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The Religious Use of Various Stones: Guatavita

The mystic lake of Guatavita, high up on the Andean plateau of Colombia, South America, was the chief holy place of the native Indians of this locality hundreds of years ago, at a time when gold and emeralds were plentiful among them, luxuries unknown to their impoverished descendants of our day. Legend had taught them to regard this lake as the abiding place of a powerful divinity or demon, whose good will must be secured at any price if dire disease were to be held aloof from the people. Four other sacred lakes on the plateau, Guasca, Siecha, Teusaca, and Ubaque, shared in a lesser degree with the principal one in the attribution of mysterious power. As early as 1534 word was brought to Sebastian de Belalcazar, founder of Quito, that in the course of the religious ceremonies held by the Indians at the Lake of Guatavita, they were wont to cast into its waters immense quantities of gold dust, emeralds and other precious stones. It was also related that at these semi-annual festivals the Caciques and the principal chiefs, bearing valuable gifts of gold-dust and emeralds, were paddled out in canoes (or on rafts) to the exact middle of the lake, this point being determined by the intersection of two ropes stretching from four temples erected at four equidistant points on its banks. Arrived at this spot the offerings were cast into the lake, and the Cacique of Guatavita, whose naked body had been coated with an adhesive clay, over which gold-dust was sprinkled in profusion, sprang into the water, and after washing off the gold-dust, swam to the shore. This resplendent living golden figure strongly appealed to the Spaniards' imagination, and the name they bestowed upon the Cacique, El Dorado ("The Golden," or "Gilded"), is used to our day as a designation of a region or a spot exceptionally rich in gold. At the moment the "Golden Cacique" made his plunge into the lake, the assembled people scattered along its banks turned their backs toward the water, shouted loudly, and threw their propitiatory offerings over their shoulders into the lake.

Attempts have often been made to secure the treasures by drawing off the waters of the lake, but only with very partial success so far. The first serious effort is said to have been made by Antonio de Sepulveda, a merchant of Santa Fe, in United States of Colombia, who obtained a Spanish concession. In or about 1823 we have record of another unsuccessful venture on the part of Jose Ignacio Paris, in an account of Colombia written in 1824 by Captain Charles Stuart Cochrane, of the Royal Navy, who aided Paris in his efforts. The report that at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the Cacique of Guatavita caused gold-dust constituting the burdens of fifty men to be cast into the lake, greatly contributed to the zeal of the treasure-seekers in the vicinity. One of the early attempts at least resulted in the recovery of so much treasure that the Government's 3 per cent. share is said to have amounted to $170,000.

In none of these essays, however, was the lake really and effectually drained off, and that of Paris in 1823 or 1824 failed in the same way, because of inadequate capital. He had succeeded in persuading sixteen shareholders to club together, each one contributing $500 to a common fund, but after not only this $8,000, but $12,000 more supplied by himself had been expended, there still remained 33 feet of water in the lake.

Recently an English company has recognized that the treasure must be sought at or even beneath the true bottom, as this existed at the time of the Spanish Conquest, and thus at levels considerably lower than those of the bottom at the present time. The project is, after 30 feet of the present bottom has been removed, to set up a steam shovel and sink down 40 or 50 feet in search of the gold-dust, golden ornaments and emeralds believed to exist here.