AtoZ Of DogsKeep your best friend safe and happy!

Francisco de Orellana – the first Amazon River Explorer

Francisco de Orellana was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. It may have been a relative of Francisco Pizarro, the conquistador of Peru. As his parents Pizarro, Orellana was born in Trujillo, Extremadura. He reached the New World as a teenager and participated in Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, where he lost an eye in battle. He was a lieutenant of Gonzalo Pizarro at its mission 1541 through the Andes east of Quito, in the heart of South America in search of El Dorado and the Land of Cinnamon.

They have faced enormous challenges to overcome the Andes, starting in Quito, when they finally arrived at the NapoRiver a tributary of the river Amazon, which lead to the lowlands of the Amazon basin. They faced Indians and captured many attacks, which, under duress kept confessing that there a land of gold and nutmeg downstream. After weeks of problems and their food supplies running low (at this time they had eaten their horses and dogs), Orellana was ordered by expedition leader Pizarro sail downstream in search of food and signs of wealth and then return.

Orellana was chosen because he knew many native languages, and could communicate with Indians and help. But he and his men found no villages while navigating the Napo River. Instead, they have suffered so much hunger they ate their own shoes.

He descended the river to its junction with the Amazon River in present-day northern Peru: instead of returning, as he had promised Gonzalo Pizarro, he descended the river to the Atlantic Ocean. Orellana managed to sail along the Amazon in one of the most astonishing success shipments in recorded history, reaching the mouth of the river August 24, 1542. He then managed to track ocean currents on the coast of South America, eventually reaching the Caribbean and Isla Margarita in Venezuela, where he was taken to Spain to meet the king and tell his amazing journey. It is known as the first European to descend the Amazon River.

Chaplain of the expedition, Gaspar de Carvajal, wrote a diary of their trip, which provides interesting, if not always accurate, descriptions that the Amazon was before Europeans arrived. He described the fertile agricultural lands and farms of turtles in the heart of the Amazon basin. Long thought to be exaggerations, attitudes to claims Orellana began to change. His description of Riverside continuous human settlements are gradually being met by the archaeological data, showing that the Amazon is a place that can support large human settlements, as technology appropriate for sustainability exists.

It may well have led the first party of Europeans through a very advanced civilization that flourished in the Amazon for centuries – a civilization whose existence has been deemed impossible.

The excavation of ruins and even fragments of the Amazonian language with words for crops, they were unable to grow suggests that there were complex practical agricultural place thousands of years.

Archaeologists have found that these Amazonian farmers apparently developed raised fields half-mile long with irrigation canals in between. Somehow they have found a way to enrich the soil with a micro-organism which creates a stratum dark loamy soil with the cuttings as qualities. Up to 10% of the Amazon basin has been terra formed this way by the former – or the size of France.

, A Spanish expedition in 1617 remarked on the extent and quality of a network of roads raised connecting villages in the Amazon together. These roads are still visible as straight lines cutting across the savannah. Alongside them operating channels, the result of their construction. This network of channels could have suffered hundreds of thousands of people, and archaeologists believe that this region was home to a society that has totally mastered its environment.

During his trip, Orellana also described an encounter tribe of women very white and tall and make up to 10 fighting men. These women were highly skilled warriors with bows and arrows, and their queen, Conor, would have great treasures. Their formidable force brought to mind the Amazons of Greek mythology, and tales of these Orellana female warriors gave the river and the area its name.

Orellana own name remains somewhat tainted because of the suspicion of having abandoned Pizarro in a desperate situation. However, his men have testified and he was found innocent. When he returned to Spain, Orellana sought and obtained an exemption to explore and New Rule Andalusia, meaning roughly the land south of the great river. He sailed from Sanlúcar May 11, 1545, with an insufficiently equipped fleet and accompanied by his wife, Ana de Ayala, whom he married in Spain.

After being named governor New Andalusia, he and his men reached the Amazon River delta, has built a riverboat and explored 500 km of the region. They face many difficulties and the 300 men he had taken with him fromSpain only 44 were rescued at sea by another Spanish fleet. Orellana was one victims – he died in November 1546.

The Amazon is the second longest river, to 3980 miles. His collection of water from 40 percent of the continent, in the form of thousands of tributaries, many of which are over 1,000 miles long. As with the Nile, the people who lived in the Amazon in ancient times used the river for agriculture and transport.

There is now an inland province in Ecuador named Orellana, whose capital is Puerto Francisco de Orellana. The province is named after Orellana, who sailed from somewhere near the city to the Atlantic Ocean. He did this trip several occasions in search of El Dorado and a forest rumor nutmeg, nutmeg at a time to be a very expensive spice.

Orellana fanatical as he was with finding gold, was known as the gilded man. " He said he saw the glitteringEl Dorado, stories that still echo through the archaeological community, and although it might be easier to believe that Orellana was a fraud, are always those looking for remnants of the past who could confirm that the legendary city existed.

The legend of El Dorado, apparently originated in a tradition of Chibcha people of Colombia who each year select a head and rolled him in gold, which he then ceremonially washed in a sacred lake, casting offerings of emeralds and gold into the waters at the same time. This custom had evidently disappeared long before the arrival the conquistadors, but the tales lived and grew into a legend of a land of gold and abundance.

The exploration of Orellana also produced an international problem between Spain and Portugal because under the Treaty of Tordesillas, the delta of the Amazon should byPortugal be excluded. It can not be resolved a century later, with the exploration of Pedro Teixeira.

About the Author

Secretário Estadual de Planejamento e Desenvolvimento Econômico, Amazonas, Brasil / Secretary for Planning and Economic Development, State of Amazonas, Brazil

WHITE TIGERS “Facts VS Fiction”

Photographic Print of Acteon turnd into a Stag, and devourd by his dogs, 1733. from Heritage-Images £10.00 10×8 Print. Printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper for stable image permanence and brilliant colour reproduction with accurate colour rendition and smooth tones. Enhanced sharpness with excellent definition. Paper size approx 254×203mm…

The Lost Princess (with linked TOC) This ebook is complete with linked Table of Content making navigation quicker and easier.Also published as A Double Story, this is known to be one of C.S. Lewis’ favorite books.The Lost Princess is a fairy tale about two spoiled girls who learn self-control from a mysterious Wise Woman. The girls are brought by magic to the Wise Woman’s cottage deep in the forest. By encountering difficult situati…

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (with linked TOC) This ebook is complete with linked Table of Content making navigation quicker and easier.”I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for. A mere spectator of other men’s fortunes and adventures, and how they play their parts; which, methinks, are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre or scene.”–BURTON.THE following papers, with two exceptions, were written in England, an…

The History of the Caliph Vathek Vathek (alternatively titled Vathek, an Arabian Tale or The History of the Caliph Vathek) is a Gothic novel written by William Thomas Beckford. It was composed in French beginning in 1782, and then translated into English by Reverend Samuel Henley in which form it was first published in 1786 without Beckford’s name as An Arabian Tale, From an Unpublished Manuscript, claiming to be translated direc…