delivered that I could not enter any of the rivers with any bark or
pinnace, or hardly with any ship's boat, it was so low, sandy, and full
of flats, and that his companies were daily grounded in their canoes,
which drew but twelve inches water. He further said that none of the
country would come to speak with us, but would all fly; and if we
followed them to their dwellings, they would burn their own towns. And
besides that, the way was long, the winter at hand, and that the rivers
beginning once to swell, it was impossible to stem the current; and that
we could not in those small boats by any means carry victuals for half
the time, and that (which indeed most discouraged my company) the kings
and lords of all the borders of Guiana had decreed that none of them
should trade with any Christians for gold, because the same would be
their own overthrow, and that for the love of gold the Christians meant
to conquer and dispossess them of all together.

Many and the most of these I found to be true; but yet I resolving to
make trial of whatsoever happened, directed Captain George Gifford, my
Vice-Admiral, to take the Lion's Whelp, and Captain Caulfield his bark,
to turn to the eastward, against the mouth of a river called Capuri,
whose entrance I had before sent Captain Whiddon and John Douglas the
master to discover. Who found some nine foot water or better upon the
flood, and five at low water: to whom I had given instructions that they
should anchor at the edge of the shoal, and upon the best of the flood
to thrust over, which shoal John Douglas buoyed and beckoned (beaconed)
for them before. But they laboured in vain; for neither could they turn
it up altogether so far to the east, neither did the flood continue so
long, but the water fell ere they could have passed the sands. As we
after found by a second experience: so as now we must either give over
our enterprise, or leaving our ships at adventure 400 mile behind us,
must run up in our ship's boats, one barge, and two wherries. But being