he got the true light thereof. For Berreo came about 1,500 miles ere he
understood aught, or could find any passage or entrance into any part
thereof; yet he had experience of all these fore-named, and divers
others, and was persuaded of their errors and mistakings. Berreo sought
it by the river Cassanar, which falleth into a great river called Pato:
Pato falleth into Meta, and Meta into Baraquan, which is also called
Orenoque. He took his journey from Nuevo Reyno de Granada, where he
dwelt, having the inheritance of Gonzalez Ximenes in those parts; he was
followed with 700 horse, he drove with him 1,000 head of cattle, he had
also many women, Indians, and slaves. How all these rivers cross and
encounter, how the country lieth and is bordered, the passage of Ximenes
and Berreo, mine own discovery, and the way that I entered, with all the
rest of the nations and rivers, your lordship shall receive in a large
chart or map, which I have not yet finished, and which I shall most
humbly pray your lordship to secrete, and not to suffer it to pass
your own hands; for by a draught thereof all may be prevented by other
nations; for I know it is this very year sought by the French, although
by the way that they now take, I fear it not much. It was also told me
ere I departed England, that Villiers, the Admiral, was in preparation
for the planting of Amazons, to which river the French have made divers
voyages, and returned much gold and other rarities. I spake with a
captain of a French ship that came from thence, his ship riding in
Falmouth the same year that my ships came first from Virginia; there was
another this year in Helford, that also came from thence, and had been
fourteen months at an anchor in Amazons; which were both very rich.

Although, as I am persuaded, Guiana cannot be entered that way, yet no
doubt the trade of gold from thence passeth by branches of rivers into
the river of Amazons, and so it doth on every hand far from the country
itself; for those Indians of Trinidad have plates of gold from Guiana,