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online at metalsupermarkets.com I'm

1:06

holding in my hands a rather lovely

1:09

little book published by

1:11

the Folio Society. It's

1:13

called Impossible Journeys. It's

1:15

a book of impossible journeys because

1:17

it tells tales of attempted voyages

1:19

to places that did not in

1:21

fact exist. It's a collection

1:24

of cartographical and historical

1:26

cul-de-sacs. It tells us fables

1:28

that were believed to be true. Like

1:31

a modern-day Chaucer it features stories. The

1:34

Friar's Tale, The Drunkard's Tale, The

1:36

Cannibal's Tale and among

1:39

them The Courtier's Tale with the

1:41

subtitle Sir Walter Raleigh Goes Upriver

1:43

in Search of El Dorado. Sir

1:47

Walter Raleigh is one of the most famous names of

1:49

the Elizabethan era. An unusually tall,

1:51

dark-haired and handsome man Raleigh

1:53

had a checkered career. His

1:56

first mission for Elizabeth I was to Ireland where

1:58

he still remembered as the person he was. perpetrator

2:00

of the Smurmurth massacre, in which 600

2:03

people were killed. Nevertheless,

2:05

or perhaps because of that, his

2:08

rise under Elizabeth was swift. He

2:10

had her favour. He

2:13

might have been successful, but for his

2:15

secret marriage to Bess Throckmorton, one of

2:17

the Queen's maids of honour, which led

2:19

to both husband and wife being sent

2:21

to the Tower, and then banished

2:23

from court. And it's at

2:25

this point that Raleigh went in search of the

2:30

city. The author of Impossible Journeys and

2:32

my guest today is someone who has

2:34

appeared on this podcast before, Matthew Lyons.

2:37

He's a fellow of the Royal Historical Society

2:39

and also the author of The Favourite, which

2:41

explores the love affair between Elizabeth I and

2:43

Walter Raleigh. Matthew

2:47

and I discuss the lure of

2:49

fame, the obsessive attraction of this

2:51

city of untold wealth, and

2:53

the search for an earthly paradise. Matthew,

3:01

it's always lovely to talk with you. So,

3:05

many of us might know about

3:07

this gallant night, Walter Raleigh, going

3:09

off in search of El Dorado.

3:12

But when would he first have heard of

3:14

it? What were the stories that were circulating

3:17

about El Dorado by the time Walter Raleigh

3:19

went there? Raleigh seems to have first heard about

3:21

it around about 1586 when his

3:24

men captured a conquistador called Pedro de

3:26

Salmiento. And instead of essentially what

3:28

most people would have done would be ransom him,

3:30

Raleigh invited him home and wined and dined him

3:33

and got these stories out of him that were

3:35

coming out of South America. And that clearly lit

3:37

a fire under him. And then he

3:39

and people like Thomas Harrott did a lot of

3:41

work in the Spanish sources. And then you get

3:44

this voyage in 1595 when essentially Raleigh is

3:47

out of favour by that point. So he's trying to win

3:49

back favour. And one of the ways he's seeking

3:52

to do that is to seek this great

3:54

legendary golden city of El Dorado. And the

3:56

thing is for the English, it's relatively new

3:58

for the Spanish. the end of the

4:00

cycle and even by the 1570s there were Spanish

4:03

writers getting it's just a fantasy. It

4:05

doesn't exist. There's still Spanish people looking

4:07

for them and Riley goes to find one

4:09

of them because for him it's a kind of

4:12

redemption as well it's the possibility of giving Elizabeth

4:14

a great wealth and perhaps also a colony in

4:16

South America and it's also there's a kind of

4:18

political spin for him which is anti-Spanish. Well they

4:21

weaken the Spanish financially if they take the gold

4:23

and the Spanish don't and then it's also like

4:25

a foothold in the Spanish Americas. So

4:27

there's all sorts of things for Riley that

4:29

are exciting about him. From a Spanish point

4:31

of view you have the conquest of Mexico,

4:33

you have the conquest of Peru. In space

4:35

of the intent of years these two massive

4:37

empires, these two massive sources of wealth have

4:40

come into Spanish hands and they're really just

4:42

on the tip of northern South America in terms

4:44

of their control and where they are on the

4:46

land and so there's this massive land here and

4:48

they think of what we've had these two great

4:51

cities, these great empires already. What else is out

4:53

there? And Elder Ida ultimately is

4:55

the name they give to the idea that

4:57

there is at least another empire out there.

