horsemen on the banks, where the country served them for to march; and
where otherwise, he was driven to embark them in boats which he builded
for the purpose, and so came with the current down the river of Meta,
and so into Baraquan. After he entered that great and mighty river, he
began daily to lose of his companies both men and horse; for it is in
many places violently swift, and hath forcible eddies, many sands,
and divers islands sharp pointed with rocks. But after one whole year,
journeying for the most part by river, and the rest by land, he grew
daily to fewer numbers; from both by sickness, and by encountering with
the people of those regions through which he travelled, his companies
were much wasted, especially by divers encounters with the Amapaians
(Amapaia was Berrio's name for the Orinoco valley above the Caura
river). And in all this time he never could learn of any passage into
Guiana, nor any news or fame thereof, until he came to a further border
of the said Amapaia, eight days' journey from the river Caroli (the
Caroni river, the first great affluent of the Orinoco on the south,
about 180 miles from the sea), which was the furthest river that he
entered. Among those of Amapaia, Guiana was famous; but few of these
people accosted Berreo, or would trade with him the first three months
of the six which he sojourned there. This Amapaia is also marvellous
rich in gold, as both Berreo confessed and those of Guiana with whom I
had most conference; and is situate upon Orenoque also. In this country
Berreo lost sixty of his best soldiers, and most of all his horse that
remained in his former year's travel. But in the end, after divers
encounters with those nations, they grew to peace, and they presented
Berreo with ten images of fine gold among divers other plates and
croissants, which, as he sware to me, and divers other gentlemen, were
so curiously wrought, as he had not seen the like either in Italy,
Spain, or the Low Countries; and he was resolved that when they came
to the hands of the Spanish king, to whom he had sent them by his