am sorry to find even so wise a man as Sir Robert Schomburgk, after
bearing good testimony to Raleigh’s wonderful accuracy about all matters
which he had an opportunity of observing, using this term of credulity.
I must dare to differ on that point even with Sir Robert, and ask by what
right the word is used? First, Raleigh says nothing about El Dorado (as
every one is forced to confess) but what Spaniard on Spaniard had been
saying for fifty years. Therefore the blame of credulity ought to rest
with the Spaniards, from Philip von Huten, Orellano, and George of
Spires, upward to Berreo. But it rests really with no one. For nothing,
if we will examine the documents, is told of the riches of El Dorado
which had not been found to be true, and seen by the eyes of men still
living, in Peru and Mexico. Not one-fifth of America had been explored,
and already two El Dorados had been found and conquered. What more
rational than to suppose that there was a third, a fourth, a fifth, in
the remaining four-fifths? The reports of El Dorado among the savages
were just of the same kind as those by which Cortez and Pizarro hunted
out Mexico and Peru, saving that they were far more widely spread, and
confirmed by a succession of adventurers. I entreat readers to examine
this matter in Raleigh, Schomburgk, Humboldt, and Condamine, and judge
for themselves. As for Hume’s accusations, I pass them by as equally
silly and shameless, only saying, for the benefit of readers, that they
have been refuted completely by every one who has written since Hume’s
days; and to those who are inclined to laugh at Raleigh for believing in
Amazons and ‘men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders’ I can only
answer thus—
About the Amazons, Raleigh told what he was told; what the Spaniards who
went before him, and Condamine who came after him, were told. Humboldt
thinks the story possibly founded on fact; and I must say that, after
reviewing all that has been said thereon, it does seem to me the simplest
solution of the matter just to believe it true; to believe that there
was, about his time, or a little before, somewhere about the Upper
Orinoco, a warlike community of women. Humboldt shows how likely such
would be to spring up where women flee from their male tyrants into the
forests. As for the fable which connected them with the Lake Manoa and
the city of El Dorado, we can only answer, ‘If not true there and then,
it is true elsewhere now’; for the Amazonian guards of the King of
Dahomey at this moment, as all know, surpass in strangeness and in
ferocity all that has been reported of the Orinocquan viragos, and thus
prove once more that truth is stranger than fiction. {138}
Beside—and here I stand stubborn, regardless of gibes and sneers—it is
not yet proven that there was not, in the sixteenth century, some rich
and civilised kingdom like Peru or Mexico in the interior of South
America. Sir Robert Schomburgk has disproved the existence of Lake
Parima; but it will take a long time, and more explorers than one, to
prove that there are no ruins of ancient cities, such as Stephens
stumbled on in Yucatan, still buried in the depths of the forest. Fifty
years of ruin would suffice to wrap them in a leafy veil which would hide
them from every one who did not literally run against them. Tribes would
die out, or change place, as the Atures and other great nations have done
in those parts, and every traditional record of them perish gradually;
for it is only gradually and lately that it has perished: while if it be
asked, What has become of the people themselves? the answer is, that when
any race (like most of the American races in the sixteenth century) is in
a dying state, it hardly needs war to thin it down, and reduce the
remnant to savagery. Greater nations than El Dorado was even supposed to
be have vanished ere now, and left not a trace behind: and so may they.