4:59

There are stories that when the empire fell

5:01

a contingent of Incans went up into the

5:03

hills and took a great deal of gold

5:06

with them so that's tied into the myth.

5:08

It seems to actually come from Quito which

5:10

was an Incan city now in Colombia

5:12

around 1540. There are like three or

5:14

four sources that place it there. It

5:16

has different forms for some people and

5:18

it's a city for some people. It's

5:20

a lake, a valley. It's an Inca-Hait

5:22

idea of wealth and behind

5:25

it is most certainly the kind of

5:27

myth about the Muisca people up in

5:29

the Colombian highlands who there was

5:31

a ritual where their kind of king once a year

5:33

would get covered in gold and they'd go out into

5:35

a lake called Lake Guatavita and they'll get to the

5:38

spirits in the water and you dive in and there'll

5:40

be a big kind of annual festival and he

5:42

is Elder Ida. That's where that kind of

5:44

part of the story comes in. That seems

5:46

to be something that did actually happen but

5:49

it's before the Spanish get there so it's

5:51

always like in memory it's always distant and

5:53

out of reach as an idea even for

5:55

them. And then there are astonishing three Conquisida

5:57

expeditions in the spring of 1530. one

6:00

coming up from Quito, one coming down to

6:02

the north, one coming over from the east,

6:05

and they all arrive in the plains of

6:07

what's now Columbia and find what is quite

6:09

a wealthy people. That's Muyiskin, they

6:11

do have quite a lot of gold, they don't

6:13

mine it, they're trading people, so they've traded all

6:15

their gold. But they do find

6:17

Lake Guatavita, and that is probably actually

6:19

where El Dorado, to the extent that there was an

6:21

El Dorado was. But because it

6:23

wasn't as wealthy as the Spanish thought it was,

6:26

this can't be El Dorado, El Dorado must be

6:28

somewhere else. So

6:30

there's a sense in some

6:32

ways that quite logically, having

6:34

found two extraordinary empires, it's

6:36

totally possible that there's another

6:38

one. And El Dorado

6:42

is this vanishing point really, it's

6:44

always over the horizon, it's never

6:46

quite graspable, but always tantalisingly drawing

6:48

you on. Yeah, I think

6:50

that's the power of El Dorado. It's almost come out,

6:52

you feel it's taunting them in a way, because it's

6:54

something that they can't have. And

6:57

in a sense, looking back to the myth

6:59

of the golden man in Lake Guatavita, that

7:01

is something that's before their time, so that's

7:03

unreachable too. It's something quite atavistic, I think,

7:05

about the search. You have that thing of

7:07

the thing you want most that you can't

7:09

have. It's really powerful. It's why

7:11

we're still talking about it now, there are other

7:13

golden cities in the Americas that didn't get found.

7:15

But my personal view is that one of the

7:17

reasons we still talk about El Dorado is Raleigh,

7:19

and his writing about it, and his, for

7:21

what's the better word, celebration of the idea.

7:25

It seems to me that he

7:27

was travelling halfway around the world

7:29

on the basis of mere hearsay,

7:31

on rumour, as many perhaps people

7:33

who'd looked for El Dorado had

7:35

already done. But I wonder

7:38

if there's a drive there that's also

7:40

about the pursuit of glory

7:42

and fame, just as much as

7:44

wealth. Yeah, I

7:46

think so. One of the things I think

7:48

that makes El Dorado and Raleigh such a

7:50

powerful combination is that Raleigh is a great

7:53

figure. He seems like a glorious

7:55

exemplar of Elizabeth Renaissance, but actually,

7:57

he had really no achievements. He's

8:00

fantastic, nothing substantial at the same time.

