 Chapter 3 of Raleigh This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Avae in July 2016. Raleigh by Edmund Gossi Chapter 3 in Disgrace For one year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Raleigh resisted with success or overlooked with equanimity the determined attacks which Essex made upon his position at court. He was busy with great schemes in all quarters of the kingdom, engaged in Devonshire, in Ireland, in Virginia, in the Northwestern seas, and to his viral activity the jealousy of Essex must have seemed like the buzzing of a persistent gnat. The insect could sting, however, and in the early part of December 1588 Raleigh's attention was forcibly concentrated on his rival by the fact that my lord of Essex had sent him a challenge. No duel was fought, and the council did its best to bury the incident in silence that it might not be known to her majesty lest it might enjoy the earl from which it will appear that Raleigh's hold upon her favor was still assured. A week later than this we get a glance for a moment at one or two of the leash of privateering enterprises, all of them a little under the rose in which Sir Walter Raleigh was in these years engaged. An English ship, the Angel Gabriel, complained of being captured and sacked of her wines by Raleigh's men on the high seas, and he retorts by insinuating that she, as it is probable, has served the king of Spain in his armada and is therefore a fair game. So too with the four butts of sack of one artson and the sugar and mace said to be taken out of a Hamburg vessel, their capture by Raleigh's vectors is comfortably excused on the ground that these acts were only reprisals against the villainous Spaniard. It was well that these more or less commercial undertakings should be successful for it became more and more plain to Raleigh that the most grandiose of all his enterprises, his determined effort to colonize Virginia, could but be a drain upon his fortune. After Captain White's final disastrous voyage, Raleigh suspended his efforts in this direction for a while. He leased his patent in Virginia to a company of merchant on March 7th 1589, merely reserving to himself a nominal privilege, namely the possession of one-fifth of such golden silver ore as should be raised in the colony. This was the end of the first act of Raleigh's American adventures. It may not be needless to contradict here a statement repeated in most rapid sketches of his life. It is not true that at any time Raleigh himself set foot in Virginia. In the Portugal expedition of 1589, Raleigh does not seem to have taken at all a prominent part. He was absent, however, with Drake's fleet from April 18th to July 2nd, and he marched with the rest up to the walls of Lisbon. This enterprise was an attempt on the part of Elizabeth to place Antonio again on the throne of Portugal from which he had been ousted by Philip of Spain in 1580. The aim of the expedition was not reached, but a great deal of booty fell into the hands of the English, and Raleigh in particular received four thousand pounds. His contingent, however, had been a little too zealous, and he received a rather sharp reprimand for capturing two barks from Cherbourg belonging to the friendly power of France. It must be understood that Raleigh at this time maintained at his own expense a small personal fleet for commercial and privateering ends, and that he lent or leased these vessels, with his own services, to the government when additional naval contributions were required. In the domestic correspondence we meet with the names of the chief of these vessels, the revenge soon afterwards so famous, the crane and the garland. These ships were merchantmen or men of war at will, and their exploits were winked at or frowned upon at court as circumstances dictated. Sometimes the hawk's eye of Elizabeth would sound the halls of these pirates with incredible acumen, as on that occasion when it is recorded that a waste coat of carnation color curiously embroidered, which was being brought home to adorn the person of the adventurer, was seized by order of the queen to form a stomacher for his royal mistress. It would be difficult to say which of the illustrious pair was the more solicitous of fine raiment. At other times the whole prize had to be disgorged, as in the case of that bark of Olon laden with barley, which Raleigh had to restore to the treasury on July 21st 1589, after he had concluded a very lucrative sale of the same. In August 1589, Sir Francis Allen wrote to Anthony Bacon, My lord of Essex hath chased Mr Raleigh from the court and hath confined him to Ireland. It is true that Raleigh himself, five months later, being once more restored to favor, speaks of that nearness to her majesty which I still enjoy, and directly contradicts the rumor of this disgrace. This, however, is not in accordance with the statement made by Spencer in his poem of Colin Clout's Come Home Again, in which he says that all Raleigh's speech at this time was of great unkindness and of usage hard, of Cynthia, the lady of the sea, which