The Search for El Dorado by John Hemming

The Search for El Dorado

by John Hemming

Michael Joseph, 1978, ISBN 0718117549, 223 pages, colour & black and white photographs throughout, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, previous store price on front flyleaf

'This book describes the nature of the conquistador, and tells from contemporary sources the appalling cruelty of these explorers, who preyed on the Indian tribes but who themselves suffered indescribable hardships.  Once the El Dorado legend had evolved, it became an obsession of successive adventurers.  There was the handsome Gonzalo Pizarro, betrayed by Orellana in the first European descent of the Amazon river. The paranoid murderer and rebel Lope de Aguirre, the aged Antonio de Berrio and Sir Walter Ralegh, the epitome of an Elizabethan courtier, who tried to found a British empire in Guiana.

The Gold Museum at Bogota with nearly 25000 objects provides the splendid backcloth to this story.  The best of these objects, photographed in colour by Mario Carrieri,are here reproduced for the first time.'