8:03

In the way of El Dorado is made for

8:05

Riley because it's this thing that ought to be

8:07

amazing and is tantalising in itself. What

8:10

is so exactly? So he's a perfect match

8:13

for it and so I think psychologically for

8:15

him, its glory, its recovery

8:17

of his name and status within the

8:19

Elizabethan court. Questionably how much

8:21

status he heard, that's crushing status for the Elizabeths

8:23

for sure. And yeah, personal glory.

8:26

He did deny that kind of thing vociferously.

8:29

There is that thing I could be king here, that

8:31

kind of idea. I could look after this empire

8:33

for Elizabeth. His discovery of the

8:35

Arna is full of oh it's not about the

8:37

gold, it's not about the gold. Even though that

8:39

is really why he's there. Clearly why he's there

8:42

because he's looking for El Dorado. It's so

8:44

true that he has this disproportionate

8:46

fame to his achievement. Extraordinary

8:48

sort of posthumous reputation for

8:51

things like introducing potatoes and

8:53

tobacco to England, or

8:56

putting his cloak over that plashy place so

8:58

Elizabeth could cross and I didn't do that

9:01

either. Or founding Roanoke, he didn't actually go

9:03

there and that sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. That's

9:05

why El Dorado is perfect. He goes in search of

9:07

a golden city and doesn't find it. That's perfect Riley

9:09

right there. But also he glosses it

9:11

and that's the crucial thing I suppose. Yeah, but

9:13

then he comes back and writes the six tourney

9:15

work all about how he didn't find it and

9:18

how that was a great triumph. It's easily persuaded

9:20

by him I think. Even though you can see

9:22

through the bluster and the rhetoric. I think one

9:24

of the things that's powerful about it is that

9:26

he's a great writer and the sense of him

9:28

visiting this part of the world he's never been

9:30

to. And very few Europeans have been to and

9:33

just the kind of explosion of information he's

9:35

getting and trying to process it and trying

9:37

to set it into what he knows of

9:39

what the world is like. So it's really

9:41

interesting work on many levels. Okay,

9:44

so we have him setting off and reaching

9:46

the so-called New World in late March 1595.

9:50

And you've mentioned that there are some

9:52

push factors at the time. This person

9:55

who's been a great favorite of Elizabeth

9:57

I is no longer such a favorite.

10:00

and he's set off to

10:03

the Americas for the first time. So even

10:06

though we talk about him being associated

10:08

with previous voyages, this is his first

10:10

direct encounter. So let's think about why

10:12

he goes and who's funding him to

10:15

go and the sort of scale of

10:17

the expedition. Essentially

10:19

he's going with the backing of quite

10:21

a few people at court primarily. Robert

10:23

Cecil is a key backer, certainly politically,

10:25

the son of William Cecil and Oliver

10:28

Lee. And he goes with

10:30

around about 60 men, four or

10:32

five ships. One of the things that's in

10:34

there in Discovery is Raleigh

10:36

reports how much people doubted

10:38

him even at the point

10:41

of leaving. They thought he went off to hide

10:43

in Cornwall for like six months or whatever, or

10:45

picked up bits of gold on the African coast

10:47

and stuff. So there's a kind of level of

10:49

disbelief about A, that he would do that as

10:51

a key courtier and as a man of his

10:53

status. And then just because

10:55

he was broadly not trusted by almost everyone

10:58

apart from Elizabeth, people are resistant to the

11:00

idea that he could want to do that

11:02

and be that he could achieve anything with

11:05

it anyway. So there's something very defensive about

11:07

his approach even from the beginning. He sets

11:09

off in the spring of 95. It's very

11:12

much a voyage into the unknown and perilous,

11:14

you have to say. He did remarkably

11:16

well to get there and back again. And

11:19

as you've said, the main source that

11:22

we have for all of this is

11:24

Raleigh himself. So it's this book

11:26

that he published in a short form that's titled

11:28

as the discovery of Guyana. Tell

11:30

us about this book and how perhaps

11:32

it shapes the narrative we have, perhaps

11:34

his purpose in writing might shape the

11:36

narrative as well. Yeah, I

11:39

think his purpose in writing it is partly

11:41

the thing you're talking about, glory or vainglory.

