Sir Walter Ralegh Part 7

CHAPTER XI.

AT HOME; AND IN PARLIAMENT. (1592-1594).

[Sidenote: _Negotiation for Hayes._]

Ralegh generally could hold his own, even in a bargain with his Queen.

In 1592 his hands were tied. He had to use his prize, as he said himself, for his ransom; and it effected his purpose. Once more he was a free man, and he had much to render liberty precious and delightful. He had a bride beautiful, witty, and devoted; and in 1594 a son was born to him, whom he named Walter. He had many pursuits, and wealth which should have been abundant, though all Elizabeth's courtiers were impecunious.

An important addition had been made to his possessions shortly before his disgrace. For some time after his rise he had intended to fix his country residence in Devons.h.i.+re. He is said to have had a house in Mill-street, Ottery St. Mary. In 1584 he had asked Mr. Duke, of Otterton, to sell him Hayes. His written request, which Aubrey copied, with omissions and inaccuracies due to the creases and stains undergone by the paper through careless handling, is, on uncertain authority, said to have been at one time preserved at the farmhouse. Subsequently, if not from the first, it was kept at the residence of the Duke family, Otterton House, between two and three miles off. Polwhele saw it at Otterton House shortly before 1793. Afterwards it disappeared. Dr.

Brushfield found the original, as he believes, at Plymouth, in the 1888 collection of Armada and Elizabethan relics. It is the property of Miss Glubb, of Great Torrington. The letter was written from the Court, on July 26, 1584, by Mr. Duke's 'very willing frinde in all I shal be able, W. Ralegh,' and runs as follows: 'Mr Duke--I wrote to Mr Prideux to move yow for the purchase of hayes a farme som tyme in my fathers possession. I will most willingly geve yow what so ever in your conscience yow shall deeme it worth: and if yow shall att any tyme have occasion to vse mee, yow Shall find mee a thanckfull frind to yow and yours. I have dealt wth Mr Sprinte for suche things as he hathe at colliton and ther abouts and he hath promised mee to dept wth the moety of otertowne vnto yow in consideration of hayes accordinge to the valew, and yow shall not find mee an ill neighbore vnto yow here after. I am resolved if I cannot 'ntreat yow, to build att colliton but for the naturall disposition I have to that place being borne in that howse I had rather seat my sealf ther then any wher els thus leving the matter att large unto Mr Sprint I take my leve resting reedy to countervail all your courteses to the vttermost of my power.'

[Sidenote: _Colaton Ralegh._]

His offer was not accepted, the Dukes, it is conjectured by Polwhele, not choosing to have so great a man for so near a neighbour. According to a local tradition, he carried out his alternative project of building at Colaton Ralegh, on land which he may be presumed to have bought of his father or eldest brother. In the garden of the Place he is said to have planted, as elsewhere, the first potatoes grown in England. But himself he never rooted there, though he was described as 'of Colaton Ralegh' in a deed of 1588. The royal bounty soon tempted him away; and he sold any property which had ent.i.tled him to that designation. The estate of Sherborne, which is inseparably connected with his memory, consisted of an ancient castle and picturesque park, together with several adjacent manors. It had belonged to the see of Salisbury since the time of Bishop Osmund, who cursed all who should alienate it, or profit by its alienation. Ralegh was not deterred by the threat. He is rumoured to have been impressed by the charms of the domain as he rode past it on his journeys from Plymouth to London. Towards the close of 1591 the bishopric of Salisbury, which had been vacant for three years, was filled by the appointment of Dr. Coldwell. Dean Bennett of Windsor, and Dr. Tobias Matthew, or Matthews, afterwards Bishop of Durham and Archbishop of York, father to the wit and letter-writer, Sir Toby, had declined it on account of a condition that the new Bishop must consent to part with Sherborne. Ralegh subsequently declared that he had given the Queen a jewel worth, 250 'to make the Bishop.' He not rarely concerned himself about vacant bishoprics for his own purposes. His present fit of ecclesiastical zeal was explained by Dr. Coldwell's execution of a lease to the Crown in January, 1592, of Sherborne and its dependencies for ninety-nine years. A rent was reserved to the see of 260, which, according to the Bishop, was not regularly paid. The Queen at once a.s.signed the lease to Ralegh. The manor of Banwell, which lay conveniently for the property, belonged to the see of Bath and Wells.

