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When the troop reached the Napo River on New Year's Day, 1540, Pizarro decided to send the bold seaman Orellana on in front down the river to look for people and provisions, for famine with all its tortures threatened them. A camp was set up and a wharf constructed.
It has already been said above that Orellana saw llamas at the dwelling of an Indian chief on the banks of the Amazon, and that Ordaz had heard mention made of them in the plains of Meta. These false reports contributed greatly to embellish the fable of El Dorado.
The men showed increasing uneasiness; but Orellana sat quietly at the helm, gave his orders to the rowers, and had the sail hoisted to catch the breeze that swept over the water. No camping-places on points of the bank, no huts roofed with palm leaves or grass, no smoke indicated the vicinity of Indians.
So he sent Orellana in the vessel, with fifty soldiers, down the Napo to the larger river. There Orellana was to get food and supplies for the army and then return. Pizarro waited and waited in vain for Orellana to return, and at last he and his men had to find their way back across the Andes with scanty food and undergo great hardships.
On this Orellana spoke to his followers in his native language when four of them drew off, two towards each gangway, and the chief and the six remaining Indians seemed to be slowly quitting the quarter-deck.
Orellana, borne swiftly down the current of the Napo, had reached the point of its confluence with the Amazon in less than three days; accomplishing in this brief space of time what had cost Pizarro and his company two months. He had found the country altogether different from what had been represented; and, so far from supplies for his countrymen, he could barely obtain sustenance for himself.
But at last Mindinuetta had the good fortune to shoot Orellana dead on the spot; on which his faithful companions, abandoning all thoughts of further resistance, instantly leaped into the sea, where they every man perished.
Pizarro gave the command of the vessel to Francisco de Orellana, a man in whose courage and fidelity he put full trust. The company now resumed its march more hopefully, following the course of the Napo for weeks that lengthened into months, the brigantine keeping beside them and transporting the weaker whenever a difficult piece of country was reached.
Since that period expeditions were undertaken at the same time from Venezuela, New Grenada, Quito, Peru, and even from Brazil and the Rio de la Plata,* for the conquest of El Dorado. Orellana, having found idols of massy gold, had fixed men's ideas on an auriferous land between the Papamene and the Guaviare.
As for Orellana and his companions, it was naturally supposed that they had perished by famine or by the hands of the ferocious natives. But they learned differently at length, when a half-starved and half-naked white man emerged from the forest, whom they recognized as Sanches de Vargas, one of Orellana’s companions.
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