11:43

I did this amazing thing, which is one

11:45

of the key themes of the book, if

11:47

you like. I did this amazing thing and

11:49

I saw these amazing things. I can do

11:52

so much for you. I've directed Elizabeth really,

11:54

a lot of it, even if it's normally

11:56

directed at Cessna and Howard. It's a pitch

11:58

to Elizabeth for obviously favourite. again but also

12:00

like money to go and either look

12:03

for El Dorado or establish an empire

12:05

or look for toward against the Spanish.

12:07

So it's a very interesting text and

12:09

so about I don't know 20 years

12:11

ago they found a manuscript copy of

12:13

it in Lamberth Palace which has or

12:15

seems to have like basically Cecil's edits

12:18

on it and so the book has published has

12:20

quite a lot of large claims about Riley himself

12:22

and all the things he saw and discovered and

12:24

you have in the manuscript you have edits where

12:26

Cecil is just trying to rein it in so

12:28

there's this thing where Riley says I know that

12:30

this is the greatest river system in the world

12:33

when I'm talking about the Orinoco. Cecil crosses out

12:35

no and you think it's the greatest river

12:37

system in the world. That kind of stuff. And

12:40

it's kind of there and what Riley's trying

12:42

to write anyway but how do you make

12:44

this experience explicable to the English minds to

12:46

the Western European world for your mindset which

12:48

is a constant challenge in the thing itself

12:50

so you have references to things like the

12:52

Landforce Travels as a way of contextualising the

12:55

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15:45

love Cecil's intervention because it

15:48

really feels like it characterises

15:50

both men. Here you

15:52

have Walter Riley, the show-off, and there

15:54

you've got Cecil, the prudent, the

15:57

counsellor. It really is such a wonderful way

15:59

of working. of summing them both up. So

16:02

we've got Roddy landing in Trinidad,

16:05

as it is, meeting Spanish

16:07

settlers and he's clearly in

16:09

Spanish territory and so

16:12

he kind of needs a reason to

16:14

attack and to make

16:16

this great attempt. Did he find some sort

16:18

of excuse to justify his behaviour? Yeah, I

16:20

think as with Spanish as well, the sorts

16:22

of people that went on these expeditions were

16:25

not going to be foraging food in the

16:27

forest. They wanted to take it from people

16:29

and so that apart from what they've taken

16:31

not themselves, they do bits of hunting here

16:33

and there and stuff but there's always a

16:35

negotiation going upriver with how are they going

16:37

to get food. You attack communities

16:39

up the river to parley with them. There's

16:42

some evidence that essentially left one of his men

16:44

behind as a country. The native chief's son, he

16:46

came back to England and Roddy left two men

16:48

there. One gets caught by the Spanish and he

16:50

left a deposition essentially saying that no it wasn't

16:53

peaceful and we had to fight our way up

16:55

some of the time. But I think the thing

16:57

is again coming back to that sense of the

16:59

unknown and how urgent it was, I don't think

17:01

really any of the sense of English Spanish

17:04

got used to it. English had any sense of the

17:06

scale of zero, you know, because you know some miles

17:08

up the river and one of the things in Discover

17:10

is we're talking about essentially coaxing his men along

17:12

a couple miles at a time and it's just around the

17:14

next pass. Tomorrow we'll find it again in a couple of

17:17

days and you do get a really strong sense and I

17:19

think it is real of kind of

17:21

Roddy's leadership abilities and before and for better

17:23

or for charisma because he does essentially take

17:25

all his men up river and gets back

17:27

down again which is some achievement

17:30

and then in classic Roddy fashion this is in

17:32

the Discovery but then to try and get some

17:34

money to show for the voyage he went and

17:36

attacked the Spanish settlement and lost a load of

17:38

his men there. He doesn't talk about that but

17:40

that is something that happened afterwards. He makes

17:42

much of the difficulties of

17:45

the conditions, the challenging situation

17:47

they're in. How real was

17:49

that challenge in terms of how difficult

17:51

a journey was it really? Yeah

17:54

my feeling is reading it. Did he

17:56

really want to find El Dorado? It's

17:58

almost like somewhere. the river and then

18:01

they go back down again and they get to

18:03

the borders of the land and come back down

18:05

and say, did you really want to find it?

