Raleigh

CHAPTER IV.

GUIANA

The vast tract in the north-east of the southern continent of America which is now divided between Venezuela and three European powers, was known in the sixteenth century by the name of Guiana. Of this district the three territories now styled English, Dutch, and French Guiana respectively form but an insignificant coast-line, actually lying outside the vague eastern limit of the traditional empire of Guiana. As early as 1539 a brother of the great Pizarro had returned to Peru with a legend of a prince of Guiana whose body was smeared with turpentine and then blown upon with gold dust, so that he strode naked among his people like a majestic golden statue. This prince was El Dorado, the Gilded One. But as time went on this title was transferred from the monarch to his kingdom, or rather to a central lake hemmed in by golden mountains in the heart of Guiana. Spanish and German adventurers made effort after effort to reach this laguna, starting now from Peru, now from Quito, now from Trinidad, but they never found it: little advance was made in knowledge or authority, nor did Spain raise any definite pretensions to Guiana, although her provinces hemmed it in upon three sides.

There is no doubt that Raleigh, who followed with the closest attention the nascent geographical literature of his time, read the successive accounts which the Spaniards and Germans gave of their explorations in South America. But it was not until 1594 that he seems to have been specially attracted to Guiana. At every part of his career it was 'hatred of the tyrannous prosperity' of Spain which excited him to action. Early in 1594 Captain George Popham, sailing apparently in one of Raleigh's vessels, captured at sea and brought to the latter certain letters sent home to the King of Spain announcing that on April 23, 1593, at a place called Warismero, on the Orinoco, Antonio de Berreo, the Governor of Trinidad, had annexed Guiana to the dominions of his Catholic Majesty, under the name of El Nuevo Dorado. In these same letters various reports of the country and its inhabitants were repeated, that the chiefs danced with their naked bodies gleaming with gold dust, and with golden eagles dangling from their breasts and great pearls from their ears, that there were rich mines of diamonds and of gold, that the innocent people were longing to exchange their jewels for jews-harps. Raleigh was aroused at once, less by the splendours of the description than by the fact that this unknown country, with its mysterious possibilities, had been impudently added to the plunder of Spain. He immediately fitted out a ship, and sent Captain Jacob Whiddon, an old servant of his, to act as a pioneer, and get what knowledge he could of Guiana. Whiddon went to Trinidad, saw Berreo, was put off by him with various treacherous excuses, and returned to England in the winter of 1594 with but a scanty stock of fresh information. It was enough, however, to encourage Raleigh to start for Guiana without delay.

On December 26 he writes: 'This wind breaks my heart. That which should carry me hence now stays me here, and holds seven ships in the river of Thames. As soon as God sends them hither I will not lose one hour of time.' On January 2, 1595, he is still at Sherborne, 'only gazing for a wind to carry me to my destiny.' At last, on February 6 he sailed away from Plymouth, not with seven, but with five ships, together with small craft for ascending rivers. What the number of his crew was, he nowhere states. The section of them which he took up to the Orinoco he describes as 'a handful of men, being in all about a hundred gentlemen; soldiers, rowers, boat-keepers, boys, and all sorts.' Sir Robert Cecil was to have adventured his own ship, the 'Lion's Whelp,' and for her Raleigh waited seven or eight days among the Canaries, but she did not arrive. On the 17th they captured at Fuerteventura two ships, Spanish and Flemish, and stocked their own vessels with wine from the latter.

They then sailed on into the west, and on March 22 arrived on the south side of Trinidad, casting anchor on the north shore of the Serpent's Mouth. Raleigh personally explored the southern and western coasts of the island in a small boat, while the ships kept to the channel. He was amazed to find oysters in the brackish creeks hanging to the branches of the mangrove trees at low water, and he examined also the now famous liquid pitch of Trinidad. Twenty years afterwards, in writing The History of the World, we find his memory still dwelling on these natural wonders. At the first settlement the English fleet came to, Port of Spain, they traded with the Spanish colonists, and Raleigh endeavoured to find out what he could, which was but little, about Guiana. He pretended that he was asking merely out of curiosity, and was on his way to his own colony of Virginia.