But enough of this. I leave the quarrel to that honest and patient
warder of tourneys, Old Time, who will surely do right at last, and go on
to the dogheaded worthies, without necks, and long hair hanging down
behind, who, as a cacique told Raleigh, that ‘they had of late years
slain many hundreds of his father’s people,’ and in whom even Humboldt
was not always allowed, he says, to disbelieve (so much for Hume’s scoff
at Raleigh as a liar), one old cacique boasting to him that he had seen
them with his own eyes. Humboldt’s explanation is, that the Caribs,
being the cleverest and strongest Indians, are also the most imaginative;
and therefore, being fallen children of Adam, the greatest liars; and
that they invented both El Dorado and the dog-heads out of pure
wickedness. Be it so. But all lies crystallise round some nucleus of
truth; and it really seems to me nothing very wonderful if the story
should be on the whole true, and these worthies were in the habit of
dressing themselves up, like foolish savages as they were, in the skins
of the Aguara dog, with what not of stuffing, and tails, and so forth, in
order to astonish the weak minds of the Caribs, just as the Red Indians
dress up in their feasts as bears, wolves, and deer, with foxtails, false
bustles of bison skin, and so forth. There are plenty of traces of such
foolish attempts at playing ‘bogy’ in the history of savages, even of our
own Teutonic forefathers; and this I suspect to be the simple explanation
of the whole mare’s nest. As for Raleigh being a fool for believing it;
the reasons he gives for believing it are very rational; the reasons Hume
gives for calling him a fool rest merely on the story’s being strange: on
which grounds one might disbelieve most matters in heaven and earth, from
one’s own existence to what one sees in every drop of water under the
microscope, yea, to the growth of every seed. The only sound proof that
dog-headed men are impossible is to be found in comparative anatomy, a
science of which Hume knew no more than Raleigh, and which for one marvel
it has destroyed has revealed a hundred. I do not doubt that if Raleigh
had seen and described a kangaroo, especially its all but miraculous
process of gestation, Hume would have called that a lie also; but I will
waste no more time in proving that no man is so credulous as the
unbeliever—the man who has such mighty and world-embracing faith in
himself that he makes his own little brain the measure of the universe.
Let the dead bury their dead.
Raleigh sails for Guiana. The details of his voyage should be read at
length. Everywhere they show the eye of a poet as well as of a man of
science. He sees enough to excite his hopes more wildly than ever; he
goes hundreds of miles up the Orinoco in an open boat, suffering every
misery, but keeping up the hearts of his men, who cry out, ‘Let us go on,
we care not how far.’ He makes friendship with the caciques, and enters
into alliance with them on behalf of Queen Elizabeth against the
Spaniards. Unable to pass the falls of the Caroli, and the rainy season
drawing on, he returns, beloved and honoured by all the Indians, boasting
that, during the whole time he was there, no woman was the worse for any
man of his crew. Altogether, we know few episodes of history so noble,
righteous, and merciful as this Guiana voyage. But he has not forgotten
the Spaniards. At Trinidad he payed his ships with the asphalt of the
famous Pitch-lake, and stood—and with what awe such a man must have
stood—beneath the noble forest of Moriche fan-palms on its brink. He
then attacked, not, by his own confession, without something too like
treachery, the new town of San José, takes Berreo prisoner, and delivers
from captivity five caciques, whom Berreo kept bound in one chain,
‘basting their bodies with burning bacon’—an old trick of the
Conquistadores—to make them discover their gold. He tells them that he
was ‘the servant of a Queen who was the greatest cacique of the north,
and a virgin; who had more caciqui under her than there were trees on
that island; that she was an enemy of the Castellani (Spaniards) in
behalf 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.’ After which perfectly true and rational speech, he
subjoins (as we think equally honestly and rationally), ‘I showed them
her Majesty’s picture, which they so admired and honoured, as it had been
easy to have brought them idolaters thereof.’
This is one of the stock charges against Raleigh, at which all
biographers (except quiet, sensible Oldys, who, dull as he is, is far
more fair and rational than most of his successors) break into virtuous
shrieks of ‘flattery,’ ‘meanness,’ ‘adulation,’ ‘courtiership,’ and so
forth. One biographer is of opinion that the Indians would have admired
far more the picture of a ‘red monkey.’ Sir Robert Schomburgk,
unfortunately for the red monkey theory, though he quite agrees that
Raleigh’s flattery was very shocking, says that from what he knows—and no
man knows more—of Indian taste, they would have far preferred to the
portrait which Raleigh showed them—not a red monkey, but—such a picture
as that at Hampton Court, in which Elizabeth is represented in a
fantastic court dress. Raleigh, it seems, must be made out a rogue at
all risks, though by the most opposite charges. The monkey theory is
answered, however, by Sir Robert; and Sir Robert is answered, I think, by
the plain fact that, of course, Raleigh’s portrait was exactly such a one