Elizabeth demanded this of Bishop G.o.dwin. The Bishop in his gouty old age had contracted a marriage which offended the Queen's notions of propriety, with a rich city widow. This was employed as a lever to oblige him to one of the forced exchanges for Crown impropriations which, though not illegal, friends of the Church styled sacrilege. Sir John Harington, Elizabeth's witty G.o.dson, writing in the reign of James, is fond of the term. He admits that he himself conveyed one of the sharp messages by which Elizabeth tried to obtain Banwell. Finally a compromise was effected. G.o.dwin courageously clung to Banwell, but redeemed it by the grant in Ralegh's favour of a ninety-nine years'

lease of Wils...o...b...

[Sidenote: _Sherborne Castle._]

[Sidenote: _Falconry._]

Ralegh found occupation at Sherborne. We know something of his life there. We know, though not nearly enough, much more of it than when Gibbon a.s.signed the absence of the 'details of private life' as a princ.i.p.al reason for the abandonment of his original decision to take Ralegh for his literary theme. It was varied and animated. He pursued amus.e.m.e.nt and business with equal earnestness. In his _Farewell to the Court_, which foreshadows the sentiment of this period, though probably written earlier, he mourns for his 'sweet spring spent,' his 'summer well-nigh done;' but he had energy for other matters than repining at 'joys expired like truthless dreams.' He built. He planted. He diverted himself with rural pastimes, especially with falconry. Throughout his career he always was ready for a hawking match or a bargain for falcons.

He once offered the reversion in fee of an Irish leasehold for a goshawk. An incident of his Munster estate, which doubtless he valued highly, was his t.i.tle to half the produce of an eyrie of hawks in the wood of Mogelly. Amidst the anxieties of his final expedition he found spirits and strength for a trial of hawks at Cloyne. The leisure and opportunities of Sherborne stimulated his ardour for the sport. Cecil kept falcons. In August 1593, Ralegh wrote to him from Gillingham Forest, of which he and his brother Carew were joint rangers: 'The Indian falcon is sick of the backworm, and therefore, if you will be so bountiful to give another falcon, I will provide you a running gelding.'

He chased another sort of game than herons. In April, 1594, he boasted that he had caught in the Lady Stourton's house a notable stout villain, with his copes and bulls. 'He calls himself John Mooney; but he is an Irishman, and, I think, can say much.' Both his wife and he soon grew fond of Sherborne, 'his fortune's fold,' as he called it alike in verse and in a letter of 1593 to Cecil. Thither they always gladly returned, though they were often called elsewhere. The plague dislodged the family in 1594. It was, he wrote in September, 1594, raging in the town of Sherborne 'very hot.' 'Our Bess,' he added, 'is one way sent, her son another way; and I am in great trouble therewith.' Less alarming occasions were constantly taking him away. He had to be in Devons.h.i.+re and Cornwall, discharging the duties of his Wardens.h.i.+p and Lieutenancy.

Every year he went to Bath for the waters. He resorted to Weymouth for sea bathing for his wife and child. He was much at all seasons in London.

[Sidenote: _Durham House._]

[Sidenote: _Mile End and Islington._]

Though banished from the Court he went on frequenting its neighbourhood.

He had more than one London residence. As a student of the law, he may have lived in Lyon's Inn and the Middle Temple. In the early period of his attendance on the Queen he had been lodged in the Palace, at Greenwich, Whitehall, Somerset House, St. James, and Richmond. Since 1584 he possessed a London house of his own. The Church supplied him, as at Sherborne and Lismore. Durham House, strictly called Duresme Place, was the town house of the see of Durham. It covered nearly the whole site of Adelphi Terrace, and the streets between this and the Strand. In the reign of Edward VI the Crown seized it, and granted it successively to the Princess Elizabeth and to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. There, the year after Ralegh's birth, Lady Jane Grey had been wedded to Dudley's son. Mary restored it to Bishop Tunstall. Elizabeth resumed it.

