Raleigh sails for Guiana. The details of his voyage should be read
at length. Everywhere they show the eye of a poet as well as of a
man of science. He sees enough to excite his hopes more wildly than
ever; he goes hundreds of miles up the Orinoco in an open boat,
suffering every misery, but keeping up the hearts of his men, who cry
out, 'Let us go on, we care not how far.' He makes friendship with
the caciques, and enters into alliance with them on behalf of Queen
Elizabeth against the Spaniards. Unable to pass the falls of the
Caroli, and the rainy season drawing on, he returns, beloved and
honoured by all the Indians, boasting that, during the whole time he
was there, no woman was the worse for any man of his crew.
Altogether, we know few episodes of history so noble, righteous, and
merciful as this Guiana voyage. But he has not forgotten the
Spaniards. At Trinidad he payed his ships with the asphalt of the
famous Pitch-lake, and stood--and with what awe such a man must have
stood--beneath the noble forest of Moriche fan-palms on its brink.
He then attacked, not, by his own confession, without something too
like treachery, the new town of San Jose, takes Berreo prisoner, and
delivers from captivity five caciques, whom Berreo kept bound in one
chain, 'basting their bodies with burning bacon'--an old trick of the
Conquistadores--to make them discover their gold. He tells them that
he was 'the servant of a Queen who was the greatest cacique of the
north, and a virgin; who had more caciqui under her than there were
trees on that island; that she was an enemy of the Castellani
(Spaniards) in behalf of their tyranny and oppression, and that she
delivered all such nations about her as were by them oppressed, and
having freed all the coast of the northern world from their
servitude, had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the
country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest.' After which