Meanwhile the Indians came to him every night with lamentable
complaints of Berreo's cruelty. 'He had divided the island and
given to every soldier a part. He made the ancient Caciques that
were lords of the court, to be their slaves. He kept them in
chains; he dropped their naked bodies with burning bacon, and such
other torments, which' (continues Raleigh) 'I found afterward to be
true. For in the city' (San Josef), 'when I entered it, there were
five lords, or little kings, in one chain, almost dead of famine,
and wasted with torments.' Considering which; considering Berreo's
treachery to Whiddon's men; and considering also that as Berreo
himself, like Raleigh, was just about to cross the gulf to Guiana in
search of El Dorado, and expected supplies from Spain; 'to leave a
garrison in my back, interested in the same enterprise, I should
have savoured very much of the asse.' So Raleigh fell upon the
'Corps du Guard' in the evening, put them to the sword, sent Captain
Caulfield with sixty soldiers onward, following himself with forty
more, up the Caroni river, which was then navigable by boats; and
took the little town of San Josef.

It is not clear whether the Corps du Guard which he attacked was at
Port of Spain itself, or at the little mud fort at the confluence of
the Caroni and San Josef rivers, which was to be seen, with some old
pieces of artillery in it, in the memory of old men now living. But
that he came up past that fort, through the then primeval forest,
tradition reports; and tells, too, how the prickly climbing palm,
{58} the Croc-chien, or Hook-dog, pest of the forests, got its
present name upon that memorable day. For, as the Spanish soldiers
ran from the English, one of them was caught in the innumerable
hooks of the Croc-chien, and never looking behind him in his terror,