Two years later, however, he was headed for South America after becoming a member of the staff of Pedro Fernández de Lugo, the newly appointed governor of the Spanish colony of Santa Marta on the northern coast of present-day Colombia. Jiménez de Quesada sailed with a large expedition to the colony, arriving in 1536.
Soon after reaching Santa Marta, rumors of a fabulously rich South American city and its Indian ruler reached Lugo. Known as El Dorado, or “the gilded one,” this legendary native king possessed such wealth that he reportedly powdered his body with gold dust each morning and washed it off every evening in a sacred lake into which emeralds and gold objects were thrown. Hoping to find the legendary city, Lugo chose Jiménez de Quesada to lead an expedition to explore the province of Santa Marta and the Magdalena River, the great waterway that rises in the Andes of southern Colombia and flows into the Caribbean Sea. He also wanted Jiménez de Quesada to find a route from Santa Marta to Peru, the center of Spanish colonial activity in South America.
This is a free page. This page contains 182 words. This
article contains 1,683 words (approx. 6 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada Access Pass.