18:07

He went without anyone to say any gold or

18:09

knew anything about what gold looked like in all

18:12

four walls within the rocks. They bought like a

18:14

load of crap in his men, which I think

18:16

in discovery he blames on his men but actually

18:18

it's him as well. So yeah, does he believe

18:20

it? We don't know really. He may have thought

18:22

I can't push these men anymore. Conversation

18:25

topiorari is in part toparari saying you can't

18:27

go any further, but as if that would

18:29

have stopped rarli if he wanted to,

18:32

these guns men were not like, oh no, that's

18:34

right. That would be a sensible thing to do.

18:36

It'll go back. You can't really work out from

18:38

the text why he didn't go on other than

18:40

you can intuit perhaps he had realized it was

18:42

a fantasy and it didn't have to prove that

18:44

it was a fantasy perhaps. I don't know. In

18:46

like the latter part of discovery, you get him

18:49

talking about mines, which is one of the things

18:51

he comes back and tries to sell. And it's

18:53

actually why he goes back in 1617 is trying

18:55

to find gold and silver mines, which actually were

18:57

there. I'm not sure that he had proof of

18:59

it, but they were there. So it's

19:01

a very kind of rarli and enigma that kind of why

19:04

didn't you stop to use it like he's

19:06

in many respects quite a rashless in

19:08

the way he tries to interpret what he

19:10

hears. So did he not want to say

19:13

that there was nothing here? He could arguably

19:15

have turned into an anti-spanish thing and Spanish

19:17

officials to think there was such a place,

19:20

but he doesn't need to hanging. So

19:22

he doesn't really push the old rarli

19:25

as a goal after he comes back.

19:27

It's all about the mines and about

19:29

potential imperial conquest and anti-spanish stuff. So

19:31

when he goes back in 1617, it's

19:33

not to find elder ardo, it's to

19:35

find the mines. So

19:37

pewter. That's interesting. Before we take

19:39

him back, the other thing in this

19:42

early visit is that he hears about

19:44

those sort of fabulous fantastical people, you

19:46

know, with heads not above their shoulders

19:49

and this sort of thing and

19:51

report this. Do you get

19:53

the sense that he believes those reports?

19:56

In some ways it's quite good ethnographic practice he

19:58

reports what he's hearing when outcome and judging

20:00

it. He says that you read about stuff in

20:02

Mandeville, I don't know.

20:04

An anthropologist called Neil Whitehead talks quite a

20:07

lot of detail about that but actually how

20:09

accurate Raleigh is in his ethnography. One of

20:11

the things he talks about is the men

20:13

with no heads. What he says is that

20:16

the case symbolic trope in the region is

20:18

for him worries to have faces painted on

20:20

the chest. So you don't have to have

20:22

much of a slip and translation for that

20:25

to be interpreted by Raleigh as men with

20:27

heads on their chests. So I don't know.