In 1583 or 1584 she gave the use of a princ.i.p.al part of the s.p.a.cious mansion to Ralegh. The remainder she permitted Sir Edward Darcy to inhabit. At Durham House the famous Dr. Dee, mathematician, astrologer, and spiritualist, who, in his diary for 1583, mentions him gratefully, records that he dined with him in October, 1593. There he held on various occasions his Court as Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and heard important suits. Aubrey speaks of Ralegh as living there 'when he came to his greatness.' He knew well his study, in a little turret looking over the Thames, with a prospect now, as in Aubrey's day, 'as pleasant perhaps as anything in the world.' Ralegh is reported to have owned other dwellings also in and about London. Probably he already possessed, though, till he left Durham House, he is not likely to have occupied, a house in Broad Street. It may be presumed to have been part of his wife's share in the Throckmorton property. Several residences have been put down to him, without sufficient evidence. Ralegh House, at Brixton Rise, has been a.s.signed to him, in mistake perhaps for his nephew, Captain George Ralegh, who lived in Lambeth parish. Because he visited his wife's relatives at Beddington Park, he is alleged to have occupied the mansion. He is rumoured to have lived at West Horsley, which his son, Carew Ralegh, first acquired in 1643 from the Carews of Beddington.

On testimony so far more substantial that Lady Ralegh had inherited a small estate in the parish from her father, he is said to have lived at Mitcham. The house his wife owned seems to have been Ralegh House, at the corner of Wykford Lane, though two other houses at Mitcham have pretended to the honour. More certainly he lived in a villa at Mile End in 1596. That is known through the entry of the burial at Stepney of a manservant who died at Mile End in 1596, and from the addresses of two letters of his dated within two and four months of the same time. Dr.

Brushfield thinks the house may have been hired for a season for the sake of country air. Mile End is described in 1597 as a common where penny-royal grew in great abundance. Ralegh would find its vicinity to Stepney, the general resort of seamen, convenient. The publication of the Middles.e.x Registers has corroborated the tradition, which gave him a suburban abode at Islington, on a site possibly afterwards occupied by the Pied Bull. For the local belief that he built, or patronized, and smoked in, the Old Queen's Head, Dr. Brushfield considers there is no foundation. His choice of any part of Islington for residence would have been determined by its contiguity to the vast royal chase in which the Queen delighted to hunt. But his occupancy of a house there commenced before the days of his grandeur, and probably had ceased before them.

[Sidenote: _In Parliament._]

His dwellings were not more numerous than his avocations. Never was his activity more various than during this interval of royal disfavour. He overflowed with public spirit. He had been sitting in the House of Commons in the spring of 1592. He was a frequent and effective speaker.

His voice is reported to have been small. That would be after sickness, toil, and imprisonment had enfeebled him. He omitted no opportunity of proclaiming his hostility to Spain. Before his disgrace he had argued for a declaration of open war. He knew, he said, of many who held it not lawful in conscience, as the time was, to take prize from the Spaniards.

Of those weak brethren he was never one. After his liberation from the Tower, when the House met he again attended. He was not so strangely in advance of his protectionist age as not to support a Bill for prohibiting Dutch and German aliens from retailing foreign wares in England. His view of Dutchmen would have satisfied Canning: 'The nature of the Dutchman is to fly to no man but for his profit. They are the people that maintain the King of Spain in his greatness. Were it not for them he were never able to make out such armies and navies by sea.'