as Sir Robert says they would have admired; a picture probably in a
tawdry frame, representing Queen Bess, just as queens were always painted
then, bedizened with ‘browches, pearls, and owches,’ satin and ruff, and
probably with crown on head and sceptre in hand, made up, as likely as
not, expressly for the purpose for which it was used. In the name of all
simplicity and honesty, I ask, why is Raleigh to be accused of saying
that the Indians admired Queen Elizabeth’s beauty when he never even
hints at it? And why do all commentators deliberately forget the
preceding paragraph—Raleigh’s proclamation to the Indians, and the
circumstances under which it was spoken? The Indians are being murdered,
ravished, sold for slaves, basted with burning fat; and grand white men
come like avenging angels, and in one day sweep their tyrants out of the
land, restore them to liberty and life, and say to them, ‘A great Queen
far across the seas has sent us to do this. Thousands of miles away she
has heard of your misery and taken pity on you; and if you will be
faithful to her she will love you, and deal justly with you, and protect
you against these Spaniards who are devouring you as they have devoured
all the Indians round you; and for a token of it—a sign that we tell you
truth, and that there is really such a great Queen, who is the Indian’s
friend—here is the picture of her.’ What wonder if the poor idolatrous
creatures had fallen down and worshipped the picture—just as millions do
that of the Virgin Mary without a thousandth part as sound and practical
reason—as that of a divine, all-knowing, all-merciful deliverer? As for
its being the picture of a beautiful woman or not, they would never think
of that. The fair complexion and golden hair would be a sign to them
that she belonged to the mighty white people, even if there were no
bedizenment of jewels and crowns over and above; and that would be enough
for them. When will biographers learn to do common justice to their
fellow-men by exerting now and then some small amount of dramatic
imagination, just sufficient to put themselves for a moment in the place
of those of whom they write?
So ends his voyage, in which, he says, ‘from myself I have deserved no
thanks, for I am returned a beggar and withered.’ The only thing which,
as far as I can find, he brought home was some of the delicious scaly
peaches of the Moriche palm—the _Arbol de Vida_, or tree of life, which
gives sustenance and all else needful to whole tribes of Indians. ‘But I
might have bettered my poor estate if I had not only respected her
Majesty’s future honour and riches. It became not the former fortune in
which I once lived to go journeys of piccory’ (pillage); ‘and it had
sorted ill with the offices of honour which, by her Majesty’s grace, I
hold this day in England, to run from cape to cape and place to place for
the pillage of ordinary prizes.’
So speaks one whom it has been the fashion to consider as little better
than a pirate, and that, too, in days when the noblest blood in England
thought no shame (as indeed it was no shame) to enrich themselves with
Spanish gold. But so it is throughout this man’s life. If there be a
nobler word than usual to be spoken, or a more wise word either, if there
be a more chivalrous deed to be done, or a more prudent deed either, that
word and that deed are pretty sure to be Walter Raleigh’s.
But the blatant beast has been busy at home; and, in spite of Chapman’s
heroical verses, he meets with little but cold looks. Never mind. If
the world will not help to do the deed, he will do it by himself; and no
time must be lost, for the Spaniards on their part will lose none. So,
after six months, the faithful Keymis sails again, again helped by the
Lord High Admiral and Sir Robert Cecil. It is a hard race for one
private man against the whole power and wealth of Spain; and the Spaniard
has been beforehand with them, and re-occupied the country. They have
fortified themselves at the mouth of the Caroli, so it is impossible to
get to the gold mines; they are enslaving the wretched Indians, carrying
off their women, intending to transplant some tribes and to expel others,
and arming cannibal tribes against the inhabitants. All is misery and
rapine; the scattered remnant comes asking piteously why Raleigh does not
come over to deliver them? Have the Spaniards slain him, too? Keymis
comforts them as he best can; hears of more gold mines; and gets back
safe, a little to his own astonishment; for eight-and-twenty ships of war
have been sent to Trinidad to guard the entrance to El Dorado, not
surely, as Keymis well says, ‘to keep us only from tobacco.’ A colony of
500 persons is expected from Spain. The Spaniard is well aware of the
richness of the prize, says Keymis, who all through shows himself a
worthy pupil of his master. A careful, observant man he seems to have
been, trained by that great example to overlook no fact, even the
smallest. He brings home lists of rivers, towns, caciques, poison-herbs,
words, what not; he has fresh news of gold, spleen-stones, kidney-stones,
and some fresh specimens; but be that as it may, he, ‘without going as
far as his eyes can warrant, can promise Brazil-wood, honey, cotton,
balsamum, and drugs, to defray charges.’ He would fain copy Raleigh’s
style, too, and ‘whence his lamp had oil, borrow light also,’ ‘seasoning
his unsavoury speech’ with some of the ‘leaven of Raleigh’s discourse.’
