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Aronson, Marc. Sir Walter Ralegh [Sic] and the Quest for El Dorado. New York, Clarion, 2000.

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Walter Ralegh was (probably) born in 1554, in a farmhouse in Devon. He grew up poor and near the sea, always feeling lured to it. He was close to Queen Elisabeth I.

"...born in Devon...probably in 1554...not wealthy or titled...family was something of a decline"(13)

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Ralegh went to France during his teen years (around 15 or 17) and fought them. He wrote about his experiences during battle, talking about how civil war is grievous. A peace was almost made after thousands of deaths (1570), just to be brought up again 2 years after (1572). Not long after more deaths, Ralegh trapped Catholics and forced them out with bundles of lighted straws. He eventually ended his educational warfare when the Comte de Montgomerie was murdered. Ralegh was unusually calm in his writings when it came to death, which is only fair since he's been surrounded by it during his lifetime. This made him stronger, he knew that death was inevitable and so he should live an adventurous and high-risk life.

"...1569, though, he was in France, fighting...all of his writings...accepting attitude for death..."(23)

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When at a disadvantage against 60 solders, he still fought fearlessly and even turned back to help out a fellow Longshoreman who got left behind.

"In the winter of 1581...Ralegh fought his way through the enemy ranks"(45)

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Raleigh's great talents were recognized and he became one of three men to run the county of Munster, which occupied around a quarter of Ireland. With this, he took greater risks and went for a traitor with a small group of men. He marched all night, avoiding their trap, and entered with only 5 men. They left victorious, arresting the Lord who was said to be a traitor.

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Being so close with Queen Elisabeth I, and being the skilled man he is, he got access to a palatial home in London. He was very grateful for the queens gifts, which only strengthened his ambitions.

"In 1583 she gave him access to a palatial home in London..."(50)

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Ralegh's privateers captured a Spanish conquistador named Don Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa who happened to be a very experienced explorer. It is suspected that this is how Ralegh learned about El Dorado, through this man.

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Ralegh requested a provisional title to 42,000 acres of good land in the counties of Cork and Waterford, and was granted it. In return, he was required to take over the English people to farm and protect the land.

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Ralegh started to realized that Ireland wasn't treating him as he wished, he sold everything he owned in Ireland, and continued his journeys.

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In 1594, Raleigh sent Jacob Whiddon to the coast around Trinidad and raised 60,000 pounds sterling to finance a grand expedition to South America. With four ships and 250 men, Raleigh arrived in Trinidad by March 22 and attacked the Spanish garrison in San José on April 7, aiming to talk with Berrio.

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(Image credit: Getty Images International Ltd)

Not many people have the distinction of putting a nonexistent place on the map, but Sir Walter Raleigh was one of them. That place was El Dorado, a legendary city of gold that was said to be located in what is now Venezuela.

But calling it a city is too precise. To the conquistadors searching for it, El Dorado was at different times a city, a kingdom or an empire; later, the search for it morphed into the search for a mine.

In the 1530s, when the phrase was first coined by the Spanish conquistadors, "El Dorado" was a man covered head to toe in gold dust - "the golden one" - and a participant in a tribal ritual of the Chibcha in the Colombian Andes. Since then, El Dorado has become a loose, seductive metaphor for the riches that might still lie undiscovered in the vast northern hinterlands of South America.
Related: Treasure hunters search for fabled gold on Philippines island. Hoard may not even exist.
The name may forever be associated with Raleigh, the famous British explorer. And, arguably, without Raleigh's own fame, El Dorado might have sunk into obscurity with other mythic golden cities such as Paititi, Cibola or Quivira, which the Europeans believed existed in the Americas. But Raleigh was by no means the first person to fall under the spell cast by the promise of unfound riches. In fact, by the time word of El Dorado reached him in the 1580s, Spanish explorers had already made several attempts to find it.

(Image credit: Alamy)

It was Raleigh, though, who ignited the story.

