El Dorado Fever
Walter Ralegh was one of the last men to succumb to a disease that had plagued the Spanish conquistadors who followed Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizzaro until the end of the sixteenth century.
It can seem almost silly that the legend of El Dorado was so powerful that an intelligent and educated man like Walter Ralegh believed at least part of it. Yet consider how quickly Spanish invasions of Mexico and Peru turned up cities and civilizations that were unimaginably rich. Tenochtitlan, capital of the Mexica (also known as the Aztec) Empire, and…
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