Which, indeed, he does even to little pedantries and attempts at
classicality; and after professing that himself and the remnant of his
few years he hath bequeathed wholly to Raleana, and his thoughts live
only in that action, he rises into something like grandeur when he begins
to speak of that ever-fertile subject, the Spanish cruelties to the
Indians; ‘Doth not the cry of the poor succourless ascend unto the
heavens? Hath God forgotten to be gracious to the work of his own hands.
Or shall not his judgments in a day of visitation by the ministry of his
chosen servant come upon these bloodthirsty butchers, like rain into a
fleece of wool?’ Poor Keymis! To us he is by no means the least
beautiful figure in this romance; a faithful, diligent, loving man,
unable, as the event proved, to do great deeds by himself, but inspired
with a great idea by contact with a mightier spirit, to whom he clings
through evil report, and poverty, and prison, careless of self to the
last, and ends tragically, ‘faithful unto death’ in the most awful sense.
But here remark two things: first, that Cecil believes in Raleigh’s
Guiana scheme; next, that the occupation of Orinoco by the Spaniards,
which Raleigh is accused of having concealed from James in 1617, has been
ever since 1595 matter of the most public notoriety.
Raleigh has not been idle in the meanwhile. It has been found necessary
after all to take the counsel which he gave in vain in 1588, to burn the
Spanish fleet in harbour; and the heroes are gone down to Cadiz fight,
and in one day of thunder storm the Sevastopol of Spain. Here, as usual,
we find Raleigh, though in an inferior command, leading the whole by
virtue of superior wisdom. When the good Lord Admiral will needs be
cautious, and land the soldiers first, it is Raleigh who persuades him to
force his way into the harbour, to the joy of all captains. When
hotheaded Essex, casting his hat into the sea for joy, shouts
‘_Intramos_,’ and will in at once, Raleigh’s time for caution comes, and
he persuades them to wait till the next morning, and arrange the order of
attack. That, too, Raleigh has to do, and moreover to lead it; and lead
it he does. Under the forts are seventeen galleys; the channel is
‘scoured’ with cannon: but on holds Raleigh’s ‘Warspite,’ far ahead of
the rest, through the thickest of the fire, answering forts and galleys
‘with a blur of the trumpet to each piece, disdaining to shoot at those
esteemed dreadful monsters.’ For there is a nobler enemy ahead. Right
in front lie the galleons; and among them the ‘Philip’ and the ‘Andrew,’
two of those who boarded the ‘Revenge.’ This day there shall be a
reckoning for the blood of his old friend; he is ‘resolved to be revenged
for the “Revenge,”’ Sir Richard Grenvile’s fatal ship, or second her with
his own life’; and well he keeps his vow. Three hours pass of desperate
valour, during which, so narrow is the passage, only seven English ships,
thrusting past each other, all but quarrelling in their noble rivalry,
engage the whole Spanish fleet of fifty-seven sail, and destroy it
utterly. The ‘Philip’ and ‘Thomas’ burn themselves despairing. The
English boats save the ‘Andrew’ and ‘Matthew.’ One passes over the
hideous record. ‘If any man,’ says Raleigh, ‘had a desire to see hell
itself, it was there most lively figured.’ Keymis’s prayer is answered
in part, even while he writes it; and the cry of the Indians has not
ascended in vain before the throne of God!
The soldiers are landed; the city stormed and sacked, not without mercies
and courtesies, though, to women and unarmed folk, which win the hearts
of the vanquished, and live till this day in well-known ballads. The
Flemings begin a ‘merciless slaughter.’ Raleigh and the Lord Admiral
beat them off. Raleigh is carried on shore with a splinter wound in the
leg, which lames him for life: but returns on board in an hour in agony;
for there is no admiral left to order the fleet, and all are run headlong
to the sack. In vain he attempts to get together sailors the following
morning, and attack the Indian fleet in Porto Real Roads; within
twenty-four hours it is burnt by the Spaniards themselves; and all
Raleigh wins is no booty, a lame leg, and the honour of having been the
real author of a victory even more glorious than that of 1588.
