Farther on they came to the lands ruled over by Chief Paguana where the Indians were friendly and they were able to lay in food supplies. But this was a shortlived respite, and on May 24 they were again engaged in combat by hostile Indians and some of Orellana's men were wounded or killed by poisoned arrows. They had to proceed as rapidly as possible, avoiding all settlements even though the store of provisions acquired in friendly regions was diminishing rapidly.

Some of the unfriendly Indians they encountered were subjects of a tribe of women warriors. Friar Carvajal called them Amazons, after the women warriors of antiquity, and the river eventually came to be named for them. In one battle some of these women led their subjects, "doing as much fighting," says Carvajal, "as ten Indian men."

In the early days of August, when they were beginning to feel the rise and fall of the tide, they stopped to prepare the boats for the open sea, making rigging out of vines and sails out of the blankets in which they had been sleeping. Finally, on August 24, eight months after leaving Pizarro and starting down the tributaries of the "mightiest of rivers," they reached its mouth. They had come some 3,000 miles. On the 26th the two home-made brigantines spread their sails and put out to sea without benefit of pilot, experienced sailors, or compass. They sailed along what Carvajal called "the most dangerous coast that has ever been seen" until, in the second week of September, they reached the port of Nuevo Cádiz on the Island of Cubagua, off the coast of Venezuela. Thus ended one of the most dramatic adventures in the history of exploration. Three years later Orellana led an expedition back to the Amazon with the intention of establishing Spain's claim to the region. But the King had refused him

adequate support and the project was doomed from the start. Before they got beyond the estuary of the Amazon, the majority of Orellana's men were dead. Orellana himself died of grief and illness on the banks of the river while on a side trip in search of food. "Buried at the foot of one of those aged trees of the always verdant forests bathed by the current of the majestic river which he had discovered," says Medina, "he at last found rest from his toils and sufferings in the midst of that luxuriant nature which was a sepulcher worthy of his imperishable name."-M. G. R.

The Silver River

Between 1520 and 1530, the Inca Empire was the goal of a race from two directions from Panama on the north and from the Atlantic coast to the southeast. Because Peru was finally conquered from the north, the southeastern approach is a phase of the Spanish conquest that historians are inclined to neglect, if not ignore. It is a story of hardships and frustrations, but not without an element of romance. It turned upon the discovery and explora

tion of a vast river system-the Río de la Plata and its affluents.

Today the Río de la Plata is one of South America's main river highways, traveled by steamships going to three of its ten capitals. Two of them-Buenos Aires and Montevideo lie on the broad, shallow Río de la Plata estuary, which receives the waters of the Paraná and the Uruguay Rivers. The third capital, Asunción, is 1,000 miles upstream from Buenos Aires on the Paraguay River, the largest tributary of the Paraná.

Juan Díaz de Solís, chief pilot of Spain, discovered the Mar Dulce (the Sea of Sweet Water) as he called it, in 1516, when he was searching for a westward passage to the Spice Islands. But his attempts to explore it ended in catastrophe. When he somewhat naïvely went on shore unarmed with a small group of followers, the party was massacred by the fierce nomadic Indians that inhabited what is now Uruguay.

Some of Solís' men who escaped found refuge on an island off the coast of Brazil. Eventually making their way westward with Indian guides, they were the first Europeans to enter the Empire of the Incas. On their return journey, however, all but three of them met with disaster when their native allies turned on them and killed them.

Ten years after Solís' death, Sebastian Cabot was commissioned by the Spanish king to sail westward and discover "the Moluccas, Tarsis, Ophir, Cipango, and Cathay." Sailing down the east coast of South America in 1527, he came upon the renamed Rio de Solis. The three survivors of the overland expedition into the Inca Empire told him tales of fabulous wealth in the interior. Their stories, together with the silver trinkets which Cabot found among the Indians, were enough to decide him. Ignoring his instructions, he determined to explore the drainage system of southeastern South America in search of the "Great White King." Once again the river was renamed, becoming the Río de la Plata-the Silver River.

Cabot proceeded up the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers. Somewhere between present-day Rosario and Santa Fe, he founded a settlement called Sancti Spíritus. But Cabot himself never got closer to the Inca Empire than a point near present-day Asunción.

He did, however, send an expedition that

adventurously crossed the Andes into part of the Inca realm. The leader brought back to Sancti Spíritus both metal objects. and fine fabrics, for a friendly chief showered him with gifts. Cabot himself return to Spain in 1530 to explain his explorations to the great Charles V.

