LEGENDARY TALES OF THE EARLY VOYAGERS.

I shall commence this chapter by a description of Spanish Guiana
(Provincia de la Guyana), which is a part of the ancient Capitania
general of Caracas. Since the end of the sixteenth century three towns
have successively borne the name of St. Thomas of Guiana. The first
was situated opposite to the island of Faxardo, at the confluence of
the Carony and the Orinoco, and was destroyed* by the Dutch, under the
command of Captain Adrian Janson, in 1579. (* The first of the voyages
undertaken at Raleigh's expense was in 1595; the second, that of
Laurence Keymis, in 1596; the third, described by Thomas Masham, in
1597; and the fourth, in 1617. The first and last only were performed
by Raleigh in person. This celebrated man was beheaded on October the
29th, 1618. It is therefore the second town of Santo Tomas, now called
Vieja Guyana, which existed in the time of Raleigh.) The second,
founded by Antonio de Berrio in 1591, near twelve leagues east of the
mouth of the Carony, made a courageous resistance to Sir Walter
Raleigh, whom the Spanish writers of the conquest know only by the
name of the pirate Reali. The third town, now the capital of the
province, is fifty leagues west of the confluence of the Carony. It
was begun in 1764, under the Governor Don Joacquin Moreno de Mendoza,
and is distinguished in the public documents from the second town,
vulgarly called the fortress (el castillo, las fortalezas), or Old
Guayana (Vieja Guayana), by the name of Santo Thome de la Nueva
Guayana. This name being very long, that of Angostura* (the strait)
has been commonly substituted for it. (* Europe has learnt the
existence of the town of Angostura by the trade carried on by the
Catalonians in the Carony bark, which is the beneficial bark of the
Bonplanda trifoliata. This bark, coming from Nueva Guiana, was called
corteza or cascarilla del Angostura (Cortex Angosturae). Botanists so