While Raleigh was anchored off Port of Spain, he found that Berreo, the Governor, had privately sent for reinforcements to Marguerita and Cumana, meaning to attack him suddenly. At the same time the Indians came secretly aboard the English ships with terrible complaints of Spanish cruelty. Berreo was keeping the ancient chiefs of the island in prison, and had the singular foible of amusing himself at intervals by basting their bare limbs with broiling bacon. These considerations determined Raleigh to take the initiative. That same evening he marched his men up the country to the new capital of the island, St. Joseph, which they easily stormed, and in it they captured Berreo. Raleigh found five poor roasted chieftains hanging in irons at the point of death, and at their instance he set St. Joseph on fire. That very day two more English ships, the 'Lion's Whelp' and the 'Galleys,' arrived at Port of Spain, and Raleigh was easily master of the situation.

Berreo seems to have submitted with considerable tact. He insinuated himself into Raleigh's confidence, and, like the familiar poet in Shakespeare's sonnet, 'nightly gulled him with intelligence.' His original idea probably was that by inflaming Raleigh's imagination with the wonders of Guiana, he would be the more likely to plunge to his own destruction into the fatal swamps of the Orinoco. It is curious to find even Raleigh, who was eminently humane in his own dealings with the Indians, speaking in these terms of such a cruel scoundrel as Berreo, 'a gentleman well descended, very valiant and liberal, and a gentleman of great assuredness, and of a great heart: I used him according to his estate and worth in all things I could, according to the small means I had.' Berreo showed him a copy he held of a journal kept by a certain Juan Martinez, who professed to have penetrated as far as Manoa, the capital of Guiana. This narrative was very shortly afterwards exposed as 'an invention of the fat friars of Puerto Rico,' but Raleigh believed it, and it greatly encouraged him. When Berreo realised that he certainly meant to attempt the expedition, his tone altered, and he 'was stricken into a great melancholy and sadness, using all the arguments he could to dissuade me, and also assuring the gentlemen of my company that it would be labour lost,' but all in vain.

The first thing to be done was to cross the Serpent's Mouth, and to ascend one of the streams of the great delta. Raleigh sent Captain Whiddon to explore the southern coast, and determined from his report to take the Capuri, or, as it is now called, the Macareo branch, which lies directly under the western extremity of Trinidad. After an unsuccessful effort here, he started farther west, on the Caño Manamo, which he calls the River of the Red Cross. He found it exceedingly difficult to enter, owing to the sudden rise and fall of the flood in the river, and the violence of the current. At last they started, passing up the river on the tide, and anchoring in the ebb, and in this way went slowly onward. The vessels which carried them were little fitted for such a task. Raleigh had had an old galley furnished with benches to row upon, and so far cut down that she drew but five feet of water; he had also a barge, two wherries, and a ship's boat, and in this miserable fleet, leaving his large vessels behind him in the Gulf of Paria, he accomplished his perilous and painful voyage to the Orinoco and back, with one hundred persons and their provisions. Of the misery of these four hundred miles he gives a graphic account:

We were all driven to lie in the rain and weather, in the open air, in the burning sun, and upon the hard boards, and to dress our meat, and to carry all manner of furniture, wherewith [the boats] were so pestered and unsavoury, that what with victuals being most fish, with the wet clothes of so many men thrust together, and the heat of the sun, I will undertake there was never any prison in England that could be found more unsavoury and loathsome, especially to myself, who had for many years before been dieted and cared for in a sort far different.

On the third day, as they were ascending the river, the galley stuck so fast that they thought their expedition would have ended there; but after casting out all her ballast, and after much tugging and hauling to and fro, they got off in twelve hours. When they had ascended beyond the limit of the tide, the violence of the current became a very serious difficulty, and at the end of the seventh day the crews began to despair, the temperature being extremely hot, and the thick foliage of the Ita-palms on either side of the river excluding every breath of air. Day by day the Indian pilots assured them that the next night should be the last. Raleigh had to harangue his men to prevent mutiny, for now their provisions also were exhausted. He told them that if they returned through that deadly swamp they must die of starvation, and that the world would laugh their memory to scorn.