While politically he was attached to Holland, he was persistently jealous of her commercially. In the next reign he drew up an elaborate plan for abstracting her lucrative carrying trade. On questions of liberty of thought he was far beyond his time. He stoutly opposed a cruel capital measure against the Brownists: 'That law is hard that taketh life, and sendeth into banishment, when men's intentions shall be judged by a jury, and they shall be judges what another means.' He prevailed to have the Bill handed for revision to a Committee of Members. On the Committee his name stands first. His disgrace had left him sufficiently prominent to be thought worth libelling by Robert Parsons the Jesuit, 'Andraeus Philopater.' Parsons described him as keeping a school of atheism, wherein the Old and New Testaments were jested at, and scholars taught to spell G.o.d backwards.

[Sidenote: _Irish Policy._]

In the shade though he was, he would abide no wrong to his official authority. In February, 1592, before his disgrace, he had found leisure in the midst of the preparations for his expedition to reprove the Devon justices of the peace for the application of their 'foreign authority'

to compel his tinners to contribute to the repair of a private bridge.

Still under a cloud in May, 1594, he was not afraid to protest highly to Lord Keeper Egerton against an encroachment by the Star Chamber on his Stannary jurisdiction. A year later the county magistrates do not seem to have thought his continuing obscuration exonerated them from defending themselves against the charge of 'intermeddling' with his prerogatives. He regarded himself as holding a commission to watch and warn against all danger by sea. In June, 1594, he was informing the Lord High Admiral that Spain had an armed fleet in the Breton ports. He prayed the Admiral to ask her Majesty's leave that his 'poor kinsman'

might serve as a volunteer soldier or mariner in an attack upon it.

Apparently he had his wish and was allowed to embark. But his advice had been followed tardily. He writes from the Foreland on August 25, that the season was too late. The only hope was that the enemy might approach the Thames. When he was not at sea he was contracting for the victualling and equipment of s.h.i.+ps of war. That was among his frequent occupations. At all periods he had his eye upon Ireland. Neither royal coldness nor bodily ailments could force him to be silent on Irish affairs. In May, 1593, sick, and 'tumbled down the hill by every practice,' he would go on exclaiming against the administrative blunders which had let England be baffled and 'beggared' by a nation without fortifications, and, for long, without effective arms. 'The beggarly, the accursed kingdom,' had cost a million not many years since. 'A better kingdom might have been purchased at a less price, and that same defended with as many pence, if good order had been taken.' Though he was not admitted to the Queen's presence, she seems to have read memorials he drew up on the subject of Ireland. It is impossible not to reprobate his sentiments on the treatment of the native Irish. His correspondence with Cecil shows, that he was as willing to connive at their treacherous murder as other contemporary English statesmen, though not Burleigh, or perhaps Burleigh's son. But he believed honestly in the rect.i.tude of his doctrines. He was patriotic in insisting upon their application for the benefit of a Government which, he thought, persecuted him. It may even be acknowledged that the resolute and consistent despotism he advocated might have been more tolerable, as well as more successful, than the spasmodic and fitful violence which discredited the Irish policy of the reign. He was indisputably right in condemning a system under which the island was 'governed neither as a country conquered nor free.'

CHAPTER XII.

GUIANA (1594-1595).

[Sidenote: _Continuance of Disgrace._]

[Sidenote: _A Project, and its Motive._]