So he returns; having written to Cecil the highest praises of Essex, whom
he treats with all courtesy and fairness; which those who will may call
cunning: we have as good a right to say that he was returning good for
evil. There were noble qualities in Essex. All the world gave him
credit for them, and far more than he deserved; why should not Raleigh
have been just to him; even have conceived, like the rest of the world,
high hopes of him, till he himself destroyed these hopes? For now storms
are rising fast. On their return Cecil is in power. He has been made
Secretary of State instead of Bodley, Essex’s pet, and the spoilt child
begins to sulk. On which matter, I am sorry to say, historians talk much
unwisdom, about Essex’s being too ‘open and generous, etc., for a
courtier,’ and ‘presuming on his mistress’s passion for him’; and
representing Elizabeth as desiring to be thought beautiful, and
‘affecting at sixty the sighs, loves, tears, and tastes of a girl of
sixteen,’ and so forth. It is really time to get rid of some of this
fulsome talk, culled from such triflers as Osborne, if not from the
darker and fouler sources of Parsons and the Jesuit slanderers, which I
meet with a flat denial. There is simply no proof. She in love with
Essex or Cecil? Yes, as a mother with a son. Were they not the children
of her dearest and most faithful servants, men who had lived heroic lives
for her sake? What wonder if she fancied that she saw the fathers in the
sons? They had been trained under her eye. What wonder if she fancied
that they could work as their fathers worked before them? And what shame
if her childless heart yearned over them with unspeakable affection, and
longed in her old age to lay her hands upon the shoulders of those two
young men, and say to England, ‘Behold the children which God, and not
the flesh, has given me!’ Most strange it is, too, that women, who ought
at least to know a woman’s heart, have been especially forward in
publishing these scandals, and sullying their pages by retailing
pruriences against such a one as Queen Elizabeth.
But to return. Raleigh attaches himself to Cecil; and he has good
reason. Cecil is the cleverest man in England, saving himself. He has
trusted and helped him, too, in two Guiana voyages; so the connection is
one of gratitude as well as prudence. We know not whether he helped him
in the third Guiana voyage in the same year, under Captain Berry, a north
Devon man, from Grenvile’s country; who found a ‘mighty folk,’ who were
‘something pleasant, having drunk much that day,’ and carried bows with
golden handles: but failed in finding the Lake Parima, and so came home.
Raleigh’s first use of his friendship with Cecil is to reconcile him, to
the astonishment of the world, with Essex, alleging how much good may
grow by it; for now ‘the Queen’s continual unquietness will grow to
contentment.’ That, too, those who will may call policy. We have as
good a right to call it the act of a wise and faithful subject, and to
say, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children
of God.’ He has his reward for it in full restoration to the Queen’s
favour; he deserves it. He proves himself once more worthy of power, and
it is given to him. Then there is to be a second great expedition: but
this time its aim is the Azores. Philip, only maddened by the loss at
Cadiz, is preparing a third armament for the invasion of England and
Ireland, and it is said to lie at the islands to protect the Indian
fleet. Raleigh has the victualling of the land-forces, and, like
everything else he takes in hand, ‘it is very well done.’ Lord Howard
declines the chief command, and it is given to Essex. Raleigh is to be
rear-admiral.
By the time they reach the Azores, Essex has got up a foolish quarrel
against Raleigh for disrespect in having stayed behind to bring up some
stragglers. But when no Armada is to be found at the Azores, Essex has
after all to ask Raleigh what he shall do next. Conquer the Azores, says
Raleigh, and the thing is agreed on. Raleigh and Essex are to attack
Fayal. Essex sails away before Raleigh has watered. Raleigh follows as
fast as he can, and at Fayal finds no Essex. He must water there, then
and at once. His own veterans want him to attack forthwith, for the
Spaniards are fortifying fast: but he will wait for Essex. Still no
Essex comes. Raleigh attempts to water, is defied, finds himself ‘in for
it,’ and takes the island out of hand in the most masterly fashion, to
the infuriation of Essex. Good Lord Howard patches up the matter, and
the hot-headed coxcomb is once more pacified. They go on to Graciosa,
where Essex’s weakness of will again comes out, and he does not take the
island. Three rich Caracks, however, are picked up. ‘Though we shall be
little the better for them,’ says Raleigh privately to Sir Arthur Gorges,
his faithful captain, ‘yet I am heartily glad for our General’s sake;
because they will in great measure give content to her Majesty, so that
there may be no repining against this poor Lord for the expense of the
voyage.’