Presently things grew a little better. They found wholesome fruits on the banks, and now that the streams were purer they caught fish. Not knowing what they saw, they marvelled at the 'birds of all colours, some carnation, orange tawny,' which was Raleigh's own colour, 'purple, green, watchet and of all other sorts both simple and mixed, as it was unto us a great good passing of the time to behold them, besides the relief we found by killing some store of them with our fowling pieces.' These savannahs are full of birds, and the brilliant macaws which excited Raleigh's admiration make an excellent stew, with the flavour, according to Sir Robert Schomburgk, of hare soup. Their pilot now persuaded them to anchor the galley in the main river, and come with him up a creek, on the right hand, which would bring them to a town. On this wild-goose chase they ascended the side-stream for forty miles; it was probably the Cucuina, which was simply winding back with them towards the Gulf of Paria. They felt that the Indian was tricking them, but about midnight, while they were talking of hanging him, they saw a light and heard the baying of dogs. They had found an Indian village, and here they rested well, and had plenty of food and drink. Upon this new river they were charmed to see the deer come feeding down to the water's brink, and Raleigh describes the scene as though it reminded him of his own park at Sherborne. They were alarmed at the crowds of alligators, and one handsome young negro, who leaped into the river from the galley, was instantly devoured in Raleigh's sight.

Next day they regained the great river, and their anxious comrades in the 'Lion's Whelp.' They passed on together, and were fortunate enough to meet with four Indian canoes laden with excellent bread. The Indians ran away and left their possessions, and Raleigh's dreams of mineral wealth were excited by the discovery of what he took to be a 'refiner's basket, for I found in it his quicksilver, saltpetre, and divers things for the trial of metals, and also the dust of such ore as he had refined.' He was minded to stay here and dig for gold, but was prevented by a phenomenon which he mentions incidentally, but which has done much to prove the reality of his narrative. He says that all the little creeks which ran towards the Orinoco 'were raised with such speed, as if we waded them over the shoes in the morning outward, we were covered to the shoulders homeward the very same day.' Sir R. Schomburgk found exactly the same to be the case when he explored Guiana in 1843.

They pushed on therefore along the dreary river, and on the fifteenth day had the joy of seeing straight before them far away the peaks of Peluca and Paisapa, the summits of the Imataca mountains which divide the Orinoco from the Essequibo. The same evening, favoured by a strong northerly wind, they came in sight of the great Orinoco itself, and anchored in it a little to the east of the present settlement of San Rafael de Barrancas. Their spirits were high again. They feasted on the eggs of the freshwater turtles which they found in thousands on the sandy islands, and they gazed with rapture on the mountains to the south of them which rose out of the very heart of Guiana. A friendly chieftain carried them off to his village, where, to preserve the delightful spelling of the age, 'some of our captaines garoused of his wine till they were reasonable pleasant,' this wine being probably the cassivi or fermented juice of the sweet potato. It redounds to Raleigh's especial credit that in an age when great license was customary in dealing with savages, he strictly prohibited his men, under threat of punishment by death, from insulting the Indian women. His just admiration of the fair Caribs, however, was quite enthusiastic:

The casique that was a stranger had his wife staying at the port where we anchored, and in all my life I have seldom seen a better-favoured woman. She was of good stature, with black eyes, fat of body, of an excellent countenance, and taking great pride therein. I have seen a lady in England so like her, as but for the difference of colour I would have sworn might have been the same.

They started to ascend the Orinoco, having so little just understanding of the geography of South America that they thought if they could only sail far enough up the river they would come out on the other side of the continent at Quito. It has been noticed that Raleigh passed close to the Spanish settlement of Guayana Vieja, which Berreo had founded four years before. Perhaps it was by this time deserted, and Raleigh may really have gone by it without seeing it. More probably, however, its existence interfered with his theory that all this territory was untouched by Europeans, and therefore open to be annexed in the name of her English Majesty. Passing up the Orinoco, he came at last to what he calls 'the port of Morequito,' where he made some stay, and enjoyed the luxury of pine-apples, which he styles 'the princess of fruits.' He was also introduced to that pleasing beast the armadillo, whose powers and functions he a little misunderstood, for he says of it, 'it seemeth to be all barred over with small plates like to a rhinoceros, with a white horn growing in his hinder parts, like unto a hunting horn, which they use to wind instead of a trumpet.' What Raleigh mistook for a hunting-horn was the stiff tail of the armadillo. Raleigh warned the peaceful and friendly inhabitants of Morequito against the villanies of Spain, and recommended England to them as a safe protector. He then pursued his westerly course to an island which he calls Caiama, and which is now named Fajardo, which was the farthest point he reached upon the Orinoco. This island lies at the mouth of the Caroni, the great southern artery of the watershed, and Raleigh's final expedition was made up this stream. He reached the foot of the great cataract, now named Salto Caroni, and his description of this noble natural wonder may be quoted as a favourable instance of his style, and as the crown of his geographical enterprise:

