Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

 

In 1541 Francisco de Orellana was one of the lieutenants on an expedition east of Quito into the South American interior charged by Francisco Pizarro to locate the "Land of Cinnamon", thought to be somewhere to the east.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Orellana's voyages served as a partial influence for Werner Herzog's 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God. An earlier -script penned by director Werner Herzog also deliberately included Orellana in the movie, but he was ultimately left out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Orellana's role in the search for El Dorado also forms part of the plot of the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

The leader of the expedition, Gonzalo Pizarro, ordered him to explore the Coca River and return when the river ended. By then, 3000 natives and 140 Spanish had already died or deserted on the march. Pizarro returned to Quito with only 80 men left alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

On reaching the Coca, Orellano's men constructed a brigantine. When they reached the confluence with the Napo River, his 50 surviving men threatened to mutiny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

During their navigation they were threatened constantly by the Omaguas, who were a populous, organized society in the late Pre-Columbian era.

 

They reached the Negro River on June 3, 1542 and finally reached the open sea on 26 August 1542. In one of the most improbably successful voyages in known history, Orellana had managed to sail the entire length of the Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Orellana decided to return to Spain to obtain from the Crown the governorship over the discovered lands, which he named New Andalusia.

 

Orellana captivated the Spanish court with tales and exaggerations of his voyage down the Amazon. When Orellana went down the river in search of gold, descending from the Andes (in 1541), the river was still called Rio Grande, Mar Dulce or Rio de Canela (Cinnamon) because cinnamon trees were once thought to be located there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

The story of the fierce ambush launched by the Icamiabas, who Orellano claimed were led by fierce white skinned warrior women, that nearly destroyed the Spanish expedition was narrated to the king, Charles I, who, inspired by the Greek legend of the Amazons, named the river the Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

At one point he fell ill with fever. In his delirium he reported that he had seen densely populated regions running hundreds of kilometers along the river. He described huge "cities that glistened in white", of temples and huge avenues 60 feet wide, in vast clearings in the middle of the dense jungle, surrounded by fields of fertile, irrigated land, where the king—the "Gilded Man"—wore gold dust as clothing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

This was the part of his tale that inspired the legend of El Dorado, "The Golden One."

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Orellana was permitted by Charles to explore and settle Nueva Andalucia, with no fewer than 200 infantrymen, 100 horsemen and the material to construct two river-going ships.The commission was accepted on 18 February 1544, but preparations for the voyage were frustrated by unpaid debts, Portuguese spies and internal wranglings.

 

Sufficient funds were raised through the efforts of Cosmo de Chaves, Orellana's stepfather, but the problems were compounded by Orellana's decision to marry a very young and poor girl, Ana de Ayala, whom he intended to take with him.

 

On his arrival at the Amazon he was to build two towns, one just inside the mouth of the river.

 

He set sail with four ships on 11 May 1545.

 

By the time Orellana arrived off the Brazilian coast shortly before Christmas 1545 one ship had been lost, 98 men had died of sickness and 50 had deserted. A further ship was lost in mid-Atlantic, carrying with it 77 crew, 11 horses and a boat to be used on the Amazon. Undaunted, he proceeded 100 leagues into the Amazon delta.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

A river-going vessel was constructed but 57 men died from hunger and the remaining seagoing vessel was driven ashore. The marooned men found refuge among friendly Indians on an island in the delta, while Orellana and a boat party set off to find food and locate the principal arm of the Amazon. On returning to the shipwreck camp they found it deserted, the men having constructed a second boat in which they had set out to find Orellana. The second boat eventually gave up the search and made its way along the coast to the island of Margarita near the Venezuela coast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Orellana and his boat crew, who had set out again to locate the principal channel, were subsequently attacked by Indians. 17 were killed by poisoned arrows.

 

Orellana himself died of illness and grief, sometime in November 1546.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The second boat crew, on arriving at Margarita, found 25 of their companions, including Ana de Ayala, who had arrived there on a ship of the original fleet. The total of 44 survivors (of an estimated 300) were eventually rescued by a Spanish ship. Many of them settled in Central America, Peru and Chile.

 

 

Ana de Ayala lived for the rest of her days in Panama. She is last heard of in 1572.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

When other explorers returned to the Amazon basin a generation after Orellano, they found nothing but wild jungle, with no evidence of the cities he had described.

 

 

Next: Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett and The Lost City of Z

 

 

 

 

 

[Pat Calhoun]

Eldorado - Poe

 

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

 

But he grew old—

This knight so bold—

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

 

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow—

"Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be—

This land of Eldorado?"

 

"Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied—

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

 

 

 

Edited February 16, 2014 by pcalhoun

[Flex Mentallo]

The Lost City of Z

 

 

 

In the early 1900’s, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett was a popular, well-known, and admired explorer of the Amazon. He was the last of the great territorial explorers who ventured into blank spots on the map with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose. He helped map the border of Argentina and Brazil, found the source of the Rio Verde, and documented several civilizations.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Arthur Conan Doyle heard Fawcett speak at the Royal Geographical Society to a packed audience in 1916.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Doyle based his Professor Challenger character partly on Fawcett, and stories of the "Lost City of Z" became the basis for his novel The Lost World.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Fawcett has been proposed as a possible inspiration for Indiana Jones. A fictionalised version of Fawcett aids Jones in the novel Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils.

 

According to an article in Comics Scene No. 45, Fawcett was even the inspiration of Kent Allard, alter ego of the Shadow. Allard fakes his death in the South American jungles, then returns to the United States.