Had not history preserved the memory of Ralegh's exile from Court, his public life was so animated that the displeasure of the Queen need hardly have been remarked. To himself the blight on his prospects was always and dismally visible. The Queen had raised him from obscurity, and afforded his genius scope for s.h.i.+ning. Well as he understood the value of his powers, he knew they derived still from her, as ten or a dozen years before, their opportunity of exercise. He was not blind to the jealousy of compet.i.tors, or to popular odium. As by an instinct of life, of the working life which alone he prized, he was continually striving to retrieve his fall by the ordinary devices of courtiers, and not without gleams of hope. Nicholas Faunt had been private secretary to Walsingham, and was therefore naturally of the Ess.e.x faction. He wrote to Anthony Bacon in January, 1594, that Ralegh was expecting to be nominated a Privy Councillor: 'And it is now feared of all honest men that he shall presently come to the Court; yet it is well withstood. G.o.d grant him some further resistance!' The further resistance came, whether from rivals, or from the rankling anger in Elizabeth's breast. Nowhere does it appear that he had speech of her. He continued to be forbidden to perform in person the duties of Captain of the Guard. Between 1592 and 1597 they seem to have been discharged by John Best, described as Champion of England. His disappointment was fortunate for his fame, if not for his future tranquillity. In his enforced retirement he brooded on schemes of maritime adventure. He determined to prove the impossibility of suppressing him. His Panama project had been imputed to his discovery that 'the Queen's love was beginning to decline.' That could not then have been truly a.s.serted. Naunton has similarly explained the Guiana expedition:--'Finding his favour declining, he undertook a new peregrination to leave that terra infirma of the Court for that of the wars, and by declining himself, and by absence, to expel his and the pa.s.sion of his enemies; which in Court was a strange device of recovery, but that he knew there was some ill office done him, that he durst not attempt to mend any other ways than by going aside, thereby to teach envy a new way of forgetfulness, and not so much as to think of him; howsoever, he had it always in mind never to forget himself; and his device took so well, that, at his return, he came in, as rams do by going backwards, with the greater strength; and so continued to the last in the Queen's grace.' Nothing, it is certain, ever was farther from Ralegh's thoughts than a wish to be forgotten, whether by enemies or by friends; yet Naunton's theory is true at bottom. The persistency of the shadow at Court was as plain to Ralegh as to others. Its own merits might else have recommended to him the Guiana expedition. But at this especial juncture it was his engine for storming his way back into his Sovereign's kindness.

[Sidenote: _Difficulties._]

Guiana had one important merit as a field for enterprise. It was known to be free from European occupation, as well as reputed to be rich.

Camden describes it as 'aurifera Guiana ab Hispanis decantata.' Many Spanish expeditions, from the year 1531 onwards, had been fitted out to find the King el Dorado, who loved to anoint his body with turpentine, and then roll in gold dust. Neither he nor his city, called by the same name, had been discovered. Attempts to penetrate into the interior had all failed. The Indians were warlike and united; the country was a jungle, environed with vast waters not easily navigated; and the invaders had quarrelled among themselves. The latest effort had been made in 1582 by Don Antonio de Berreo. Berreo was son-in-law to Quesada, who had annexed New Grenada to Spain. Berreo alleged that he spent 300,000 ducats, and journeyed 1500 miles, before he arrived within Guiana. He seems never to have actually entered. From a tribe on the confines he received gifts of gold images and ornaments which he sent to King Philip by his officer Domingo de Vera. But other Indians on the borders blocked further progress by firing the savannahs. He was forced to retire to Trinidad, of which he was appointed Governor. From Trinidad he concerted raids on the mainland. One of his captains ascended the Orinoko for some distance, and on April 23, 1593, took formal possession of the country for Spain. Ralegh's own subsequent experience proved that individual Spaniards had stolen in, searching for gold. He questioned seamen who had been in or near this wonderful land. He studied every published narrative which touched upon it. A treatise, never printed, and now lost, which he had himself composed on the West Indies, may have embodied the results of his enquiries. The information he collected filled him at once with admiration for the invincible constancy, as he described it, of the Spaniards, and with hatred of their rapacity and cruelty. He abhorred their barbarous treatment of the native owners of the New World. As always, he could not comprehend by what right they claimed a monopoly of its sovereignty for themselves against the rest of Europe.

Lady Ralegh perceived the bent of his thoughts. She wrote in February, 1594, to invoke the aid of Cecil, in diverting her husband from the perilous temptation. I reproduce her letter in the original spelling: 'I hope for my sake you will rather draw sur watar towardes the est then heulp hyme forward touard the soonsett, if ani respecke to me or love to him be not forgotten. But everi monthe hath his flower and everi season his contentement, and you greate counselares ar so full of new councels as you are steddi in nothing; but wee poore soules that hath bought sorrow at a high price desiar, and can be plesed with, the same misfortun wee hold, fering alltarracions will but multiply misseri, of wich we have allredi felte sufficiant. I knoo unly your parswadcions ar of ef.e.c.ke with him, and hild as orrekeles tied to them by Love; therfore I humbelle besiech you rathar stay him then furdar him. By the wich you shall bind me for ever. As yet you have ever geveng me caus.'

