NO EL DORADO

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 154, 22 February 1932, Page 7

NO EL DORADO

SECRET OF THE WILDS SUCCESSFUL THIRD ATTEMPT TO REACH SOURCE OF ORINOCO. OLD LEGEND SHATTERED. A geography secret has been revealed by Herbert Spencer Dickey, South American explorer, whose third attempt succeeded in tracing to its source the Orinoco, whose fresh waters Columbus saw surging out into the Caribbean. His first attempt, in 1929, failed almost at the start. The second, in 1930, missed the goal by many miles. The third succeeded, pushing the Parima Mountains sixty miles- eastward from where the maps locate them and adding a great expanse of territory to Venezuela. "And incidentally," he says, 'we killed the legend of E1 Dorado." The Orinoco is different from the Amazon and other rivers of the. northern tier of South Ameriea. In place of foliage so dense that the eye cannot see more than a f ew feet beyond the river's bank, the Orinoco's jungle growth is spare and confined to the river's very brim. Beyond, and to the horizon, stretches out a plain, which, were it not for an oceasional peak which juts up from the surface, might he pl'aced in Africa. Fanciful Theories Exploded. Dr. Dickey disposes of many fanciful theories about the Orinoco. Game is so rare, having heen eaten out by Indians for hundreds of years, that ;a day's expedition by his native hunters produced no more than one inedible fish and a shrivelled monfeey. "We saW two snakes on our entire journey; il have not seen more than fifty in thirty years qf South American travel, aiid L have treated two cases of snake-bite in all that time. If the neophyte is to depend on game for sustenance he had better carry it with him from New York in cans. The Indians now have recourse to grubs and earthworms for the animal element in their daily diet." Of the natives Dr. Dickey writes in the New York Times: — "The primitive Indian of the Orinoco forest is an elusive creature. Those who have whips are pitiful degenerates, who been civilised hy Winchester rifles and whips are pitiful degenerates, who shrink at a harsh word, who raise their arms in defence hefore their faces if one walks toward them. These hate and fear the uncivilised so-called savages of the forest and are, in their turn, feared and hated. The ethnological jig-saw puzzles of the Orinoco, who call themselves white men, have always employed civilised Indians in their rpursuit of savage men and women. Sometimes the civilised product, at other times the primitive, has won. Always bloodshed has marked these forays, as well as rapine and the horrors of torture. The Untutored Indian. "There is little of good to be said of the Indian who has fallen beneath the sw&y of the white man, except, perhaps, that he, apparently, is hum- • ble. There is much to be said of his uncivilised brother. He works hard, for hunting and fishing, in a region almost bereft of fish and game, is an arduous task. He loves his children. He punishes the alienator of his wife's affection with death. He desires to be let alone. Whether his visitor comes, bearing the benefits of spiritual consolation, or is merely a curi-osity-driven explorer, the primitive man of the jungle has managed to exist without him for eenturies and has no wish to change this condition of affairs.

"The Indians are, nevertheless, hos- I pitable. The unwelcome guest is not . embarrassed hy having to ask for food. Such as it is, it is placed before him. A soup of palm maggots, a j dish of fried ants may not be the j white man's idea 'of a banquet, but it is his for the taking, even when, at | times, the family has to go on short rations. "It is strange that the savage of the Orinoco has endured the white man so long. His enslavement and torture have been an oceurrence mere- 1 ly of recent years. Ih the case of the humble Caribs, who populated the lower Orinoco and who now have completely disappeared, the process = was instituted eenturies ago. The offscourings o'f the Spanish gaols, who became finally the valorous, romantic, intrepid Conquisadores, decimated the Carih population efficiently and without waste of time." Disposal of a Leg.end. As to the famous Spanish legend of the Upper Orinoco being an E1 Dorado, lined with golden treasure, paved with a mass of diamonds, Dr. Dickey says: "We reached this fancied E1 Dorado and ipassed throtigh it. We found neither gold nor diamonds. We found, instead, a place where man could not exist without enduring every imaginable privation, excepting thirst; a place where it rained most of the time, where a thick mist which whirled d6wn the eanyons brought actual physical misery, where there was no game in the loW, stunted woods and no fish in the turbulent stone-pav-ed streams. We killed the legend of E1 Dorado."