The fabulous tales told by some travellers about the incalculable riches contained in these cities have inflamed the greed and avarice of a great number of adventurers, who, at various periods, have attempted to find the lost road to these queens of the llanos and Pampas of the Cordillera. Others merely impelled by the irresistible attractions which extraordinary enterprises offer to, vagabond imaginations, have also started, during the last fifty years, in search of the Indian cities, but, up to the present day, success has not crowned a single one of these expeditions.
Some of the travellers have returned disenchanted and half killed by this journey toward the unknown; a certain number left their bodies at the base of precipices or in the quebradas to serve as food for birds of prey; and, lastly, others, more unhappy still, have disappeared without leaving a trace, and no one has ever known what became of them.
We, in consequence of circumstances too lengthy to repeat here, but which we may possibly narrate some day, have involuntarily inhabited one of these impenetrable cities, and, more fortunate than our predecessors, we succeeded in escaping through a thousand perils, all miraculously avoided. The description we are about to give is therefore scrupulously exact, and will not admit of doubt, since we speak from personal knowledge.
Garakouaïti, the city which appears before us, when we have at last crossed the virgin forest, extends from north to south in the form of a rectangle. A wide stream, over which are thrown several stone bridges of incredible lightness and elegance, passes through its entire length. At each corner of the square an enormous block of rock, cut perpendicularly on the side facing the country, serves as an almost impregnable fortification. These four citadels are also connected together by a wall, twenty feet thick at the top, and forty high, which inside the town forms an incline whose base is sixty feet in width. This wall is built of the bricks of the country, which are about a yard long, and called adobes, and surrounds the town. A wide deep ditch doubles the height of the walls.
Two gates alone offer entrance to the city: they are flanked by turrets, exactly like a mediæval castle; and what supports our comparison is, that an extremely narrow and light bridge of planks, which can be removed upon the slightest alarm, is the sole communication between the gate and the exterior.