Ralegh leaves England—Arrives at Trinidad—Taking of S. Joseph—Interviews with Berreo—Dealings with natives—Starts up the river in boats—Dangers overcome—Adventures—They reach River Amana—Indian village—Within sight of Guiana—Toparimaca—Beauty of the land—Falls of the Caroli—The return—Voyage home—Arrival in England.

Although travel was slow and involved great physical endurance, there was never a time when men less loved their homes and firesides. The scene again changes. Many things called Ralegh; the spirit of unrest was always strong in him; he was always longing to get right away. The little things of life pressed upon him, and drove him to seek respite and quiet in the Unknown. And the Unknown held for him immense possibilities; the kingdom he desired to establish haunted his imagination more imperiously even than the actual release from the life and surroundings which quickly to his spirit became dull and commonplace. His nature was too high bred to endure with patience, until it was confronted by the inevitable; and there was very little that to his nature was inevitable. The barriers that would have stopped a smaller nature were pushed on one side by him, and even when Fate held him fast, he ultimately triumphed by turning his bondage to magnificent account. The spirit of life was with him always stronger than his fear of being called a coward, stronger even than his pride. And always when he at length realized a thing to be inevitable, he faced it at his full stature.

He had lived the life of the courtier, he had fought against Spain, he had attended to the numberless duties in Devonshire, in Cornwall, in Ireland; everything was becoming wearisome to him, and while he was unconsciously losing interest in his life, he was also losing his power over others. He was in disfavour. He was prouder than the proud men amongst whom he lived, and in consequence he had many enemies, who longed to humble his pride. He grew tired of the life; his imagination moved ever in advance of the present, and kept him ever unsatisfied and alert. In himself rather than in the influence of others lay the primary reason for his loss of favour. It is almost invariably so with a great personality even when he is himself unconscious of the cause.

He put all his energy into making preparations for carrying out his project of founding a new kingdom in Guiana. If he were successful, fortune would be remade, and favour would be regained. The prospect was exciting, but more alluring than the excitement was the knowledge that the sea and the unknown would bring to his soul immediate peace; that new sights, new dangers, and new interests would soothe his mind, fretted by the immanent pettiness of passing days. Change is the law of life, and Ralegh was immensely alive. Such a nature as his must always find expression for itself, must find scope and occupation for its greatness, or the spirit preys upon itself and pines into uneasiness. Whatever the force be from which vitality comes, brain or blood or soul, that force is irresistible. Death alone can free a man from its tyranny.

So Ralegh turned towards that kingdom in Guiana, towards "that great and golden city which the Spaniards call El Dorado," and on Thursday, February 6, 1595, he left England. The previous year he had sent his servant, Jacob Whiddon, to get "knowledge of the passages," and he had "some light from Captain Parker," but yet his journey's end was vaguely known. Jacob Whiddon and Captain Parker only conjectured that the place existed somewhere southward of the great bay Charuas, or Guanipa; and their conjecture was incorrect by some six hundred miles. Information of the kind was apt then to be inaccurate. Spaniards, indeed, knew something of this vast empire of Guiana, but naturally they kept such knowledge to their own use. That this destination was six hundred miles farther inland than he had been led to believe, Ralegh did not discover until he arrived at Trinidad, which he reached with no mishap other than the usual one of separation.

One of the pieces of gossip which old Aubrey recounts, and which is pleasant to believe, is that Ralegh was in the habit of taking many books with him on a voyage, and of reading them assiduously in his cabin. He knew Spanish well, and was conversant with the travel-lore of Spain. Among his books would surely be the "large discourses" of Pedro de Cieza and Francisco Lopez, recounting the marvels of the land to which he was making and the adventures which the Spaniards endured in conquering it.

