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El Dorado   /ɛl dɔrˈɑdoʊ/   Listen
El Dorado

noun
1.
An imaginary place of great wealth and opportunity; sought in South America by 16th-century explorers.  Synonym: eldorado.






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"El Dorado" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the revolver. Orators, Governors, capitalists and leaders of the legislature enjoyed a degree of fame, but it seemed local and meagre when contrasted with the fame of such men as Sam Brown, Jack Williams, Billy Mulligan, Farmer Pease, Sugarfoot Mike, Pock Marked Jake, El Dorado Johnny, Jack McNabb, Joe McGee, Jack Harris, Six-fingered Pete, etc., etc. There was a long list of them. They were brave, reckless men, and traveled with their lives in their hands. To give them their due, they did their killing principally among themselves, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... wilds, somewhere, the fabled El Dorado lay; there bubbled the fountain of eternal youth: through that endless wilderness of forest, plain and hill flowed on in turbid majesty the waters of De Soto's ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... in this chapter of adventures with grizzlies in Placer and El Dorado counties in 1850 and 1851, I am indebted to Dr. R. F. Rooney, of Auburn, Cal., who obtained the details at first hand ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... till after 1545, when the mines of Potosi made Europe dream of El Dorado, the great new Golden West, that England began to think of trying her own luck in America. Some of the fathers of Drake's "Sea-Dogs" had already been in Brazil, notably "Olde Mr. William Hawkins, a man for his wisdome, valure, experience, and skill in sea causes much esteemed ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... ornamented saddles and the desert skins to adorn their chateaux at home; and raining down on the troopers a shower of uncounted Napoleons until the Chasseurs, who had begun to think their trades would take them to Beylick, thought instead that they had drifted into dreams of El Dorado. He never looked up; he heard nothing, heeded nothing; he was dreamily wondering whether he should always be able so to hold his peace, and to withhold his arm, that he should never strike his tyrant down with one blow, in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... the efforts to reach Timbuktu, which was the great object of ambition to the explorers of the nineteenth century. It exercised the same fascination over their minds as did El Dorado, with its golden city of Monoa, to the adventurers in the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was thought to be the capital of a powerful and wealthy state; and those ardent minds promised themselves all kinds of wonders when they should at ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... Robin Creek, which lies somewhere Eastward of the Dividing Range. From accounts received, it would appear that a field of unequalled richness has been opened up, and that a phenomenal rush to the new El Dorado will shortly set in. All holders of Miners' Rights are entitled to peg off claims.' Gentlemen, I have been to the Kangaroo Bank," continued the giant, "and I have seen the gold myself. It is different from any sold here hitherto, barring some 70 ounces, which were brought in a few weeks ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... who conceived the hope of rifling the virgin treasures popularly believed to be buried in the inaccessible hoards of the princes of Arabia, whose realms were long looked upon—perhaps on the principle of omne ignotum pro magnifico—as a sort of indefinite and mysterious El Dorado. [31] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... frequently occupied by armies, and the forts George and William Henry, at the southern end, possess most interesting historical associations. The novelist Cooper made Lake George a region of romance. To the young generation of Americans who yearly visit its shores it is an El Dorado, and the very air breathes love as they glide in their light boats over its pellucid waters, adding to the picturesqueness of the scene, and supplying that need ever felt, no matter what the natural beauty, — the ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... or country abounding in gold and precious stones, and afterward any place of great wealth. The word is often used figuratively. In a preface to an early volume of his poetry, Poe alludes quite incidentally to "the poet's own kingdom—his El Dorado," and in this sense the ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... lunch in the shade of the live-oaks at El Dorado Springs, which used to be a much-frequented watering-hole in the days when Camp Grant thrived and mule-skinners freighted supplies in to feed Uncle Sam's pets. Two hours later they stopped again at the edge of the Santa Cruz wash, two miles from the Rocking ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... "El Dorado" is praised in all the English journals as the best book that has been written upon California. Bohn has published it in his "Shilling Series," and it ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... Coffeemire, and the others, for slander. The case was tried before Alcalde Sinclair, and the jury gave Keseberg a verdict of one dollar damages. The old alcalde records are not in existence, but some of the survivors remember the circumstance, and Mrs. Samuel Kyburz, now of Clarksville, El Dorado County, was a witness at the trial. If Keseberg was able to vindicate himself in an action for slander against the evidence of all the party, it is clear that such evidence was not adduced as has frequently appeared in books. For ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... the notion that the Moquis loved gold and possessed vast stores of that precious metal is not apparent unless it be, as Bandelier suggests, that it originated in the myth of the El Dorado, or Gilded Man.[2] The story started at Lake Guatanita in Bogota, and traveled north to Quivera, but the wealth that the Spaniards sought they never found. Their journey led them over deserts that gave them but little food and only a meager supply of water, ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... nor the credulity of the Middle Ages, the reports of this Cipango inflamed the imagination of Europe, and to reach it became at once the desire and the problem of adventurers and merchants. But how could this El Dorado be reached? Not by sailing round Africa; for to sail South, in popular estimation, was to encounter torrid suns with ever increasing heat, and suffocating vapors, and unknown dangers. The scientific world had lost the knowledge of what even the ancients knew. Nobody surmised that there was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... of State, in the interests of Raleigh's Guiana projects. The letter is here given in full, as it shows better than anything else the close and confidential relations existing between Sir Walter and Hariot at that time. Raleigh had returned from Guiana, his first El Dorado expedition, in August 1595, and had in the mean time employed such energy and enterprise that within about five months he had fitted out and dispatched his second El Dorado fleet under his friend Captain Keymis. This second expedition returned to Plymouth in June 1596, a few days after Raleigh ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... yearnings for his own kind, for the life he had been shut out from—a general sort of desire, which men sometimes feel, to break out and taste the prime of living. Besides, there drifted down the river wild rumors of the wonderful El Dorado, glowing descriptions of the city of logs and tents, and ludicrous accounts of the che-cha-quas who had rushed in and were ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... could not but wonder whether Bourne had seen this sail when he looked upon the water? Does he see such sights every day, because he lives down here? Is it not perhaps a magic yacht of his; and does he slip off privately after business hours to Venice, and Spain, and Egypt, perhaps to El Dorado? Does he run races with Ptolemy, Philopater and Hiero of Syracuse, rare regattas on ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... delved with mighty Hercules and had created that great gap that has severed two continents. Then, leaving their work to be finished, they had sailed on to celebrate their triumph in the Land of El Dorado, the region ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James