from her presence faultless him debarred. And this may probably be considered as final evidence. At all events, this exile from court, whether it was enforced or voluntary, brought about perhaps the most pleasing and stimulating episode in the whole of Raleigh's career, his association with the great poet whose lines have just been quoted. We have already seen that, eight years before this, Spencer and Raleigh had met under Lord Gray in the expedition that found its crisis at Smirvick. We have no evidence of the point of intimacy which they reached in 1582, nor of their further acquaintance before 1589. It has been thought that Raleigh's picturesque and vivid personality immediately and directly influenced Spencer's imagination. Dean Church has noticed that to read Hooker's account of Raleigh's adventures with the Irish chieftains, his challenges and single combats, his escapes at Fords and Woods, is like reading bits of the fairy queen in prose. The two men, in many respects the most remarkable Englishmen of imagination, then before the notice of their country, did not, however, really come into mutual relation until the time we have now reached. In 1586 Edmund Spencer had been rewarded for his arduous services as clerk of the Council of Munster by the gift of a manor and ruined castle of the Desmond's, kill Coleman near the Galty Hills. This little peal tower, with its tiny rooms, overlooked a county that is desolate enough now, but which then was finely wooded and watered by the river Orbeck, to which the poet gave the softer name of Muller. Here in the midst of terrors by night and day at the edge of the dreadful wood, where outlaws fell afraid of forest ranger, Spencer had been settled for three years, describing the adventures of knights and ladies in a wild world of fairy that was but too like Munster when the shepherd of the ocean came over to Ireland to be his neighbor. Raleigh settled himself in his own house at Ugal and found society in visiting his cousin Sir George Carey at Lismore and Spencer at Kill Coleman. Of the later association we possess the most interesting record. In 1591, reviewing the life of two years before, Spencer says, One day I sat, as was my trade, under the foot of Mole, that mountain whore, keeping my sheep among the cooly shade of the green alders by the Muller's shore. There a strange shepherd chanced to find me out, whether allured with my pipe's delight, whose pleasing sound shrilled far about. The secret of the authorship of the shepherd's calendar having by this time oozed out in the praises of Webb in 1586 and of Puttenham in 1589. Or did I led by chance, I know not right, whom when I asked from what place he came and how he hiked himself, he did eclip, the shepherd of the ocean by name, and said he came far from the main sea deep. He, sitting me beside in that same shade, provoked me to play some pleasant fit. That is to say to read the manuscript of the Fairy Queen, now approaching completion. And when he heard the music which I made, he found himself full greatly pleased at it. Yet emuelling my pipe he took in haunt, my pipe, before that emuelled of many, and played thereon, for well that skill he conned, himself as skillful in that art as any. Among the other poems thus read by Raleigh to Spencer at Kill Coleman was the lamentable lay to which reference had just been made, the peace and praise of Elizabeth which bore the name of Cynthia. In Spencer's pastoral the speaker is persuaded by Thestilis, Lordovic brisket, to explain what did he that was that the shepherd of the ocean sang, and he explains very distinctly, but in terms which are scarcely critical, that Raleigh's poem was written in love and praise, but also in pathetic complaint of Elizabeth that great shepherdess that Cynthia hight, his liege, his lady, and his life's regent. This is most valuable evidence of the existence in 1589 of a poem or a series of poems by Sir Walter Raleigh, set by Spencer on a level with the best work of the age in verse. This poem was, until quite lately, supposed to have vanished entirely and beyond all hope of recovery. Until now no one seems to have been aware that we hold in our hands a fragment of Raleigh's magnum opus of 1589, quite considerable enough to give us an idea of the extent and character of the rest. In 1870 Archdeacon Hannah printed what he described as a continuation of the lost poem Cynthia from fragments in Sir Walter's own hand among the hat-fill manuscripts. Dr. Hannah, however, was led by the character of the handwriting by some vague illusions in one of the fragments to a prison captivity and most of all probably by a difficulty in dates, which we can now for the first time explain, attributed these pieces to 1603 to 1618, that is to say to Raleigh's imprisonment in the tower. The second fragment beginning, my body in the walls captive, belongs no doubt to the later date. It is in a totally distinct meter from the rest and has nothing to do with Cynthia. The first fragment bears the stamp of much earlier date, but this also can be no part of Raleigh's