Antonio de Berrío

"A collection of nearly 40 documents related to Berrío's governorship of Trinidad and his quest for El Dorado in central Venezuela (Guiana) in the 1580s and 1590s. Already in his 50s when he and his family migrated to the New World to assume the territorial and political legacy left him by his wife's uncle, the great New Granadan conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Berrío's late adult life illustrated the power of the El Dorado myth among Spaniards and Britons alike; Berrío and Walter Raleigh crossed swords in 1595 when the latter first sought the fabled area. Berrío's late career also demonstrates the continuation of the conquest era through late-16th century. Handsomely printed and nicely illustrated with reproductions of De Bry engravings"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.