All the terrible hardships of these first explorers had often fired his imagination, but never as now, when every movement of the ship brought him nearer to the actual scene of his endeavour. He would succeed where they had failed. And his heart must have warmed to these brave adventurers in spite of the fact that they were his enemies. He remembered their hardships, and his own, when he wrote in his "History of the World," "I cannot forbeare to commend the patient virtue of the Spaniards. We seldome or never finde that any Nation hath endured so many misadventures and miseries as the Spaniards have done in their Indian discoveries.... Tempests and shipwrecks, famine, overthrowes, mutinies, heat and cold, pestilence, and all manner of diseases, both old and new, together with extreme povertie, and want of all things needefull, have beene the enemies wherewith every one of their most noble Discoverers, at one time or other hath encountered. Many yeeres have passed over some of their heads in the search of not so many leagues; yea, more than one or two have spent their labour, their wealth and their lives in search of a golden Kingdom without getting further notice of it than what they had at their first setting forth. All which, notwithstanding the third, fourth, and fifth under-takers, have not been disheartened. Surely they are worthily rewarded with those Treasuries and Paradises which they enjoy; and well they deserve to hold them quietly, if they hinder not the like virtue in others, which (perhaps) will not be found." Men who lived through the same elemental perils have something in common, and a man like Ralegh is able to realize and to express the fact; he is able to rise above the claims of nationality at a time when his nation struggled for its very life, and he with it, against the rival nation of Spain.

He arrived at the island of Trinidad, and punished, after the manner of the time, the treachery of the Spaniards against Jacob Whiddon; for the year before Berreo, Governor of Trinidad, had broken his word of truce to Whiddon, and having set an ambuscade for his men when they landed, slew some eight of them. "So as both to be revenged of this wrong, as also considering that to enter Guiana by small boats, to depart four or five hundred miles from my ships and to have a garrison in my back interested in the same enterprise, who also daily expected supplies out of Spain, I should have savoured very much of the ass; and therefore, taking a time of most advantage, I set upon the corp du gard in the evening, and having put them to the sword, sent Captain Galfield onward with sixty soldiers, and myself followed with forty more, and so took their new city, which they called S. Joseph, by break of day; they abode not any fight after a few shot, and all being dismissed but only Berreo and his companion. I brought them with me aboard, and at the instance of the Indians I set their new city of S. Joseph on fire."

And now Ralegh shows once more his extraordinary power over other men, and shows it even more vividly than in the case of the Irish chieftain whom he changed from a leader of rebels to a staunch servant of the Queen. He wanted all the information he could obtain, and from Berreo he obtained it, though he was bitterly opposed, as might be expected, to the English and to Ralegh. A Boswellian record of their conversations would be of value to all business men.

"Having Berreo my prisoner, I gathered from him as much of Guiana as he knew. This Berreo is a gentleman well descended and had long served the Spanish King in Milan, Naples, the Low Countries, and elsewhere, very valiant and liberal, and a gentleman of great assuredness, and of a great heart. I used him according to his estate and worth in all things I could, according to the small means I had." Berreo well knew the importance of such knowledge to Ralegh; for he had spread reports far and wide among the Indians that the English meant them the deadliest mischief, and he had announced that any native found to have had any intercourse with the English would be forthwith hanged. But Berreo, an old man, was constrained to give a full account of his journey; and Ralegh's narrative of his own expedition is punctuated by what Berreo saw and heard, and conjectured, and by repeated corroboration of Berreo's statements. Ralegh must have smiled to himself when the old man so far relented towards him as even to beg him not to venture his life and the lives of the company in attempting a task which had proved too much for his own capability. There must have been a singular mingling of affection and cunning in the petition. "Berreo," writes Ralegh, "Berreo was stricken into a great melancholy and sadness, and used all the arguments he could to dissuade me, and also assured the gentlemen of my company that it would be labour lost, and that they should suffer many miseries if they proceeded." And he went on to explain the nature of the difficulties, how the mouths of the rivers were sandy and full of flats, which could only be entered in the smallest boats; how the current ran swift and strong; how the natives were hostile, and how the kings of the natives had decreed that none should trade with the English for gold, "because the same would be their own overthrow, and that for the love of gold the Christians meant to conquer and dispossess them of all together." To which Ralegh adds drily, "Many and the most of these I found to be true."

