'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.'


And he will go forth to endure heat, hunger, fever, danger of death
in battle, danger of the Inquisition, rack, and stake, in search of
El Dorado. What so strange in that? I have known half a dozen men
who, in his case, and conscious of his powers, would have done the
same from the same noble motive.

He begins prudently; and sends a Devonshire man, Captain Whiddon--
probably one of The Whiddons of beautiful Chagford--to spy out the
Orinoco. He finds that the Spaniards are there already; that Berreo,
who has attempted El Dorado from the westward, starting from New
Granada and going down the rivers, is trying to settle on the Orinoco
mouth; that he is hanging the poor natives, encouraging the Caribs to
hunt them and sell them for slaves, imprisoning the caciques to
extort their gold, torturing, ravishing, kidnapping, and conducting
himself as was usual among Spaniards of those days.

Raleigh's spirit is stirred within him. If 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'
fiction as it is, once excited us, how must a far worse reality have
excited Raleigh, as he remembered that these Spaniards are as yet
triumphant in iniquity, and as he remembered, too, that these same
men are the sworn foes of England, her liberty, her Bible, and her
Queen? What a deed, to be beforehand with them for once! To
dispossess them of one corner of that western world, where they have
left no trace but blood and flame! He will go himself: he will find
El Dorado and its golden Emperor; and instead of conquering,
plundering, and murdering him, as Cortez did Montezuma, and Pizarro