THE KINGDOM IN GUIANA
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
_Faerie 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.