========== As a boy in Lima, my grandfather told me a legend of the Spanish conquest of Peru. Atahualpa, emperor of the Inca,
had been captured and killed. Pizarro and his conquistadors
had grown rich, and tales of their conquest
and glory had reached Spain and was bringing new waves of Spaniards,
hungry for gold and glory. They would go into towns and ask the Inca, "Where's another civilization
we can conquer? Where's more gold?" And the Inca, out of vengeance, told them, "Go to the Amazon. You'll find all the gold you want there. In fact, there is a city called Paititi --
El Dorado in Spanish -- made entirely of gold." The Spanish set off into the jungle, but the few that return
come back with stories, stories of powerful s...