A part of the Amerindian heritage that is very well known, highly visible and accessible is the literature. This includes the Romantic, the historical and the actual. The literature of Guyana was started and has been forever coloured by the prose writings of Walter Ralegh (not his poetry, which belongs to an entirely different English tradition). His The Discovery of Guyana (short modernised title) set off an endless succession of literature based on El Dorado and the gilded Amerindian prince. That has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration and imagination for Guyanese writers that has reappeared in the literature and has been a popular theme in tourism.
Written accounts at the very root of written Guianese history, the very ancestors of Guianese literature, have their origin in the Amerindian presence and European encounters with it. This literature in its wider interpretations will include the historical and the anthropological documentation