epic. The long passage then following on the contrary is, I think, beyond question, a canto almost complete of the lost epic of 1589. It is written in the four-line heroic stanza adopted ten years later by Sir John Davis for his nosketeepsum and most familiar to us all in Grey's churchyard elegy. Moreover, it is headed the 21st and last book of The Ocean to Cynthia. Another note in Raleigh's handwriting styles the poem The Ocean's Love to Cynthia, and this was probably the full name of it. Spencer's name for Raleigh, the shepherd or pastoral hero of the ocean, is therefore for the first time explained. This 21st book suffers from the fact that stanzas, but apparently not very many, have dropped out in four places. With these losses the canto still contains 130 stanzas or 526 lines. Supposing the average length of the 20 preceding books to have been the same, The Ocean's Love to Cynthia must have contained at least 10,000 lines. Spencer therefore was not exaggerating or using the language of flattery towards a few elegies or a group of sonnets when he spoke of Cynthia as a poem of great importance. As a matter of fact, no poem of the like ambition had been written in England for a century past, and if it had been published it would perhaps have taken a place only second to its immediate contemporary, the fairy queen. At this very time and in the midst of his poetical holiday, Raleigh was actively engaged in defending the rights of the merchants of Waterford and Wexford to carry on their trade in pipe staves for casks. Raleigh himself encouraged and took part in this exportation, having two ships regularly engaged between Waterford and the Canaries. Traces of his peaceful work in Munster still remain. Sir John Pope Hennessy says, The richly perfumed yellow wallflowers that he brought to Ireland from the Azores and the effane cherry are still found where he first planted them by the black water. Some sedders he brought to Cork are to this day growing according to the local historian Mr. J. G. McCarthy at a place called Tivoli. The four venerable yew trees whose branches have grown and intermingled into a sort of summerhouse thatch are pointed out as having sheltered Raleigh when he first smoked tobacco in his Ugal garden. In that garden he also planted tobacco. A few steps further on where the town wall of the 13th century bounds the garden of the Warden's house is the famous spot where the first Irish potato was planted by him. In that garden he gave the tubers to the ancestor of the present Lord Southwell by whom they were spread throughout the province of Munster. These were boons to mankind which the zeal of Raleigh's agents had brought back from across the western seas. Gifts of more account in the end than could be contained in all the places of Manoa and all the emerald mines of Trinidad if only this great man could have followed his better instinct and believed it. Raleigh's habitual difficulty in serving under other men showed itself this autumn in his dispute with the Irish deputy Sir William Fitzwilliam and led perhaps to his return early in the winter. We do not know what circumstances led to his being taken back into Elizabeth's favour again, but it was probably in November that he returned to England and took Spencer with him. Of this interesting passage in his life we find again an account in Colin Clout's Come Home Again. Spencer says, when thus our pipes we both had wearied well and each an end of singing made he, Raleigh, again to cast great liking to my lore and great disliking to my luckless lot and advised him to come to court and be presented to Cynthia whose grace was great and bounty most rewardful. He then devotes no less than ninety-five lines to description of the voyage which was a very rough one and at last he is brought by Raleigh into the Queen's presence. The shepherd of the ocean, unto that goddess Grace me first enhanced and to my otten pipe inclined her ear that she then s'forth there in Gantech delight and it desired at timely hours to hear, finally commanding the publication of it. On December 1st 1589 the fairy queen was registered and a pension of fifteen pounds secured for the poet. The supplementary letter and sonnets to Raleigh express Spencer's generous recognition of the services his friend had performed for him and appealed to Raleigh as, the summer's nightingale, thy sovereign goddess's most dear delight, not to delay in publishing his own great poem, the Cynthia. The first of the eulogistic pieces prefixed by friends to their fairy queen was that noble and justly celebrated sonnet signed W.R. which alone would justify Raleigh in taking a place among the English poets. Raleigh's position was once more secure in the sunlight. He could hold Sir William Fitzwilliam informed, on December 29th, that, I take myself far his better by the honourable office I hold as well as by that nearness to her majesty which still I enjoy and never more. The next two years were a sort of breathing space for Raleigh's career. He had reached the table-land of his fortunes and neither rose