scattered remnant comes asking piteously why Raleigh does not come
over to deliver them? Have the Spaniards slain him, too? Keymis
comforts them as he best can; hears of more gold mines; and gets back
safe, a little to his own astonishment; for eight-and-twenty ships of
war have been sent to Trinidad to guard the entrance to El Dorado,
not surely, as Keymis well says, 'to keep us only from tobacco.' A
colony of 500 persons is expected from Spain. The Spaniard is well
aware of the richness of the prize, says Keymis, who all through
shows himself a worthy pupil of his master. A careful, observant man
he seems to have been, trained by that great example to overlook no
fact, even the smallest. He brings home lists of rivers, towns,
caciques, poison-herbs, words, what not; he has fresh news of gold,
spleen-stones, kidney-stones, and some fresh specimens; but be that
as it may, he, 'without going as far as his eyes can warrant, can
promise Brazil-wood, honey, cotton, balsamum, and drugs, to defray
charges.' He would fain copy Raleigh's style, too, and 'whence his
lamp had oil, borrow light also,' 'seasoning his unsavoury speech'
with some of the 'leaven of Raleigh's discourse.' Which, indeed, he
does even to little pedantries and attempts at classicality; and
after professing that himself and the remnant of his few years he
hath bequeathed wholly to Raleana, and his thoughts live only in that
action, he rises into something like grandeur when he begins to speak
of that ever-fertile subject, the Spanish cruelties to the Indians;
'Doth not the cry of the poor succourless ascend unto the heavens?
Hath God forgotten to be gracious to the work of his own hands. Or
shall not his judgments in a day of visitation by the ministry of his
chosen servant come upon these bloodthirsty butchers, like rain into
a fleece of wool?' Poor Keymis! To us he is by no means the least
beautiful figure in this romance; a faithful, diligent, loving man,
unable, as the event proved, to do great deeds by himself, but