... bride for a while in a pleasant provincial town, not many hours distant from Paris, Jasper returned to London, intent upon seeing Darrell himself; and, should the father-in-law still defer articles of peace, Jasper believed that he could have no trouble in raising a present supply upon such an El Dorado of future expectations. Darrell at once consented to see Jasper, not at his own house, but at his solicitor's. Smothering all opposing disgust, the proud gentleman deemed this condescension essential to the clear and definite understanding of those ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... for fear I have left an impression that Argentina is the El Dorado which lies beyond the seas. There are such things as locusts, floods, droughts, and frosts in ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... her love of travel and adventure was quite wonderful, and she had a most childlike faith in the existence and reality of the El Dorado we were going ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... Fountain of El Dorado (west end) - Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney In position similar to the preceding, west of the Tower of Jewels. A triptych of ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... Payne would have loved any man who would have taken her out of the droning, heart-breaking routine of the class and music room. She had followed his fortunes unquestioningly. First at Sacramento, during the turmoil of his political career, later on at Placerville in El Dorado County, after Derrick had interested himself in the Corpus Christi group of mines, and finally at Los Muertos, where, after selling out his fourth interest in Corpus Christi, he had turned rancher and had "come in" on the new tracts of wheat land ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... El Dorado, next door in the tent. He impressed me as a very quiet, direct, square sort of a fellow. The best type of professional gambler, in matters of this ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... during the earlier part of the sixteenth century, heard much of a fabled king whom they called El Dorado. [27] This king, it was said, used to smear himself with gold dust at an annual religious ceremony. In time the idea arose that somewhere in South America existed a fabled country marvelously rich in precious metals and ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... circumstances; independence; competence &c. (sufficiency) 639; solvency. provision, livelihood, maintenance; alimony, dowry; means, resources, substance; property &c. 780; command of money. income &c. 810; capital, money; round sum &c. (treasure) 800; mint of money, mine of wealth, El Dorado[Sp], bonanza, Pacatolus, Golconda, Potosi. long purse, full purse, well lined purse, heavy purse, deep pockets; purse of Fortunatus[Lat]; embarras de richesses[Fr]. pelf, Mammon, lucre, filthy lucre; loaves and fishes|!. rich man, moneyed man, warm man; man of substance; capitalist, millionaire, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Virginia, its El Dorado in every sense, had a different settlement, and by a different people. They were, for the most part, Germans, of the same class with those that settled in the great valleys of Pennsylvania, and who have made so large a portion of that State into a rich ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... strangers the entire population of the field was crowding, every man firing off his questions as fast as he could utter them, with no one answering him, and no one heeding him in the general noise and excitement. The four were trying to reach the door so as to get on the way to their El Dorado, but a solid wall of perspiring humanity surrounded them, through which they were helpless ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... inflammation that quickly leads to adenoids. In 415 villages of New York state twelve per cent were found to be mouth breathers. For two summers I have known a lad named Fred. He lives at the seashore. Throughout his twelve years he has lived in a veritable El Dorado of health and nature beauty. Groves and dunes and flora vie with the blues of ocean and sky in resting the eye and in filling the soul with that harmony which is said to make for sound living. Yet to a child, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... depend upon myself in an emergency, and I was now as helpless as a log. They put me in a swinging cot, which was a great idea to prevent seasickness. We went slowly out the harbor to sea with our prow pointing toward "Blighty," the El Dorado of the wounded Tommy. 'Twas little I saw of river, harbor, or sea from my berth in the nethermost depths of that vessel's hold. I was told we went across with all lights out. The days had passed when, in our folly, we painted our hospital-ships white with a green band and marked ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... schoolmistresses actually do come to Wall Street; all the world comes here, incorporates its idioms into its dialect and is infected with its spirit. It is a lounge for men of pleasure, a study for men of learning, an El Dorado for men of adventure, and a market for men of business. It has a habitat and a manner, a character and a vernacular. It bristles with incongruity and contradiction, yet it is as logical ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... come for a thing a deal more precious, Sir Governor,—a thing worth more to me than all the treasure of the Indies with Manoa and El Dorado thrown in,—to wit, the thing upon which I've set my mind. That which I determine to do, I do, sir, and the thing I determine to have, why, sooner or later, by hook or by crook, fair means or foul, I have it! I am not one to be crossed ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... Covington—that was his name; the name that had been handed down to Monte. The man had shouldered a rifle, fought his way across deserts and over mountain paths, had risked his life a dozen times a day to reach the unknown El Dorado of the West. He had done this partly for a woman—a slip of a girl in New York whom he left behind to wait for him, though she begged to go. That ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett



Words linked to "El Dorado" :   fictitious place, mythical place, imaginary place



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