The creature in the map

by Charles Nicholl

"A highly readable and authoritative account of Walter Raleigh's failed expedition up the Orinoco river to find the fabled El Dorado in mid-1595. Based largely on first-hand accounts such as the Raleigh's own The Discoverie of Guiana, Francis Sparry's testimony, and the author's retracing of Raleigh's route, the book not only recounts the expedition itself but also explicates the cultural myth of El Dorado that animated explorers and conquerors like Raleigh and the Spaniard Antonio de Berrío"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.