20:29

I used to think he was really

20:32

just drunk with the wonder of it and with

20:34

strangeness. There is that sense of him

20:36

quite incantatory about the way he uses

20:38

place names and people names. Coming to

20:40

it again, I think there's more nuance

20:42

and scepticism there. That scepticism

20:44

is too much but it's more of a

20:46

willingness to judge what he's hearing than a

20:48

gullibility perhaps. I'm not sure. It's interesting. You

20:51

can read it different ways. Surely

20:53

a major part of it is that he is

20:55

trying to say to those of people who've given

20:57

him vast sums of money to go and do

20:59

this that it was worth their while to invest

21:01

even though he's come back empty handed. Oh

21:04

absolutely. Yeah. And you think that's one of

21:06

the reasons why Cessal has taken such a

21:08

personal interest in Raleigh's report. It's worth saying

21:10

actually that you think perhaps that Cessal is

21:12

really at it and going, come on Walter,

21:14

what are you talking about? But actually it's

21:16

like one of Raleigh's men, Lawrence Keynes, goes

21:18

to Guiana the next year and Cessal

21:21

is one of the investors. So there's

21:23

continued interest in the possibilities of what

21:25

Raleigh is selling even though there's kind

21:27

of scepticism about the details. Just

21:29

in terms of the amount of money that's being invested

21:31

so that I think if I remember correctly that

21:33

Raleigh's voyage to Guiana to Elder Raleigh

21:36

would cost like 60,000. So

21:38

Raleigh didn't do things by heart. He

21:40

always wanted more and the scale of everything

21:42

was always like in a very kind of

21:44

Elder Raleigh way, Raleigh was always about bigger,

21:47

more, faster, further. That's a very kind of

21:49

Raleigh kind of idea. I've just

21:51

bunged it into the National Archives' currency converter and

21:53

it tells us in 2017 this

21:55

was worth approximately 10,298 hours. So

22:01

it's vast amounts of money that people are putting

22:03

into it. A lot of money.

22:05

You can understand why the other courtiers were less

22:07

than thrilled when he came back with nothing. But

22:09

also this is like brilliant bravado towards the end

22:11

of this company where he's come and switched into.

22:13

It wasn't all about the gold. It

22:16

was all about establishing Elizabeth's name. He

22:18

talks quite a lot about showing the

22:20

native people's portraits of Elizabeth and saying

22:22

how she'd freed the northern hemisphere from

22:24

the Spanish. So it turns into this kind

22:26

of like, well it was never about the money. Which is

22:28

on the face of a ludicrous and it's hard to believe he

22:30

thought he'd get away with it. So

22:33

we fast forward to the new

22:35

king. James VI is the coming

22:37

days, the first of England and

22:39

English foreign policies, for start not

22:41

with Raleigh. In any way he's

22:43

pretty swiftly confined to the Tower

22:45

for allegedly plotting James's overthrow. And

22:48

it's only in 1615, 1616

22:51

when Raleigh is in his 60s that he's

22:54

given royal approval to head back to the

22:56

Orinoco to see what he can find. Tell

22:58

us what happened then. Raleigh's

23:00

old, he's pretty poorly. He was in

23:03

bad shape in 1595. He's in really

23:05

poor shape now physically. So they sail

23:07

over. Raleigh essentially stays at the coast.

23:10

He stays on his ship and he

23:12

sends his key sidekick Lawrence Keams upriver

23:14

with Raleigh's son Watt and

23:17

they head upriver. Raleigh's essentially sitting

23:19

waiting on the coast quite poorly,

23:21

waiting for information to come down.

23:24

And essentially they get up to where

23:26

Raleigh had got to before and they

23:28

see a Spanish fort. And they are

23:30

under strict instructions from James not to

23:32

engage militarily with the Spanish, but

23:35

of course Spanish are in the

23:37

way. And essentially they attack the

23:39

Spanish fort. Raleigh's son is chopped

23:41

almost immediately and it's a disaster.

23:44

And then Keams comes back down to

23:46

Raleigh in his ship and

23:49

tells Raleigh about the loss of his

23:51

son and Raleigh is distraught. He blames

23:54

Keams and Keams goes into his cabin

23:56

and kills himself. And then

23:58

Raleigh comes back down to Raleigh. back to

24:00

England and there are suggestions that he might

24:02

have thought about maybe in French or somewhere

24:05

because clearly he was still under a sentence

24:07

of death and it should probably have made

24:09

clear that when he left the tower his

24:11

death sentence wasn't removed. He asked Francis Bacon's

24:13

advice and Bacon said no be fine don't

24:16

worry which is terrible advice. So he comes

24:18

back there's the sentence of death hanging over

24:20

him he knows that his men have done

24:22

exactly what they were told not to do

24:24

by James who's close allied to the Spanish

24:27

at this point and he's pretty

24:29

much a broken man I think it's probably fair to

24:31

say. There's a really beautiful letter

24:33

he wrote to his wife after the death

24:35

of his son where he says I don't

24:37

know what sorrow was till now. It's really

24:39

very powerful. He comes back and Spanish ambassadors

24:41

wanting his head and essentially James gives it

24:43

to him. It is a

24:45

tragic postscript. Did the

24:48

myth of El Dorado die with Raleigh?