nor fell in favour. The violent crisis of the Spanish Armada had marked the close of an epoch at court. In September 1588 Lester died. In April 1590, in September 1591 Sir Christopher Hatton, three men in whose presence, however apt Raleigh might be to warrant his influence, he could never have felt absolutely master. New men were coming on, but for the moment the most violent and aggressive of his rivals, Essex, was disposed to wave a flag of truce. Both Raleigh and Essex saw one thing more clearly than the Queen herself, namely that the loyalty of the Puritans, whom Elizabeth disliked, was the great safeguard of the nation against Catholic encroachment, and they united their forces in trying to protect the interests of men like John Udall against the Queen's turbulent prejudices. In March 1591 we find it absolutely recorded that the Earl of Essex and Raleigh have joined as instruments from the Puritans to the Queen upon any particular occasion of relieving them. With Essex some sort of genuine protestant fervour seems to have acted. Raleigh, according to all evidence, was a man without religious interests, but far before his age intolerance for the opinions of others, and he was swayed, no doubt, in this as in other cases, by his dislike of persecution on the one hand, and his implacable enmity to Spain on the other. In May 1591 Raleigh was hurriedly sent down the Channel in a pinnace to warn Lord Thomas Howard that Spanish ships had been seen near the Skilly Islands. There was a project for sending a fleet of twenty ships to Spain, and Raleigh was to be second in command, but the scheme was altered. In November 1591 the first came before the public as an author with a tract in which he celebrated a prowess of one of his best friends and truest servants, Sir Richard Grenville, in a contest with the Spaniard, which is one of the most famous in English history. Raleigh's little volume is entitled A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of Diasaurus this last summer betwixt the Revenge and an Armada of the King of Spain. The fight had taken place on the preceding 10th of September. The odds against the Revenge were so excessive that Grenville was freely blamed for needless foolhardiness in facing 15,000 Spaniards with only 100 men. Raleigh wrote his report to justify the memory of his friend and doubtless hastened its publication that it might be received as evidence before Sir R. Beville's commission, which was to meet a month later to inquire into the circumstances of Grenville's death. Posterity has taken Raleigh's view, and all Englishmen, from Lord Bacon to Lord Tennyson, have united in praising this fight as one memorable even beyond credit and to the height of some heroical fable. The report of 1591 was anonymous, and it was Hackloid first, who, in reprinting it in 1599, was permitted to state that it was penned by the honourable Sir Walter Raleigh Knight. Long entirely neglected, it has of late become the best known of all its author's productions. It is written in a sane and manly style, and marks the highest level reached by English narrative prose as it existed before the waters were troubled by the fashion of Euphes. Not issued with Raleigh's name, it was yet no doubted once recognised as his work, and cannot have been without influence in determining the policy of the country with Spain. The author's enmity to the Spaniard is inveterate, and he is careful in an eloquent introduction to prove that he is not actuated by resentment on account of this one act of cruel cowardice, but by divine anger justified by the events of years against the ambitious and bloody pretenses of the Spaniard, who, seeking to devour all nations, shall be themselves devoured. The tract closes with a passionate appeal to the loyalty of the English Catholics, who are warned by the sufferings of Portugal that the obedience even of the Turk is easy and liberty in respect of the slavery and tyranny of Spain, and who will never be so safe as when they are trusting in the clemency of her majesty. All this is in the highest degree characteristic of Raleigh, whose central idea in life was not prejudice against Catholic religion, for he was singularly broad in this respect, but in his own words, hatred of the tyrannous prosperity of Spain. This ran like a red strand through his whole career from Smerwick to Dubloch, and this was at once the measure of his greatness and the secret of his fall. It was formally supposed that Raleigh came into possession of Sherbourne, his favorite country residence in 1594, that is to say after the Throckmorton incident. It is, however, in the highest degree improbable that such an estate would be given to him after his fatal offence, and in fact it is now certain that the lease was extended to him much earlier, probably in October 1591. There is a pleasant legend that Raleigh and one of his half-brothers were riding up to town from Plymouth when Raleigh's horse stumbled and threw him within the precincts of a beautiful Dorsetra estate, then in possession of the dean and chapter of