Naturally he did not let experience alone prove the truth of his valiant prisoner's statements. He called all the captains of the island together that were enemies to the Spaniards and conversed with them by means of an

Indian interpreter whom he had brought out of England. "I made them understand that I was the servant of a queen who was the great Cassiqui of the north, and a virgin, and had more Cassiqui under her than there were trees in their island; that she was an enemy to the Castellans in respect of their tyranny and oppression, and that she delivered all such nations about her as were by them oppressed; and having freed all the coast of the northern world from their servitude had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest. I showed them Her Majesty's picture, which they so admired and honoured as it had been easy to have brought them idolatrous thereof.... They now call her Ezrabeta Cassipuna Aquerewana."

That was his policy always with the natives. The Spaniards desired immediate wealth, which they wrung from the Indians by all means in their power; Ralegh desired a new English kingdom, and knew that for his purpose the aid of the Indians was invaluable. And accordingly wherever he went he was always at the utmost pains to conciliate them with presents and carefully sought expressions of regard and good will. The Indian chieftains fell under the spell of his personality in the same way as the Irish rebel and his Spanish prisoner, or, indeed, any one over whom he sought from the first moment of acquaintance to exercise influence.

To estimate at its proper value the gigantic proportions of the task which Ralegh had sailed some thousand miles to achieve, it is necessary to remember something of the geography of the country which is now called Venezuela, and the innumerable rivers which there flow into the sea, forming a complicated network.

Having at length discovered from Berreo and the natives as much as he could about the lie of the land—that is to say, about a quarter of that which an intelligent Council School teacher could have told him in ten minutes at the present day—Ralegh started up the river to Guiana, "resolving," as he puts it, "to make trial of all, whatsoever happened." He sent ships to reconnoitre and take soundings. Captain Calfield in his bark and the vice-admiral George Gifford in the Lion's Whelp eastward to the mouth of the river called Capuri; King, master of the Lion's Whelp in his ship's boat to try another branch of the river in the bottom of the bay of Guanipa, and to see if there was water enough to admit the passage of a small ship. This branch was called the Amana; but it, like the other, presented the same difficulties. The rush of water was dangerous for a small boat, and the shallowness prevented the use of a ship. King could only make hurried investigations, because his Indian guide assured him that the natives of Guanipa, who were cannibals, might any moment attack them, and that the attack would be terrible, for they paddled swiftly in canoes and shot poisoned arrows with deadly effect.

Nothing could deter Ralegh from his enterprise. He gave instructions to his carpenters to cut down a gallego-boat, to draw five feet of water, and to fit her with banks to row on. John Douglas was sent in his barge to look after King, who had not returned, and to take careful soundings in the bottom of the bay. For old John Hampton of Plymouth, and others who had come from Trinidad, had told him dreadful stories of its danger. "It hath been held for infallible that whatsoever ship or boat shall fall therein can never disembogue again by reason of the violent current which setteth into the said bay, as also for that the breeze and easterly wind bloweth directly into the same."

John Douglas took with him an old cassique of Trinidad for a pilot, and was successful. Four goodly entrances were found, whereof the least was as big as the Thames at Woolwich, but only six feet deep. Ralegh accordingly gave up hope of finding passage for his ship, and decided to go on with the boats, and the gallego which he had prepared, and which held sixty men. In the boat of Lion's Whelp and in its wherry there was room for twenty men, in Captain Calfield's wherry for ten, and in Ralegh's barge for ten more. They carried victuals for a month. Among the gentlemen were Ralegh's cousins Butshead Gorges and John Grenville, his nephew John Gilbert, Captain Keymis and Captain Clarke. "We had as much sea to cross over in our wherries as between Dover and Calais, and in a great billow, the wind and current being both very strong, so as we were driven to go in those small boats directly before the wind into the bottom of the bay of Guanipa." Their pilot was an Arwacan, an Indian of Barema, which is a river to the south of the Orinoco. Ralegh had caught and pressed him into his service as he was paddling in his canoe to sell bread at Marquerita; but now the Arwacan confessed himself quite ignorant of the river up which they were rowing; he told them he had not been on it for twelve years, "at which time he was very young and of no judgment." The position of the adventurers was one of extreme danger; they might have rowed in that labyrinth of rivers for a year without finding a way either out or in, for they only discovered the Arwacan's ignorance after four days. Ralegh realized their plight to the full, and the extraordinary good fortune which drew them out of it. A small canoe was espied in which three Indians were paddling. Ralegh, in his eight-oared barge, immediately gave chase, and succeeded in overtaking the canoe before it crossed the river ("which because it had no name we called the river of the Red Cross, ourselves being the first Christians that ever came therein"). Natives on the thickly wooded bank watched the chase with eagerness, and the captain with anxiety, fearing what might happen to their fellows. But when they saw that Ralegh treated the three with deference, the people on the shore made friendly signs and showed no fear as the eight-oared barge drew in, but offered to traffic in such commodities as they possessed.

