[In the following essay, Sturcken describes how Walter Raleigh's failure to find El Dorado led to his execution in 1618.]

The Empyre of Guiana is directly east from Peru towards the sea … and it hath more abundance of Golde then any part of Peru, and as many or more great Cities than euer Peru had when it florished most … I haue beene assured by such of the Spanyardes as haue seene Manoa the emperiall Citie of Guiana, which the Spanyardes call el Dorado, that for the greatnes, for the riches, and for the excellent seate, it farre exceedeth any of the world, at least of so much of the world as is knowen to the Spanish nation: it is founded vpon a lake of salt water of 200 leagues long like vnto mare caspiū. And if we compare it to that of Peru, and but reade the report of Francisco Lopez and others, it wil seeme more then credible, and because we may iudge of the one by the other, I thought good to insert part of the 120 chapter of Lopez in his generall historie of the Indies, wherein he discribeth the court and magnificence of Guaynacapa, auncestor to the Emperour of Guiana, whose very words are these.

All the vessels of his home, table, and kitchin were of gold and siluer, and the meanest of siluer and copper for strength and hardnes of the mettal. He had in his wardroppe hollow statues of golde which seemed giants, and the figures in proportion and bignes of all the beastes, birdes, trees and hearbes, that the earth bringeth forth. … Finally there was nothing in his countrey, whereof hee had not the counterfeat in gold: Yea and they say, The Ingas had a garden of pleasure in an iland neere Puna, where they went to recreate themselues, when they would take the ayre of the sea, which had all kind of garden hearbes, flowers and trees of Gold and Siluer, an inuention, and magnificence til then neuer seene: Besides all this, he had an infinite quantitie of siluer and gold vnwrought in Cuzco which was lost by the death of Guascar, for the Indians hid it, seeing that the Spaniards tooke it, and sent it into Spayne.

Thus did Sir Walter Raleigh contribute, in his Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtifvl Empyre of Gviana (1595), to the legend of a golden city in an inaccessible Incan empire to the east.

In an age given to imaginative fancy (frequently with good reason), the fact that all of the above report was based on second-hand information was perhaps beside the point. Whether its sources were firsthand or not, the legend of gold to the east had already spread quickly from the early years of the sixteenth century, until it ranked with the stories describing the buried Atlantis and those that told of the sun god Bochica's early ascent from the central plains to Bogotá. Repetition of the rumors added fuel to the fires of imagination. Yet these rumors of El Dorado were never completely without a foundation of some truth, however scant. Certain Incan tribes did flee eastward during the first years of the conquest. Many of them probably established themselves far east of Cuzco either prior to or in the century following Pizarro's arrival, as numerous accounts have maintained. They also undoubtedly practiced certain rites in which their bodies, or that of their chieftain, were moistened with resin and coated with a powdery gold mixture that was later removed by submersion in a mountain lake.

So much for the legend of the Gilded Man and his kingdom of gold, a legend on which one could easily spend years of intense and fascinating study. The actual fact of its truth or fiction holds much less glamor today than do the tales of those dreamers who rished life and limb over vast stretches of overgrown jungle to make their vision of El Dorado a reality. Indeed, the legend is of such proportions that it was able to feed lesser rumors, which soon acquired a status of respectability through repetition. Thus Alonso Mercadillo set out to discover El Dorado to the east of the Huallaga River in Peru, and along the way he subdued a “two-nosed” tribe. Cieza de León later explains how, by tearing the flesh, they displayed split nostrils. Gonzalo Pizarro's fantastic journey from Cuzco to Quito and then across the Cordillera is just one in a series of incredible tales of inhuman brutality and superhuman courage, covering hundreds of miles of swamps considered impassable today, as well as gorges described as bottomless. Yet strangely enough, what excited the imagination most at the time was the story of Pizarro's encounter with a group of husky female warriors near the headwaters of the Amazon.

So it went, from one dreamer to the next. These and other seekers after El Dorado, men of uncommon fortitude and belief in themselves, are thought of today in terms of the countless life-or-death decisions they made on the spur of the moment, in defiance of the gods of both hemispheres. Their heroic (or foolhardy) gestures amid misfortune, romanticized beyond belief today, constitute an extraordinary mocking of fate itself. Acts of incredible rashness, in the face of disaster from warring tribes or nature itself, frequently turned into superb strokes of genius.

One such gesture, however, that failed was made in 1616 by Sir Walter Raleigh, then twelve years imprisoned in the Tower of London. Twenty-one years had passed since his first trip to Guiana, under the flag of Elizabeth. He had laid claim to the territory along the Orinoco basin (present-day Venezuela) and later attested the existence of easily accessible gold fields in the area. In his own words, the area was so rich in the mineral that “the gold Oare is founde but att the Roote of the grasse, in a broad and flatt slate.” It is not clear, from his early reports, whether he himself had actually seen or visited such fields.

In any case, finding himself betrayed by close friends, imprisoned by King James, and convicted of treason against the crown, his last gesture to save face was one of fantastic proportions. He staked his life and reputation on one final trip into the mouth of the Orinoco. The gold he swore to bring back would (he thought) force James to reclaim Guiana; England would be thereby immeasurably enriched, Spain's encroachment eastward halted, and Raleigh himself would be once more in the good graces of the crown.

This poses a most interesting question, and one which unfortunately will never be answered. To what extent did Raleigh himself believe he could succeed? The odds against his achieving his mission were, on the face of it, incredibly high. For he knew, not only that the Spaniards had established fortifications in the area where the gold was presumably located, but that the Spanish ambassador to England had been informed of Raleigh's project to look for gold.

The history of this last defiant stroke to recuperate his fame and fortune is detailed in Raleigh's Apologie for the ill Successe of his Enterprise to Guiana and in his letters to Lawrence Keymis, his chief lieutenant on the expedition. They make up a dreary tale of failure after miserable failure along every step of the journey. Raleigh did not even accompany the body of adventurers into the interior, remaining at first on board ship near the mouth of the great river. Led by Keymis, the band of Englishmen committed a number of blunders, attacking and provoking the Spaniards on every hand, and sailing the incredible distance of over three hundred miles up the Orinoco. The gold was presumably located only several miles inland, according to the plans announced originally to the King. To make a bad situation worse, one of Raleigh's sons was killed during this wandering, aimless expedition. The brilliant but ill-fated Keymis, thinking himself faithful to his beloved master to the last, finally caught up with a tired, sick Raleigh in Trinidad. One can only wonder about the exchange of conversation that must have taken place. Keymis, unable to live with his loss of face before Raleigh, solved his problem immediately and permanently by stabbing himself to death.

Raleigh's dilemma at returning empty-handed was settled in turn on October 29, 1618, on a raised platform in the courtyard at Westminster before a packed audience. The ancient charge of treason was again invoked, and Raleigh had to pay with his life. Thus the dream of an immediate empire in Guiana, an empire so fabulously wealthy it would rival those of Spain to the west and north, was lost together with Raleigh's head. Yet this tragic aftermath has served in no way to destroy the boldness of his original gesture to reach the gold fields of Guiana.

It is true that he had played his hand against insuperable odds, and he had lost. The penalty, in this case, was his life. But to the crowds, apparently, that saw his head fall, this was no traitor. For them, the last of the great Elizabethan courtiers and adventurers was being senselessly sacrificed. Had he not served his country and the Virgin Queen illustriously, only to die an ignominious death at the hands of a Stuart?

The man had to die, just as his age, finally, had to come to an end. And at the moment he died, another Raleigh, the one who still lives in romantic legend and fancy, was born.