24:50

No it's curious you get expeditions really

24:52

through the 17th century into the 18th

24:54

century. There's a Flemish expedition in the

24:56

1660s which does what Raleigh and Barrieu

24:58

fell to do which is go beyond

25:01

up to the source of the Coronie

25:03

which is the river where the mines

25:05

were which is where they said El

25:07

Dorado was and Flemish explore goes there

25:09

and then goes hey nothing there. It's

25:12

partly fueled by maps because maps are

25:14

quite stubborn in terms of information. Once

25:16

something gets on a map it doesn't

25:18

really come off. So, I mean Raleigh's

25:20

version of El Dorado is that there's

25:22

Lake Perima and there's this city of

25:24

El Dorado called Menel. Those

25:27

two things are on loads of maps

25:29

up until the 1840s with those two

25:31

things on it. Even though Alexander von

25:33

Humboldt had done a lot of work

25:35

where Raleigh had been and what places

25:37

he was talking about and so

25:39

he had worked out around about the turn of the

25:42

19th century that we had pinpointed

25:44

where Raleigh was talking about and that there

25:46

was nothing there. The lake was essentially like

25:48

a plane flooded in particular seasons. A

25:50

conference of two rivers and a lake

25:52

opened up and then proceeded again. And

25:55

then Germany explored in the 1830s

25:57

called Schomburg. He went there. to

26:00

prove to himself that there was nothing there. He had

26:02

to do the emotional abscess discovery, he was a great guy,

26:04

obviously he's a fan of Rylie, but he's a very

26:06

invested Rylie Beaose to the place where

26:09

Perima and Mano autobinch to see

26:11

if himself wasn't there. That's when it

26:13

dies. We talked a bit earlier about the lake

26:15

Ottovita and the myth about the golden man, and

26:17

that's kind of another current of Eldorod that's ongoing.

26:20

So there were attempts to drain the lake to

26:22

look for the golden dress that was in the

26:24

lake from the offerings. There were attempts from maybe

26:26

those 1540, but certainly through into the 18th, 19th

26:28

century. In turn the 20th

26:32

century there was a kind of biggish

26:34

expedition that got closed almost entirely

26:37

draining the lake, and they found I think

26:39

60 odd items which they auctioned at Sotheby's

26:41

as people tended to do in those days.

26:44

Even though Eldorod had eyes of stolen,

26:46

ripples of it going on in different

26:48

ways for eccentricists, we know

26:50

it's a resonant thing, it is something you can't

26:52

have, something you can't have that you think is

26:55

there or that might be there. Well

26:57

thank you very much for talking

26:59

to us about Eldorado, and I

27:01

suppose we can all have a think about

27:03

what our own personal Eldorado is, but

27:06

also to think about this extraordinary

27:08

character who was Walter Raleigh, who I still feel

27:10

like I'm trying to get my head around, but

27:13

it's this combination of charisma and

27:15

brilliance and fantastic leadership, and

27:17

then ultimately the kind of emperor's

27:19

new clothes that was nothing to show.

27:21

I think that's why he's more compelling than

27:24

many of his more successful contemporaries, is that

27:26

you feel his charisma even now, but what

27:28

is it based on other than just force

27:30

of personality? It's very peculiar, and as I

27:32

said earlier Eldorado is perfect for him because

27:35

it's something that he couldn't find, you couldn't

27:37

prove, that didn't exist, or that it's just

27:39

a metaphor and run, it's like a metaphor

27:41

for I don't know ambition, but also the

27:43

Renaissance man, chemist, poet,

27:46

scholar, historian, courtier,

27:49

he never really nails any one of them, but

27:51

he could have been great in all these different

27:53

things, he's never there, and that's

27:55

very like Eldorado I think. And I think

27:58

also something has that feels very

28:01

modern. He's searching for

28:03

fame. He's famous for being famous.

28:05

There's a superficiality and the lack

28:07

of substance to it, but everyone knows his

28:10

name. Thank you so much for joining me.

28:12

Thank you. And

28:20

thanks to you for listening to Not Just

28:22

the Tudors from History Hit, and

28:24

also to my researcher Alice Smith and

28:26

my producer Rob Weinberg. We are always

28:28

eager to hear from you, so do

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drop us a line at notjustthetudors at

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