As the adventurers stopped there for a while at the mouth of a little creek which came from the Indian village into the river, Ferdinando the pilot, who came with them originally, and his brother, must needs go to the village to drink the wine of the place, and upon him the chief men of the village fell, threatening to punish them with death for having thus brought white strangers into their midst. But Ferdinando, "being quick and of a disposed body," escaped to the woods, and his brother raced back to the barge, where he cried out panting that the Indians had slain Ferdinando. Ralegh immediately laid hands on a very old man, who was with him to serve as hostage, and if Ferdinando were indeed dead, to take his place as pilot. Meanwhile the Indians were pursuing Ferdinando with deer-dogs, and the woods sounded with their shouts; nor could the old man stay them, though he called out as loudly as he could the sad consequences in which they would involve him. At last Ferdinando reached a part of the shore and climbed a tall tree which hung over the river, and the barge happening to pass by, he plunged into the water and swam to it, half dead with fear. "But our good hap was that we kept the other old Indian, which we hand-fasted to redeem our pilot withal, for being natural of those rivers we assured ourselves he knew the way better than any stranger could; and, indeed, but for this chance, I think we had never found the way either to Guiana or back to our ships; for Ferdinando, after a few days, knew nothing at all nor which way to turn, yea and many times the old man himself was in great doubt which river to take."

They rowed on through the maze of rivers and islands, which were inhabited by the Ciawani and the Waraweete, goodly people, carpenters for the most part of canoes, who dwell in little houses in the summer, and, when the river rises (and it rises thirty feet, amazingly, as Ralegh discovered), in the tops of trees. He relates their customs; how some beat the bones of their chiefs into powder and the wives and friends drink it all, that the bones may have a kindly resting-place; how others take up the buried corpse of a dead chieftain, when the flesh has departed from the bones, and hang the skeleton in his own house, decking the skull with feathers and fitting his gold plates about the bones of his arms and thighs and legs.

On the third day the gallego "came on ground and stuck so fast as we thought that even there our discovery had ended and that we must have left sixty of our men to have inhabited like rooks upon trees with those nations; but the next morning, after we had cast out all her ballast, with tugging and hauling to and fro we got her afloat."