When we ran to the tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining to the river, we behold that wonderful breach of waters, which ran down Caroli [Caroni]; and might from that mountain see the river how it ran in three parts, above twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been all covered over with a great shower of rain; and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had risen over some great town. For mine own part, I was well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill footman, but the rest were all so desirous to go near the said strange thunder of waters, that they drew me on by little and little, till we came into the next valley, where we might better discern the same. I never saw a more beautiful country, nor more lively prospects, hills so raised here and there over the valleys, the river winding into divers branches, the plains adjoining without bush or stubble, all fair green grass, the ground of hard sand easy to march on either for horse or foot, the deer crossing in every path, the birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes, cranes and herons of white, crimson, and carnation perching on the river's side, the air fresh with a gentle easterly wind, and every stone that we stooped to take up promised either gold or silver by his complexion.

The last touch spoils an exquisite picture. It is at once dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, it is sometimes disseminated in an almost imperceptible manner in the mass of granite rocks itself, without our being able to admit that there is a ramification and an interlacing of small veins.' It is plain that Raleigh got hold of unusually rich specimens of the sparse auriferous quartz. He was accused on his return of having brought his specimens from Africa, but no one suggested that they did not contain gold. No doubt much of the sparkling dust he saw in the rocks was simply iron pyrites, or some other of the minerals which to this day are known to the wise in California as 'fool's gold.' His expedition had come to America unprovided with tools of any kind, and Raleigh confesses that such specimens of ore as they did not buy from the Indians, they had to tear out with their daggers or with their fingers.

It has been customary of late, in reaction against the defamation of Raleigh in the eighteenth century, to protest that gold was not his chief aim in the Guiana enterprise, but that his main wish, under cover of the search for gold, was to form a South American colony for England, and to open out the west to general commerce. With every wish to hold this view, I am unable to do so in the face of the existing evidence. More humane, more intelligent than any of the adventurers who had preceded him, it yet does not seem that Raleigh was less insanely bitten with the gold fever than any of them. He saw the fleets of Spain return to Europe year after year laden with precious metals from Mexico, and he exaggerated, as all men of his age did, the power of this tide of gold. He conceived that no one would stem the dangerous influence of Spain until the stream of wealth was diverted or divided. He says in the most direct language that it is not the trade of Spain, her exports of wines and Seville oranges and other legitimate produce, that threatens shipwreck to us all; 'it is his Indian gold that endangereth and disturbeth all the nations of Europe; it purchased intelligence, creepeth into councils, and setteth bound loyalty at liberty in the greatest monarchies of Europe.' In Raleigh's exploration of Guiana, his steadfast hope, the hope which led him patiently through so many hardships, was that he might secure for Elizabeth a vast auriferous colony, the proceeds of which might rival the revenues of Mexico and Peru. But we must not make the mistake of supposing him to have been so wise before his time as to perceive that the real wealth which might paralyse a selfish power like that of Spain would consist in the cereals and other products which such a colony might learn to export.

Resting among the friendly Indians in the heart of the strange country to which he had penetrated, Raleigh became in many ways the victim of his ignorance and his pardonable credulity. Not only was he gulled with diamonds and sapphires that were really rock-crystals, but he was made to believe that there existed west of the Orinoco a tribe of Indians whose eyes were in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts. He does not pretend that he saw such folks, however, or that he enjoyed the advantage of conversing with any of the Ewaipanoma, or men without heads, or of that other tribe, 'who have eminent heads like dogs, and live all the day-time in the sea, and speak the Carib language.' Of all these he speaks from modest hearsay, and less confidently than Othello did to Desdemona. It is true that he relates marvellous and fabulous things, but it is no less than just to distinguish very carefully between what he repeats and what he reports. For the former we have to take the evidence of his interpreters, who but dimly understood what the Indians told them, and Raleigh cannot be held personally responsible; for the latter, the testimony of all later explorers, especially Humboldt and Schomburgk, is that Raleigh's narrative, where he does not fall into obvious and easily intelligible error, is remarkably clear and simple, and full of internal evidence of its genuineness.