SOURCE: Connell, Evan. “The Golden Man.” The Atlantic Monthly 241, No. 6 (June 1978): 65-71.

In the following essay, Connell describes the hardships and madness endured by expeditions led by Ambrosius Dalfinger, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Gonzalo Pizarro, Lope de Aguirre, and Walter Raleigh as they vainly sought El Dorado.

If you go to Bogotá and visit the Banco de la República you will see, in the bank's Museo del Oro, nearly 10,000 pre-Columbian gold artifacts: labrets, nose rings, brooches, masks, spoons, pincers, receptacles, representations of birds, snakes, crocodiles, people, animals—so many that you think they must be dime-store replicas. You walk along a corridor filled with display cases, each case cluttered with dull gold knickknacks. You turn right, walk down another long corridor past more of the same. Then more. And more. Finally, instead of going out, you enter a room which is completely dark. After you have...