Salisbury, and that Raleigh, choosing to consider that he had thus taken season of the soil, asked the queen for Sherbourne Castle when he arrived at court. It may have been on this occasion that Elizabeth asked him when he would cease to be a beggar and received the reply when your majesty ceases to be a benefactor. His first lease included a payment of 260 pounds a year to the Bishop of Salisbury who asserted a claim to the property. In January 1592, after the payment of a quarter's rent, Raleigh was confirmed in position and began to improve and enjoy the property. It consisted of the manner of Sherbourne, with a large park, a castle which had to be repaired, and several farms and hamlets together with a street in the borough of Sherbourne itself. It is a curious fact that Raleigh had to present the queen with a jewel worth 250 pounds to induce her to make the bishop, that is to say to a point to the sea of Salisbury, now vacant, a man who would consent to the alienations of such rich church lands as the manners of Sherbourne and yet Minster. John Mears, afterwards so determined and exasperating an enemy of Raleigh's, was now appointed his bailiff, and Adrian Gilbert a sort of general overseer of the works. A Raleigh had been but two months settled in possession of Sherbourne, with his 99 years lease clearly made out, when he passed suddenly out of the sunset into the deepest shadow of approaching disfavor. The year opened with promise of greater activity and higher public honors than Raleigh had yet displayed and enjoyed. An expedition was to be sent to capture the rich fleet of plate ships, known as the Indian Keraks, and then to push on to storm the pearl treasuries of Panama. For the first time Elizabeth had shown herself willing to trust her favorite in person on the perilous western seas. Raleigh was to command the fleet of fifteen ships, and under him was to serve the morose hero of Cathay, the dreadful Sir Martin Frobisher. Raleigh was not only to be admiral of the expedition, but its chief adventurer also, and in order to bear his expense he had collected his available fortune from various quarters, stripping himself of all immediate resources. To help him the Queen had bought the Ark Raleigh, his largest ship, for five thousand pounds, and in February 1592 he was ready to sail. When the moment for parting came, however, the Queen found it impossible to spare him, and Sir John Burrow was appointed admiral. It is exceedingly difficult to move with confidence in this obscure part of our narrative. On March 10th 1592 we find Raleigh at Chatham, busy about the wages of the sailors, and trying to persuade them to serve under Frobisher, whose reputation for severity made him very unpopular. He writes on that day to Sir Robert Cecil, and uses these ambiguous expressions with regard to a rumor of which we now hear for the first time. I mean not to come away, as they say I will, for fear of a marriage, and I know not what. If any such thing were I would have imparted it to yourself before any man living, and therefore I pray, believe it not, and I beseech you to suppress what you can any such malicious report. For I protest before God there is none on the face of the earth that I would be fastened on to. Raleigh was now in a desperate embarrassment. There was that concealed in his private life which could only be condoned by absence. He had seen before him an unexpected chance of escape from England, and now the Queen's tedious fondness had closed it again. The desperate fault which he had committed was that he had loved too well, and not at all wisely, a beautiful orphan, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a maid of honour to the Queen. It is supposed that she was two or three and twenty at the time. Whether he seduced her and married her after his imprisonment in the tower, or whether in the early months of 1592 there was a private marriage, has been doubted. The biographers of Raleigh have preferred to believe the letter, but it is to be feared that his fair fame in this matter cannot be maintained unsullied. Among Sir Walter Raleigh's children one daughter appears to have been illegitimate, my poor daughter to whom I have given nothing, for his sake will be cruel to himself to preserve thee, as he says to Lady Raleigh in 1603, and it may be that it was the birth of this child which brought down the vengeance of Queen Elizabeth upon their heads. His clandestine relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton were not in themselves without excuse. To be the favourite of Elizabeth, who had now herself attained the sixtieth summer of her immortal charms, was tantamount to a condemnation to celibacy. The vanity of Belphibi would admit no rival among high or low, and the least divergence from the devotion justly due to her own imperial loveliness was a mortal sin. What is less easy to forgive in Raleigh than that at the age of 40 he should have rebelled at least against his tyranny is that he seems, in the crisis of his embarrassment, to have abandoned the woman to whom he could write