How Raleigh learned of El Dorado

Raleigh likely first learned of El Dorado in the early autumn of 1586, almost certainly from a Spanish conquistador named Don Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who had been captured by Raleigh's privateers in August of that year while returning home across the Atlantic. With 30 years of experience in the New World behind him, Sarmiento was a seasoned explorer.
Related: Massive gold bar unearthed in Mexico was looted Aztec treasure
Considering the two great Incan and Aztec empires that Spain had conquered some 70 years earlier, the idea of a third certainly wouldn't have seemed absurd to Raleigh.

It may also have been from Sarmiento that Raleigh heard of Don Antonio de Berrio, another conquistador. Berrio believed he had reac

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Walter Raleigh's bloody quest for El Dorado

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Queen Elizabeth I's favourite explorer was driven mad searching for the mythic 'Golden Empire'

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Walter Raleigh crosses the Atlantic in search of EL Dorado and the Seven Cities of Gold in 1595

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Enjoy Discounts & Hottest Sales On Sir Walter Raleigh. Limited Offer. Shop Now! Best Deals On Sir Walter Raleigh.

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Histories Sir Walter Raleigh And The Quest For El Dorado

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Gold was the beacon that lured the Spaniards to America, and dazzling stories were told by them of the riches of the countries they explored, s

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Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) was an English adventurer, writer and nobleman. After growing close to Elizabeth I during his time in the army, Raleigh was knighted in 1585 and became captain of the guard. During Elizabeth's reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the ill-fated Roanoke settlement. He later drew the queen's wrath and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After Elizabeth's death in 1603, Raleigh was implicated as an enemy of her successor, James I, and given a death sentence. The sentence was commuted, and Raleigh was freed to lead an expedition to the New World, but its failure sealed his fate.

Sir Walter Raleigh's Early Life

Sir Walter Raleigh was born in 1552 to Walter Raleigh and Catherine Champernowne. He was raised in a farmhouse near the village of East Budleigh in Devon, England. Raleigh studied at Oxford before serving in the Huguenot army in France (1569). A rival of the Earl of Essex for the queen's favors, he served (1580) in Elizabeth's army in Ireland, distinguishing himself by his ruthlessness at the siege of Smerwick and by the plantation of English and Scots Protestants in Munster. Elizabeth rewarded him with a large estate in Ireland, knighted him (1585) and gave him trade privileges and the right to colonize America.

Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth

In 1587, Raleigh explored North America from North Carolina to present-day Florida, naming the region in honor of Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen." ( Raleigh never stepped foot in Virginia himself.)

In 1587 Raleigh sent an ill-fated second expedition of colonists to Roanoke. In 1588 he took part in the victory over the Spanish Armada. He led other raids against Spanish possessions and returned with much booty. Raleigh forfeited Elizabeth's favor by his courtship of and subsequent marriage to one of her maids-of-honor, Bessy Throckmorton, and he was committed to the Tower of London in 1592. Hoping, on his release, to recover his position, he led an abortive expedition to Guiana to search for El Dorado, a legendary land of gold. Instead, he helped to introduce the potato plant and tobacco use in England and Ireland.

Sir Walter Raleigh: Tower of London And Beheading

James I Elizabeth's successor, James I, distrusted and feared Raleigh, charged him with treason and condemned him to death, but commuted the sentence to imprisonment in the Tower in 1603. It was there that Raleigh lived with his wife and servants and wrote his History of the World (1614). Walter and Elizabeth ("Bessy") Raleigh had three children: Carew Raleigh, Damerei Raleigh and Walter Raleigh.

Raleigh was released in 1616 to search for gold in South America. He invaded and pillaged Spanish territory at a time when James I was seeking peace with Spain, and was forced to return to England without booty. Raleigh was arrested on the orders of the king. His original death sentence for treason was invoked and he was executed at Westminster on October 29, 1618. He is buried in St. Margaret's Church in Westminster.

A gifted poet, writer, and scholar, many of his poems and writings were destroyed. A pioneer of the Italian sonnet-form in English, he was a patron of the arts, notably of Edmund Spenser in his composition of The Faerie Queene (1589-96).

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Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) was an English adventurer, writer and nobleman. After growing close to Elizabeth I during his time in the army, Raleigh was knighted in 1585 and became captain of the guard. During Elizabeth's reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the ill-fated Roanoke settlement.