The Creature in the Map

A reconstruction of Sir Walter Raleigh's 1595 South American journey, this book combines scholarship with travelogue, and offers an understanding of the meanings of the El Dorado myth. It seeks to analyze and bring to life the experience of Raleigh's voyage to the Orinoco Delta, in what is now Venezuela. Nicholls' reconstruction of the journey uses Raleigh's own account "The Discoverie of Guiana", which is part truth, part advertising, part rhapsody, together with considerable ancillary material.