Gaspar de Carvajal

Spanish explorer and soldier Francisco de Orellana arrived in the New World in the 1520s, participating in the conquest of Peru. He subsequently became the first Spanish governor of Guayaquil, Ecuador. He then joined an excursion in 1540 in search of the mythic kingdom of El Dorado. The leader of the expedition was Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Incas.

By 1542, the journey into the heart of South America was not going well and the desperate party faced starvation. Orellana took fifty-seven men to navigate a nearby river in search of food. He and his men were not to rejoin Pizarro, having floated a long way on dangerous rivers upon which they could most likely not safely reverse course. They had little idea of where the waterway would take them, what types of natives they would encounter...