Ciudad de los Césares (lost city)

Ciudad de los Césares (English: City of the Caesars), also known variously as Ciudad Encantada de la Patagonia (Enchanted City of Patagonia), Ciudad Errante (Wandering City), Trapalanda, Trapananda, Trapalandia, Lin Lin and Elelín, is an alleged lost city in South America, supposed to have been situated in the Patagonian region of the Southern Cone, which was the subject of much interest and searching during the Spanish colonial period.

Reading

 * "(Page 5.) We were not long in scrambling up the dunes to get a sight of the country beyond. At last, Patagonia! How often had I pictured in imagina tion, wishing with an intense longing to visit this solitary wilderness, resting far off in its primitive and desolate peace, untouched by man, remote from civilisation! There it lay full in sight before me — the unmarred desert that wakes strange feelings in us; the ancient habitation of giants, whose foot prints seen on the sea-shore amazed Magellan and his men, and won for it the name of Patagonia. There, too, far away in the interior, was the place called Trapalanda, and the spirit-guarded lake, on whose margin rose the battlements of that mysterious city, which many have sought and none have found. (Page 208.) During the last twenty years the country has been crossed in various directions, from the Atlantic to the Andes, and from the Rio Negro to the Straits of Magellan, and has been found all barren. The mysterious illusive city, peopled by whites, which was long believed to exist in the unknown interior, in a valley called Trapalanda, is to moderns a myth, a mirage of the mind, as little to the traveller's imagination as the glittering capital of great Manoa, which Alonzo Pizarro and his false friend Orellana failed to discover. The traveller of to-day really expects to see nothing more exciting than a solitary huanaco keeping watch on a hilltop, and a few grey-plumaged rheas flying from him, and, possibly, a band of long-haired roving savages, with their faces painted black and red."
 * "(Page 5.) We were not long in scrambling up the dunes to get a sight of the country beyond. At last, Patagonia! How often had I pictured in imagina tion, wishing with an intense longing to visit this solitary wilderness, resting far off in its primitive and desolate peace, untouched by man, remote from civilisation! There it lay full in sight before me — the unmarred desert that wakes strange feelings in us; the ancient habitation of giants, whose foot prints seen on the sea-shore amazed Magellan and his men, and won for it the name of Patagonia. There, too, far away in the interior, was the place called Trapalanda, and the spirit-guarded lake, on whose margin rose the battlements of that mysterious city, which many have sought and none have found. (Page 208.) During the last twenty years the country has been crossed in various directions, from the Atlantic to the Andes, and from the Rio Negro to the Straits of Magellan, and has been found all barren. The mysterious illusive city, peopled by whites, which was long believed to exist in the unknown interior, in a valley called Trapalanda, is to moderns a myth, a mirage of the mind, as little to the traveller's imagination as the glittering capital of great Manoa, which Alonzo Pizarro and his false friend Orellana failed to discover. The traveller of to-day really expects to see nothing more exciting than a solitary huanaco keeping watch on a hilltop, and a few grey-plumaged rheas flying from him, and, possibly, a band of long-haired roving savages, with their faces painted black and red."