Four days more they rowed on until they came into the river Amana, which ran more directly, without windings and twistings, than the other, and then a fresh difficulty met them. For the flood of the sea no longer gave any help and "we were enforced either by main strength to row against a violent current or to return as wise as we went out." The men complained that the work was too much for them; but they consented to pull on when Ralegh and the other captains and gentlemen offered to take each his turn at the oar. Each spell of rowing lasted one hour. Thus they proceeded slowly and with tremendous effort for three more days, when the men began to despair; the current became each day stronger and the river appeared interminable in length. "But we evermore commanded our pilots to promise an end by next day, and used it so long as we were driven to assure them from four reaches of the river to three, and so to two, and so to the next reach." The men, too, were hungry; food was giving out; the sun was scorching, and there was nothing to drink but the thick and troubled water of the river. Sometimes they found fruits on the trees that were good to eat; sometimes they shot birds. Birds there were of every brilliant colour, "carnation, crimson, orange-tawny, purple, green watchet, and of all sorts, both simple and mixt, as it was unto us a great good passing of the time to behold them." But the men were hungry and tired. Then a pilot, the very old man, whom they had hand-fasted, said that he would bring them soon to a town of the Arwacas, where they would find a store of bread, hens, fish, and the wine of the country, if they would turn with their barge and wherries down a branch of the river on the right hand. The men were cheered at the prospect. Ralegh and Gifford and Calfield determined to make their way to the town for food; so, leaving the majority of their men at the river's entrance, they set out. They rowed three hours without seeing a sign of human life, and they began to suspect that the pilot was playing them false. It grew towards night, but still he kept assuring them that the village lay only four reaches farther on. "When we had rowed four and four we saw no sign, and our poor watermen even, heartbroken and tired, were ready to give up the ghost; for we had now come from the galleye near forty miles."

Then they determined to hang the very old man, their pilot. But the river began to narrow. It became so narrow that the trees with which either bank was thickly covered touched branches across the water, and they were obliged to draw their swords and cut a passage through. "We were very desirous to find this town, hoping of a feast, because we made but a short breakfast aboard the galley in the morning, and it was now eight o'clock at night and our stomachs began to gnaw apace." At last they saw a light, heard the dogs of the village bark, and one hour after midnight they arrived. The old pilot had not deceived them in any way. They found good store of hens, bread, fish, and Indian drink.

Meanwhile the company which was left behind in the galley, fearing that some mishap must have come to the wherries, sent out a party after them in the ship's boat of the Lion's Whelp, under Captain Whiddon. But Ralegh was so pleased with the prospect which the morning light disclosed to his view, that he had rowed some forty miles farther on. For no longer was the country beshrubbed with thorns and thickets and closely growing trees. Great plains, twenty miles in length, covered with fair green grass spread out before him, "and in divers parts groves of trees by themselves (he writes with his keen eye for effects of landscape), as if they had been by all the art and labour in the world so made of purpose, and still as we rowed the deer came down, feeding by the water's side, as if they had been used to a keeper's call." But all was not beautiful and quiet. In the river swam fishes of a monstrous size, and thousands of ugly serpents, called lagartos. A negro, a very proper young fellow, leapt from Ralegh's barge to swim to the shore, and in the sight of all the men, one of these lagartos ate him. Those monstrous serpents are now called alligators.

They came back to the great river and resumed their course, pulling ever with difficulty against the current. And again they were reduced to hunger, and again they were on the brink of despair, when Captain Gifford, who was a little in advance of the others seeking a place to land and make a fire, saw four canoes, and with no small joy he urged his men to try the uttermost of their strength to come up with them. At last they overtook them, as they paddled up a creek off the main stream, and found bread in two canoes, which they captured, and learned that three Spaniards were in the other canoes, one a cavallero, one a soldier, and one a refiner of metals. The bread roused the courage of the hungry men, and "Let us go on!" they cried; "we care not how far!" as they lit fires for the night's encampment. Immediately Ralegh sent Captain Thyn and Captain Gifford in one direction, Captain Calfield in another, to follow the men who had fled away. As he himself was creeping through the bushes he saw an Indian basket which was insecurely hidden. In the basket was a refiner's outfit, quicksilver, saltpetre, and other things to test the quality of minerals, and the dust of ore which had been refined. They could not, however, catch the Spaniards, but they discovered some Arwacas concealed in the woods who had acted as pilots to the Spaniards. Them they questioned, and one they took with them for their own pilot.

Ralegh had no mining tools with him, nor had he come for small and immediate gain. His purpose was no other than to open out the resources of the whole country for England, not to snatch a cargo load of gold. Moreover, a month had passed since they had seen the ships. Time was precious; there was much to be done; "and to stay," he says pithily, "to dig out gold with our nails had been opus laboris but not ingenii." He stayed only to survey the neighbourhood. During his short stay the natives came in numbers to him, and with his usual policy he treated them with elaborate kindness in contrast to the cruelty of the Spaniards. He paid for everything which he used, and took every means to prevent violence to their women, and theft. If the offender was discovered he was punished before the Indians; and, more than that, if an Indian complained of a theft which could not be laid to any man's account, he was paid to the full amount of his loss.

