an hundred pound weight for a knife, and sell it at Margarita for ten
pesos. They also recover great store of cotton, Brazil wood, and those
beds which they call hamacas or Brazil beds, wherein in hot countries
all the Spaniards use to lie commonly, and in no other, neither did we
ourselves while we were there. By means of which trades, for ransom of
divers of the Guianians, and for exchange of hatchets and knives, Berreo
recovered some store of gold plates, eagles of gold, and images of men
and divers birds, and dispatched his camp-master for Spain, with all
that he had gathered, therewith to levy soldiers, and by the show
thereof to draw others to the love of the enterprise. And having sent
divers images as well of men as beasts, birds, and fishes, so curiously
wrought in gold, he doubted not but to persuade the king to yield to him
some further help, especially for that this land hath never been sacked,
the mines never wrought, and in the Indies their works were well spent,
and the gold drawn out with great labour and charge. He also despatched
messengers to his son in Nuevo Reyno to levy all the forces he could,
and to come down the river Orenoque to Emeria, the province of Carapana,
to meet him; he had also sent to Santiago de Leon on the coast of the
Caracas, to buy horses and mules.

After I had thus learned of his proceedings past and purposed, I told
him that I had resolved to see Guiana, and that it was the end of my
journey, and the cause of my coming to Trinidad, as it was indeed,
and for that purpose I sent Jacob Whiddon the year before to get
intelligence: with whom Berreo himself had speech at that time, and
remembered how inquisitive Jacob Whiddon was of his proceedings, and of
the country of Guiana. Berreo was stricken into a great melancholy and
sadness, and used all the arguments he could to dissuade me; and also
assured the gentlemen of my company that it would be labour lost, and
that they should suffer many miseries if they proceeded. And first he