,--just as it led us to California, which otherwise would not have been one of our States to-day. The gold actually found at first in the New World was disappointingly little; up to the conquest of Mexico it aggregated only $500,000. Cortez swelled the amount, and Pizarro jumped it up to a fabulous and dazzling figure. But, curiously enough, the gold that was found did not cut a more important figure in the exploration and civilization of the New World than that which was pursued in vain. The wonderful myth which stands for the American Golden Fleece had a more startling effect on geography and history than the real and incalculable riches of Peru. Of this fascinating myth we have very little popular knowledge, except that a corruption of its name is in everybody's mouth. We speak of a rich region as "an Eldorado," or "the Eldorado" oftener than by any other metaphor; but it is a blunder quite unworthy of scholars. It is simply saying "an the," "the the." The word is Dorado; and it does not mean "the golden," as we seem to fancy, but "the gilded man," being a contraction of the Spanish _el hombre dorado_. And the Dorado, or gilded man, has made a history of achievement beside which Jason and all his fellow demi-gods sink into insignificance. Like all such myths, this had a foundation in fact. The Colchian ramskin was a poetic fancy of the gold mines of the Caucasus; but there really _was_ a gilded man. The story of him and what he led to is a fairy tale that has the advantage of being true. It is an enormously complicated theme; but, thanks to Bandelier's final unravelling of it, the story can now be told intelligibly,--as it has not been popularly told heretofore.