El Dorado

'The Golden One' or 'The Guilded One'. During many pre-imperialist native meso-american rituals, one or more people would cover their bodies with gold dust, usually to symbolize themselves as the Sun God or his disciples. This was supposedly quite a startling sight when the first european coquerers saw it, and many Spanish soldiers truly believed they were seeing ghosts or phantasms.

El` Do*ra"do (?), pl. El Doradoes (). [Sp., lit., the gilt (sc. land); el the + dorado gilt, p. p. of dorare to gild. Cf. Dorado.]

1.

A name given by the Spaniards in the 16th century to an imaginary country in the interior of South America, reputed to abound in gold and precious stones.