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ELDORADO BY LEVI BISHOP
over the mountains, with more wealth, as they believed, than was to be found in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and with which they were to astonish their many waiting friends at home. The guides having seen them safe on the other side of the mountains, returned according to their vows to their delightful Eldorado.
Such, according to the fanciful descriptions of the great philosopher and romancer of the eighteenth century, was the imaginary Eldorado, a name which has added, from the Spanish language, a world of vast significance to the popular nomenclature of the world. Such was the unreal locality-the attractive paradise of gold and diamonds, which was supposed to be somewhere in South America, to which the restless cupidity of the eastern world was directed. The great author from whom we have taken this sketch has drawn this picture in strong colors, as he usually draws all of his pictures, and yet his description is believed not to surpass the wild and most extravagant opinions which prevailed extensively in Europe for ages before and even down to the time when he lived, and when he wrote on the subject. Such, finally, was the ne plus ultra of earthly hopes and expectations, which occupied the public mind of Europe for two or three centuries after the discovery of America by Columbus, which was stimulated by the discovery of the rich mines of Mexico and Peru, which was supposed by some to have been actually reached when the gold mines and washings of California were discovered, and which is fed even now in this country and in Europe by accounts of real or fictitious mineral treasures in different regions of the Rocky Mountains.
Michigan
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