Here Ralegh sent back Ferdinando and the very old man in a canoe with presents for themselves and a message to deliver to the ships, and the company rowed on their way, taking with them as pilot, Martin, the native who was captured from the three Spaniards. But the next day the galley ran aground, and "we were like to cast her away with all our victual and provision and so lay on the sand one whole night, and were far more in despair at this time to free her than before, because we had no tide of flood to help us; and therefore feared that all our hopes would have ended in mishaps. But we fastened an anchor upon the land, and with main strength drew her off."

Then at last, to their great joy, the mountains of Guiana rose before them, and in the evening of the same day a fresh northerly wind sprang up, and before it they passed on till they were brought in sight of the great river of Orinoco, "out of which the river descended wherein we were." As their boats entered the Orinoco they espied three canoes manned by natives, who, when they saw the English, paddled fast away westward towards Guiana, thinking they were Spaniards. The boats, giving chase, came up with one of the canoes, and explained by their interpreter that they were not Spaniards but friends. Thereupon the natives were cordial, gladly gave them fish and tortoise eggs, and promised to bring their chief man to the boats in the morning. In the morning the chief man, whose name was Toparimaca, came with some forty followers, bringing presents of bread and fruit and wine. With him Ralegh conferred about the nearest way to Guiana, and he escorted Ralegh to his own port, and from his port escorted Ralegh and some of his captains to the town, where the captains caroused until they were "reasonable pleasant." The name of the town was Arowocai, and in it was staying a stranger cassique with his wife and retainers. Of this wife Ralegh gives a characteristic description: "In all my life I have seldom seen a better favoured woman. She was of good stature, with black eyes, fat of body, of an excellent countenance, her hair almost as long as herself, tied up again in pretty knots, and it seemed that she stood not in that awe of her husband as the rest, for she spake and discoursed and drank among the gentlemen and captains and was very pleasant, knowing her own comeliness, and taking great pride therein. I have seen a lady in England so like her as, but for the difference of colour, I would have sworn might have been the same." Toparimaca gave them a pilot, an old man of great experience and travel, who knew his way by day or night on the river, and they rowed on. Without him, mishap would have befallen them, because the river is exceedingly broad, at places extending to twenty miles, and its course is full of wonderful eddies, islands, shoals, currents, and dangerous rocks.

They passed up the great river, sailing, for a wind rose up behind them, along the shore of the island of Assapana, past the river Europa, which poured its waters into the great river; they sailed on ever westward, wide green plains spread out on the right hand, and the banks of the river were a very perfect red. Now they must make all speed possible, for the time was drawing near when the rain would fall, and the river rising, would, by the violence of its current, hinder all further progress. On they sailed, past the high mountains of Aroami and Aio, past the great island Manoripano, until, on the sixth day, they reached the land of that Morequito whom Berreo had slain. They anchored in the port, and Ralegh despatched one of his pilots to the uncle of Morequito, King of Aromaia. In the morning, before noon, the old king came with his followers, walking the fourteen miles to the shore; he was one hundred and ten years old. A little tent had been set up on the shore, and in it the old king rested. When he was rested, Ralegh conversed with him by means of an interpreter. He explained how he had been sent out by his Queen specially to free the land from the tyranny of the Spaniards; he dilated at large on "Her Majesty's greatness, her justice, her charity to oppressed nations, with as many of the rest of her beauties and virtues as either I could express or they conceive, all which being with great admiration attentively heard and marvellously admired. I began to sound the old man as touching Guiana." They talked for a long space of time, the old king relating memories of his youth, how "there came down into that large valley of Guiana a nation from so far off as the sun slept (Ralegh liked that phrase and mentions it as the old king's own expression), with so great a multitude as they could not be numbered nor resisted; and that they wore large coats and hats of crimson; ... that they had slain and rooted out so many of the ancient people as there were leaves in the wood upon all the trees." When the Christians came, however, they joined forces together and lived at peace, each one holding the Spaniard as a common enemy. And as the old king talked, Ralegh marvelled to find a man of such gravity and judgment and of so good discourse that had no help of learning nor breed.

