that we were about four hundred miles from our ships, and had been a
month from them, which also we left weakly manned in an open road, and
had promised our return in fifteen days.

Others have devised that the same ore was had from Barbary, and that we
carried it with us into Guiana. Surely the singularity of that device I
do not well comprehend. For mine own part, I am not so much in love with
these long voyages as to devise thereby to cozen myself, to lie hard, to
fare worse, to be subjected to perils, to diseases, to ill savours, to
be parched and withered, and withal to sustain the care and labour of
such an enterprise, except the same had more comfort than the fetching
of marcasite in Guiana, or buying of gold ore in Barbary. But I hope the
better sort will judge me by themselves, and that the way of deceit is
not the way of honour or good opinion. I have herein consumed much time,
and many crowns; and I had no other respect or desire than to serve her
Majesty and my country thereby. If the Spanish nation had been of like
belief to these detractors we should little have feared or doubted their
attempts, wherewith we now are daily threatened. But if we now consider
of the actions both of Charles the Fifth, who had the maidenhead of Peru
and the abundant treasures of Atabalipa, together with the affairs of
the Spanish king now living, what territories he hath purchased, what
he hath added to the acts of his predecessors, how many kingdoms he hath
endangered, how many armies, garrisons, and navies he hath, and doth
maintain, the great losses which he hath repaired, as in Eighty-eight
above an hundred sail of great ships with their artillery, and that no
year is less infortunate, but that many vessels, treasures, and people
are devoured, and yet notwithstanding he beginneth again like a storm
to threaten shipwrack to us all; we shall find that these abilities rise
not from the trades of sacks and Seville oranges, nor from aught else
that either Spain, Portugal, or any of his other provinces produce; it