The costly myth of El Dorado, from the
earliest days of its conception, was insatiable in the matter of human
lives.
Quesada died, like one or two other great figures of medieval times, of
leprosy, after having founded the city of Santa Aguda in 1572. He left
behind him a will in which he requested that no extravagant monument
should be erected over his grave--a rather superfluous request as it
turned out, since he also left debts to the value of 60,000 ducats! The
city of Bogota holds his remains, which were conveyed to that city after
his death.
The value of New Granada in the eyes of Spain lay in its being the chief
emerald-producing centre of the world. The _conquistadores_ of Peru had
met with emeralds, and had gathered the impression that the real emerald
was as hard as a diamond, a belief which led them to submit all the
green gems they found to the test of hammering--with disastrous results
to the stones. The loss occasioned by this procedure was intensified by
the fact that for a long while it was found impossible to discover the
mine from which the Incas had procured their emeralds. It was not until
the discovery of New Granada that the source was revealed from which the
stones had been obtained.
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