The Gilded Man A Romance of the Andes

The Gilded Man / A Romance of the Andes by Clifford SmythTHE GILDED MANA ROMANCE OF THE ANDESBY CLIFFORD SMYTHWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNECONTENTSIntroductionI. In Which Comet Goes LameII. In Una’s GardenIII. A Chapter on GhostsIV. The Ghost of the ForgottenV. The Search for El DoradoVI. Emboladores on the MarchVII. La Reina de Los IndiosVIII. A River InterludeIX. On Indian TrailsX. An Old MysteryXI. In Which Andrew Is FoundXII. A Dead WallXIII. Mrs. Quayle Takes the LeadXIV. 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 MANFOREWORDTwo 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. His tale garnished with many other mysterious matters soon speeded expedition after expedition dreaming across those“perilous seas In fairyland forlorn.�All came back with marvels on their tongues. All had caught glimpses of the gilded domes of the city but that was all. Gonzales Ximinez de Quesada from Santa Fé de Bogotá was “warmest� perhaps; but he too failed. Many a daring sailor since has vainly gone on a like quest. Even in our prosaic times—in the true Elizabethan spirit that for all their romance actually animated those enterprises of old time—when men sought real gold as now not “faery-gold�—an enterprise with a prospectus shareholders and those dreams now known as promised dividends has made it its serious “incorporated� business to go in quest of El Dorado.But elaborate as all previous expeditions and enterprises have been and dauntless as the courage of the individual explorer one and all have failed—till now. Till now I say—for at last El Dorado has been discovered and it is my proud privilege to announce for the first time the name of its discoverer—Dr. Clifford Smyth.Dr. Smyth has chosen the medium of fiction for the publication of his discovery like other such eminent discoverers as the authors of Erewhon and Utopia but that fact I need hardly say in nowise invalidates the authenticity and serious importance of his discovery. Though truth be stranger than fiction it has but seldom its charm and to use the by-gone phrase Dr. Smyth’s relation of happenings which we never doubt for a rap