long afterwards, I chose you and I loved you in my happiest times. After this brief dereliction, however, he returned to his duty, and for the rest of his life was eminently faithful to the wife whom he had taken under such painful circumstances. There is a lacuna in the evidence as to what actually happened early in 1952. The late Mr. JP Collier filled up this gap with a convenient letter which has found its way into the histories of Raleigh, but the original of which has never been seen by other eyes than the transcribers. What is certain is that Raleigh contrived to conceal the state of things from the queen and to steal a way to see under pretext that he was merely accompanying Sir Martin Frobischer to the mouth of the channel. He says himself that on May 13th 1592 he was about 40 leagues off the Cape of Finisterre. It was reported that the queen sent a ship after him to insist on his return, but such a messenger would have had little chance of finding him when once he had reached the latitude of Portugal, and it is more reasonable to suppose that after straying away as far as he dared he came back again of his own accord. On June 8th he was still living unmolested in Durham House and dealing, as a person in authority, with certain questions of international navigation. Three weeks later the queen seems to have discovered what everybody about her knew already, the nature of Raleigh's relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton. On July 28th Sir Edmund Stafford wrote to Anthony Bacon, if you have anything to do with Sir Walter Raleigh or any love to make to Mrs. Throckmorton, at the tower tomorrow you may speak with them. It was four years before Raleigh was admitted again to the presence of his enraged Bill Phoebe. Needless prominence has been given to this imprisonment of Raleigh's which lasted something less than two months. He was exceedingly restive under constraint, however, and filled the air with the picturesque clamour of his distress. His first idea was to soften the queen's heart by outrageous protestations of anxious devotion to her person. The following passage from a letter to Sir Robert Cecil is remarkable in many ways, curious as an example of affected passion in a soldier of 40 for a maiden of 60, curious as a piece of carefully modulated euphoistic prose in the fashion of the hour, most curious as the language of a man from whom the one woman that he really loved was divided by the damp wall of a prison. My heart was never broken till this day that I hear the queen goes away so far off, whom I have followed so many years with so great love and desire in so many journeys, and am now left behind her in a dark prison all alone. While she was yet nire at hand that I might hear of her once in two or three days, my sorrows were the less, but even now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery. I that was want to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel, sometimes playing like Orpheus. Behold the sorrow of this world, once amiss hath bereaved me of all. O glory that only shineth in misfortune what is become of thy assurance. All wounds have scars, but that of fantasy. All affections they are relenting, but that of womankind. Who is the judge of friendship but adversity? Or when is grace witnessed but in offences? There were no divinity, but by reason of compassion for revenges are brutish and mortal. All those times past, the loves, the sights, the sorrows, the desires, can they not weigh down one frail misfortune? Can not one drop of salt be hidden in so great heaps of sweetness? I may then conclude, spes et fortuna valete. She is gone in whom I trusted, and of me hath not one thought of mercy, nor any respect of that that was. Do with me now, therefore, what you list. I am more wary of life than they are desirous I should perish. He kept up this comedy of passion with wonderful energy. One day, when the royal barge, passing down to Gravesend, crossed below his window, he raved and stormed, swearing that his enemies had brought the queen dither to break his gall in thunder with tantalus' torment. Another time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman and just catch a sight of the queen or else his heart would break. He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Careyew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur George's, because he said they were restraining him from the sight of his mistress. He proposed to Lord Howard of Effingham at the close of a business letter that he should be thrown to feed the lions, to save labour, as the queen was still so cruel. Sir Arthur George's was in despair. He thought that Raleigh was going mad. He will shortly grow, he said, to be Orlando Furioso if the Bright Angelica persevere against him a little longer. It was all a farce, of course, but underneath the fantastic effectation there was a very real sentiment that of the intolerable tedium of captivity. Raleigh had been living a life of exaggerated activity, never a month at rest, now at sea, now in Devonshire, now at court, hurrying