[Sidenote: _A Royal Commission._]

If Cecil tried dissuasion, he did not succeed. In the course of 1594 Ralegh sent out as a pioneer his 'most valiant and honest' old officer, Captain Whiddon, to explore the Orinoko and gather information. Whiddon sailed to Trinidad. There Berreo received him amicably, as it seemed, though Whiddon thought the imprisonment of some of his crew implied treachery. Berreo, with the a.s.sistance of de Vera in Spain, was promoting an expedition of his own, and was not likely to be communicative. Whiddon was back before 1595. Ralegh forthwith began preparations for an expedition to be conducted by himself. He procured a Royal Commission to 'our servant Sir Walter Ralegh,' neither 'trusty'

nor 'well-beloved,' to offend and enfeeble the King of Spain and his subjects in his dominions to the uttermost; to discover and subdue heathen lands not in the possession of any Christian prince, nor inhabited by any Christian people; to resist and expel by force of arms all persons who should attempt to settle within 200 leagues of the place where he or his people might fix their habitations within the six following years; and to capture all s.h.i.+ps trading within the limits aforesaid. He speedily equipped several s.h.i.+ps. The cost was such that, as he said at his trial, if he had died in Guiana, he had not left 300 marks a year to his wife and son. Captain Laurence Keymis was in command of a galley. Captain Whiddon sailed again, to his grave as it happened in Trinidad. Believers in Ralegh a.s.sisted. Thus, the High Admiral lent the Lion's Whelp, which Anthony Wells King commanded. Two barks joined the expedition, one under Captain Crosse, the other under Captain Caulfield. There were 100 officers, gentlemen volunteers, and soldiers.

In the number was John Gilbert, Sir Humphrey's son. He was a close ally of Ralegh's in maritime adventures, notwithstanding occasional disagreement on their respective proportions of the profits. Cecil contributed money. Two s.h.i.+ps, under Captains Amias Preston and Sommers, or Summers, which were expected to unite in the undertaking, never came.

The squadron when collected was detained by contrary winds. Ralegh boasted to Cecil that he was indifferent to good fortune or adversity.

But in another letter he confessed: 'This wind breaks my heart.' The delay was the more exasperating that other s.h.i.+ps had run out, 'bound to the wars, a mult.i.tude going for the Indies.' He was afraid the chiefest places of his enterprise might be attempted, and he should be undone.

Others would reap no advantage; for he knew 'they would be beaten, and do no good.'

[Sidenote: _The Voyage._]

[Sidenote: _Capture of Berreo._]

However, at last, on February 6, 1595, he was off. He had bequeathed to Cecil the charge of staying litigation against him. He was especially afraid of a suretys.h.i.+p suit inst.i.tuted by Widow Smith. The widow 'hath a son that waits on the keeper, and a daughter married to Mr. Wilkes, so it will be harder to clear.' He captured a Spanish s.h.i.+p at the Canaries with firearms, and a Fleming with wine. At Teneriffe he paused in vain for Preston and Sommers. They had a.s.sumed that he would have quitted Teneriffe before they could arrive. At least that was their explanation.

So they were gone on an adventure of their own. Finally Ralegh set sail.