Then the old king "desired leave to depart, saying that he had far to go; that he was old and weak and was every day called for by death." Ralegh begged him to remain during the night, but he could not prevail upon him to do so; and, though the weather was hot, the old king walked back fourteen miles to his town, having promised to wait upon Ralegh on his return. And that he did not fail to do. It was not for nothing that he was held to be the proudest and the wisest of all the Oroonokoponi.

Still they sailed westward, eager to see the famous river Caroli, which led to the frontiers of the people who were most hostile to Tuga, the Emperor of Guiana, and anchored by the island Caiama. The next day they came, after ten miles, to the mouth of the Caroli; when they were yet far distant they heard the great roar and fall of the river. So violent was the rush of the current that they were unable to make any headway up the stream—not a stone's cast in an hour. Accordingly, a halt was made, and messengers were sent inland to invite the native king to a parley. The king came, and Ralegh discoursed with him about the purpose of his coming and his Queen's goodness and beauty; and learned from him about his people and country. By this time, all the rivers having risen five feet and more, further progress became impossible; and Ralegh, dividing his company into bands, sent them inland in every direction to explore. He himself went to the top of the first hills of the plain adjoining the river, and in the distance the celebrated falls of the Caroli were visible. "There appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had all been covered over with a great shower of rain; and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had arisen over some great town. For my own part I was well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill footman, but the rest were all so desirous to go near the strange thunder of waters, as they drew me on by little and little till we came into the next valley where we might better discern the same." The men of each band returned and brought with them stones and minerals, lustre, marquesite crystal, and stones that resembled sapphire.

Ralegh, as he looked at the stones and heard the reports of the wonderful fertility and resources of the land which lay in splendid expanse around him, must have felt within him that his dream of El Dorado was at last realized. Indeed, it seemed that he had only to come out and take possession.

But now "the fury of Oroonoco began daily to threaten us with dangers ... for no half day passed but the river began to rage and overflow very fearfully and the rains came down in terrible showers, and gusts in great abundance, and withal our men began to cry out for want of shift, for no man had place to bestow any other apparel than that which he wore upon his back, and that was thoroughly washed on his body for the most part ten times in one day; and we had now been well near a month, every day passing to the westward farther and farther from our ships. We therefore turned towards the east and spent the rest of the time in discovering the river towards the sea which we had not yet viewed and which was most material."

The first day of their return they sped down the stream of the great river against the wind one hundred miles, and anchored at the port of Morequito; and immediately a messenger was sent to bid the old king come. Once more Ralegh had a long conference with him concerning the kingdom of Guiana, and once more he was impressed by the wisdom of the old man's replies to his questions. Francis Sparrow and a boy, Harry Gordon, were left to learn the language till Ralegh came next year, equipped to conquer the land; and a young native was to go with them to England.

On their journey back to the sea they stayed several times to confer with native kings and find out how they were disposed towards the Spaniards and towards Tuga, the Emperor of Guiana. At the very end of their expedition they found the greatest peril awaiting them. "When we were arrived at the seaside, then grew our greatest doubt and the bitterest of all our journey fore-passed, for I protest before God we were in a most desperate estate.... There arose a mighty storm, and the river's mouth was at least a league broad, so as we ran before night close under the land with our small boats and brought the galley as near as we could, but she had as much ado to live as could be, and there wanted little of her sinking and all those in her.... The longer we tarried the worse it was, and therefore I took Captain Gifford, Captain Calfield, and my cousin Grenville into my barge, and after it cleared up about midnight we put ourselves to God's keeping and thrust out into the sea, leaving the galley at anchor, who durst not adventure out but by daylight. And so being all very sober and melancholy, one faintly cheering another to shew courage, it pleased God that the next day, about nine of the clock, we descried the island of Trinidado, and steering for the nearest part of it, we kept the shore until we came to Curiapan, where we found our ships an anchor, than which there was never to us a more joyful sight.