The fate of Sancti Spíritus, the colony he founded, involves a tale that may or may not be apocryphal. In any case the tragedy was chronicled in verse by the Archdeacon of Buenos Aires, Barco de la Centenara, who wrote within fifty years of the events he describes.

It seems that a young Spanish captain called Sebastián Hurtado had brought his beautiful wife Lucía with him to the frontier fort of Sancti Spíritus. During a feast attended by a friendly tribe of Indians, Mangora, the chief, saw the fair Spanish lady and fell in love with her. Immediately he began to devise a plan to get her into his power.

One day when Hurtado had been sent out on an expedition, Mangora appeared at the fort laden with much-needed provisions as proof of his friendship. Since he had come a great distance, he was offered hospitality within the fort. During the night Mangora's followers ambushed the little settlement. Although Mangora was killed in the melee, his brother fled with Lucía.

Meanwhile, Hurtado returned to find Sancti Spíritus in ruins. Going in search. of his wife, he also was captured and tied to a tree to watch her burn at the stake. Then the Indians shot him with their arrows while he "with his eyes turned to heaven, besought our Lord to pardon all his sins, and by whose mercy we may believe that he and his wife enjoy celestial glory. All of which happened in the year 1532."

In Spain, meanwhile, Francisco Pizarro had arrived from his voyage down the

west coast of South America from Panama, and had already convinced the king that Peru should be conquered from the north. Cabot was thrown into disfavor and banished for awhile. But it was only a few years later in 1536-that Buenos Aires was founded for the first time.-K. W.

The Orinoco River and El Dorado

The Orinoco River stretches for about 1,500 miles through northern South America, flowing now peacefully, now as raging rapids, from its headwaters to the sea. Rising in the Parima Mountains in the southeastern tip of Venezuela, it flows first to the northwest, then north, forming part of the present-day boundary between Venezuela and Colombia. It then turns eastward along the Venezuelan plains, and spreads into a great delta as it joins the sea. Intrepid explorers once fought its currents, suffering untold hardships and privations as they searched for the fabulous Manoathe city of the Gilded Man, El Doradothe site of great treasures of gold. Manoa was the objective of the avaricious, the adventurous, the glory-seeker. Its location might have been questioned, but its existence was accepted as truth, and inIdeed had a basis in fact.

High in the Colombian Andes there is a lake called Guatavita, and long ago, "so long," says Kathleen Romoli in Colombia, Gateway to South America, "that names are forgotten," there was a Lord of Guatavita who once every year covered himself with gold dust and in an elaborate ceremony threw dazzling offerings of gold and silver into the lake. His gifts and similar ones brought by all his subjects were for his lovely bride who had drowned herself in the lake and who came to be regarded as a kind of goddess. This was

the origin of the legend of El Dorado, but the stories became so distorted as time went on that when the Spaniards finally reached the province of El Dorado, they did not recognize it.

In 1499 Alonso de Ojeda, using a map drawn up by Columbus himself, may have been the first white man to see the great Orinoco delta. Of the many to probe the mysteries of the great river the first was Diego de Ordaz; another, and the most familiar in the United States, Sir Walter Raleigh.

Diego de Ordaz was the first European actually to penetrate the Orinoco country. When he set out in 1531 to battle the currents of that mighty river, he had an inkling of the difficulties that lay before him, for he had explored with Cortés. After many difficulties, including large and small rapids to be passed, he reached Carichana, hundreds of miles upstream near the mouth of the Meta, a large tributary flowing from the west. Here he and his men rested, repaired their boats, and replenished their provisions. Here, too, they heard tales of the rich peoples who lived on the Western slopes of the Andes. Again they set out up the Orinoco, but the Atures rapids forced them to turn back. They then attempted to go up the Meta, but the dry season had come, and the stream was little more than mud in many places. Ordaz returned downstream to the Gulf of Paria, determined to reach the "Province of Meta" by an overland route, but he had not reckoned with revolt. By his constant and unnecessary cruelty to the Indians he had alienated his men, and by his extravagant claims he had come into conflict with certain Spanish authorities at Cubagua, an island off the coast of Venezuela. He was arrested by the Alcalde of Cubagua and the two set out for Santo Domingo to have their quarrel settled by the authorities there.