[Gutenberg 41530] • In Search of El Dorado: A Wanderer's Experiences

Excerpt:

"Good wine needs no bush," but because a man does not always himself see the full scope of what he has written, an introduction may have its uses for author and readers alike. And to me—the adventure of whose own career has reached the inexorable Finis—these true stories of gold and gem seeking have an interest beyond the mere record of peril and achievement, though, in the words of Sir Philip Sidney, it "stirs the heart like a trumpet-blast" when brave men come to grips with dangers which (like the treasure-guarding dragons of fairy-tales) yield not only their hoard, but their own strength, as reward to the conqueror.

And these are true romances—no fiction with its Deus ex machina at the psychological moment, but the unadorned risks, escapes, and failures of adventurers on the quest of those strange commodities, seemingly haunted by death and fear, from their secrecy in the recesses of the earth till they shine with a sinister light in the crowns of[Pg viii] kings or make rough, for better handling, the sword-grips of warriors.

The quest of "El Dorado" begins with the history of man, and in pursuit of the glittering phantom have "many souls of heroes gone down into Hades," only that others might step into their empty places in the ranks. For whatever is found, always just beyond reach flits what is not found—what never will be, be it the golden city of Manoa, with its palace of the Inca, "all the vessels of whose house and kitchen are of gold, and in his wardrobe statues of gold which seemed giants, and ropes, budgets, chests and troughs of gold," or the mysterious jewels of the wisdom of Solomon, or the genie-guarded gems of the Arabian Nights.