"Now it have pleased God to send us safe to our ships it is time to leave Guiana to the sun whom they worship, and steer away to the north."

So Ralegh and his brave men set their sails for England. Many hours in his cabin he must have enjoyed the luxury of rest, working out in his mind the time and proper equipment for the great expedition which he would lead back to the land which he had prospected. His imagination would picture to him the careful opponents who would be ready to put forward drawbacks and dangers; and he would answer them with such conviction that the most careful would gradually catch a part of his ardour. Guiana would be the topic of all Englishmen, and England's ultimate glory. He would view again the beauty of the land and its fertility, the broad plains and the thick woods, where birds of every brilliant colour flew, he would see the deer coming to drink at the water's edge, the refiner's basket, and the gold waiting to be worked out of the ground, and the precious stones waiting to be cut; the crystal, the sapphire, the lustre. He had his map, he had friends among the natives, he had made all ready for the great occupation. "The common soldier shall here fight for gold, and pay himself, instead of pence, with plates of half-a-foot broad, whereas he breaketh his bones in other wars for provant and penury. Those commanders and chieftains that shoot at honour and abundance, shall find there more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with golden images, more sepulchres filled with treasure than either Cortez found in Mexico, or Pizzaro in Peru, and the shining glory of this conquest will eclipse all those so far extended beams of the Spanish nation."

He arrived in England in August, 1595, having been absent not quite seven months. On all sides he met with opposition and disbelief. Some, the graver sort, considered it better to husband their forces, to repel the threatened invasion of Philip, who had sworn "to avenge the destruction of the Armada on Elizabeth, if he were reduced to pawn the last candlestick on his domestic altar." Others were angry that Ralegh had brought back no cargoes of gold and precious stones; others, again, laughed at him, saying that he had never been to Guiana at all, but had been lurking in Cornwall: that the whole thing was a cock and bull story to regain favour at Court. He, sneered they, was too easeful and sensual to endure the discomfort of so long a journey. Where were the riches which he would have taken, as Drake took, had he really been to Guiana? To which Ralegh answered proudly, "It became not the former fortune in which I once lived to go journies of picory: and it had sorted ill with the offices of honour, which, by her Majestie's grace I hold this day in England, to run from cape to cape, and from place to place, for the pillage of ordinary prizes."

His reception exasperated him; but he did not give way. In five months he fitted out another expedition under Captain Keymis; and wrote a full account of the voyage he had himself taken. But this second expedition was too small to do anything else than keep in touch with the native friends, and to find fresh information.

Ralegh's efforts were unavailing. To found the empire in Guiana became his life's purpose, and he strove to attain it with all the resources of his energy. But the course of events was too strong for him, and he could not make men see far enough ahead of immediate gain. Many years later his scorn at their apathy broke out again, when, in writing his "History of the World," he is describing Roman energy in the founding of colonies: "Such an offer, were it made in England, concerning either Virginia or Guiana, it selfe would not overjoy the multitude. But the Commonalty of Rome tooke this in so good part, notwithstanding all danger, joined with the benefit, that Flaminius had ever after their good will." There is something indescribably pathetic in this personal touch—of the prisoner recording the fame of a man who had been honoured for offering less to his people than the prisoner himself had offered, and at less personal risk—Flaminius supported, Ralegh hindered—each by the nation which he most desired to serve.

Edmund Spenser felt for him a friend's sympathy when he wrote in the FaËrie Queene—

And shame on you, O Men, which boast your strong
And valiant hearts, in thoughts lesse hard and bold,
Yet quaile in conquest of that Land of Gold!
But this to you, O Britons, most pertaines,
To whom the right hereof itselfe hath sold,
The whiche, for sparing little cost or paines,
Loose so immortall glory, and so endless gaines.

CHAPTER XII