He reached Trinidad on March 22. He stayed a month for the Lion's Whelp, and also for Preston and Sommers. He employed his leisure in a careful survey of the coast. On the sh.o.r.e he found clumps of mangroves bearing oysters. He satisfied his mind that the Indian fig-tree is not the Tree of Knowledge, its only fruit being oysters, which adhere to its pendulous fibres. Terrible tales were told him of the Spanish habit of chaining and torturing native chiefs. He heard also that five months before Berreo had sent to Spain for reinforcements. It seemed dangerous to leave an enemy behind him. He had, moreover, a grievance for the maltreatment of Whiddon's men the year before. A combination of motives induced him to lead a hundred of his company in a night attack on Berreo's new city of St. Joseph. By dawn he took it. He burnt it down, having first released from a dungeon five caciques fastened together with a single chain. The proceeding was high-handed and summary. Now it would be criminal. It did not bear that character then. Lingard has stigmatised Ralegh as a murderer, on account of the Spanish lives lost during the a.s.sault. Berreo and the Spanish Government were less particular. They saw nothing in his conduct adverse to the laws of war and nations. If their soldiers had arrived in time, they would have antic.i.p.ated him in the aggression. Throughout this whole period Spaniards and Englishmen, on the ocean and in the Indies, fought or fought not, as suited not merely their mutual, but their several, convenience. Neither side held it treachery to be a.s.sailed without a solemn declaration of war. Berreo, as there is no real reason to doubt, though Southey has questioned it, was captured in the town. Ralegh speaks of him as a well descended gentleman, of great a.s.suredness, and of a great heart. He had his defects. He tortured natives, and was so ignorant as not to know east from west. These blemishes of feeling and education did not prevent Ralegh from behaving as a polished English gentleman to a polished Spanish hidalgo. They lived together in great amity, and conversed much. Berreo was so far from showing rancour that he told all he knew of previous attempts upon Guiana. He did not under-rate the difficulties, partly because he had reason to believe in them, partly from a wish to put his captor off a project he hoped hereafter to accomplish himself. Among other impediments to an entrance he mentioned that the main land was 600 miles farther from the sea than Whiddon had understood it to be. Ralegh concealed the disquieting fact from his men.

[Sidenote: _A Maze of Waters._]

He a.s.sembled a conclave of island chiefs. His Sovereign, a virgin Queen, he informed them, had commissioned him to free them from the Castilian yoke. Then he set forth from Curiapan in an old gallego boat cut down to draw but five feet of water. It was fitted with banks of oars. Sixty officers and gentlemen volunteers embarked with him. A boat, two wherries, and a barge carried forty more. They were victualled for a month. The s.h.i.+ps anch.o.r.ed near los Gallos in the Gulf of Paria. Twenty miles of sea were crossed 'in a great billow' to Guanipa Bay, where dwelt savages who shot poisoned arrows. Then the expedition was entangled in a labyrinth of rivers. These were the eight branches of the Orinoko. 'All the earth,' wrote Ralegh, 'doth not yield the like confluence of streams.' That is hardly an exaggerated statement about the Orinoko, which is fed by more than 436 rivers, and a couple of thousand rivulets. A young Indian pilot, whom Ralegh had brought, named Ferdinando, became bewildered. The boats might have wandered a whole year had not, partly by force, and partly by good treatment, the services of an old native been secured. Though often sorely perplexed, he piloted them along a succession of narrow reaches of the Cano Manamo.

By Ralegh's orders he and the other Indian promised an outlet by every next day, to cheer the crews. All were, however, on the verge of utter despair, when suddenly the tangled thickets on the banks opened up into a lovely champaign country. It was a paradise of birds and beasts. The turf was diversified by groves of trees, disposed in order as if by all the art and labour in the world. Still as the oarsmen rowed the deer came down feeding by the water's side, as if they had been used to a keeper's call. On an excursion off the route they were following they overtook two canoes laden with bread. Among the bushes they found a refiner's basket. In it were quicksilver and saltpetre, prepared for a.s.say, and the dust of ore which had been refined. It belonged to some Spaniards who escaped; but the natives, their companions, were caught.

One of them, called Martino, proved a better pilot than Ferdinando and the old man. Naturally the refining apparatus suggested a hunt after gold. Ralegh was of a different opinion. The attempt, he considered, would give notice to other nations of the riches of the country. To the present expedition it could not have been very profitable from lack of tools. He had no mind to dig with his nails. Had he wanted gold he might, he says, have obtained much in actual bullion from the Indians.

But he 'shot at another mark than present profit.' He decided to advance, his men being of good courage, and crying out to go on, they cared not how far.