hither and thither. His horse and he one veritable centaur. Among the euphoristic tears of fancy, which he sent from the tower, there occurs this little sentence, breathing the most complete sincerity. I live to trouble you at this time, being become like a fish cast on dry land, gasping for breath, with lame legs and lame lungs. There was no man then in England whom it was more cruel to shut up in a cage. This reference to his lungs is the first announcement of the failure of his health. Raleigh's constitution was tough, but he had a variety of ailments and a tendency to rheumatism and to consumption was among them. In later years we shall find that the damp cells of the tower filled his joints with pain and reduced him with a weakening cuff. But long before his main imprisonment, his joints and his lungs were troublesome to him. Meanwhile the great privateering expedition in which Raleigh had launched his fortune was proceeding to its destination in the Azores. No such enterprise had been as yet undertaken by English adventurers. It was a strictly private effort, but the Queen in her personal capacity had contributed two ships and 1,800 pounds and a citizens of London 6,000 pounds, but Raleigh retained by far the largest chair. Raleigh had been a week in the tower when Admiral Sir John Burrow, who had divided the fleet and had left Frobisher on the coast of Spain, joined to his contingent two London ships, the Golden Dragon and the Prudence, and lay in wait on the flores for the great line of approaching Carracks. The largest of these, the Madre de Dios, was the most famous plate ship of the day, carrying what in those days seemed almost incredible no less than 1,800 tons. Her cargo brought through Indian seas from the coast of Malabar was valued when she started at 500,000 pounds. She was lined with glowing woven carpets, sarsenate quilts and lengths of white silk and cypress. She carried in chests of sandalwood and ebony such store of rubies and pearls, such porcelain and ivory and rock crystal, such great pots of musk and planks of cinnamon, as had never been seen on all the stalls of London. Her hold smelled like a garden of spices for all the Benjamin and clubs, the nutmegs and the civet, the ambergris and the frankincense. There was a fight before Raleigh's ship the row-buck could seize the enormous prize, yet somewhat a passive one on the part of the lumbering Carrack, such a fight as may ensue between a great rabbit and the little stote that sucks its life out. When she was entered it was found that pilferings had gone on already at every port at which she had called, and the English sailors had done their share before Borough could arrive on board. The jewels and the lighter spices were badly tempered with, but in the general rejoicing over so vast a prize this was not much regarded. Through seas so tempestuous that it seemed at one time likely that she would sink in the Atlantic, the Madre de Dios was at last safely brought into Dartmouth on September 8th. The arrival of the Madre de Dios on the Queen's birthday had something like the importance of a national event. No prize of such value had ever been captured before. When all deduction had been made for treasure lost or pilfered or squandered, there yet remained a total value of £141,000 in the money of that day. The fact that all this wealth was lying in Dartmouth harbour was more than the tradesmen of London could bear. Before the Queen's commissioners could assemble, half the usurers and chopkeepers in the city had hurried down into Devonshire to try and gather up a few of the golden crumbs. Raleigh, meanwhile, was ready to burst his heart with fretting in the tower until it suddenly appeared that this very concourse in drable at Dartmouth would render his release imperative. No one but he could cope with Devonshire in its excitement, and Lord Burley determined on sending him to Dartmouth. Robert Cecil, writing from Exeter to his father on September 19th, reported that for seven miles everybody he met on the London Road smelt of amber or of musk, and that he could not open a bag without finding seed pearls in it. My Lord, he says, there never was such spoil. Raleigh's presence was absolutely necessary, for Cecil could do nothing with the desperate and obstinate merchants and sailors. On September 21st, Raleigh arrived at Dartmouth with his keeper, Blount. Cecil was amazed to find the disgraced favourite so popular in Devonshire. I assure you, he says, his poor servants to the number of one hundred and forty, goodly man, and all the mariners, come to him with such shouts and joy as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them in my life. But his heart is broken, for he is extremely pensive longer than he is busyed, in which he can toil terribly. But if you did hear him rage at the spoils, finding all the short wares utterly devoured, you would laugh as I do, which I cannot choose. The meeting between him and Sir John Gilbert was with tears on Sir John's part, and he be like finding it known he had a keeper, wherever he is saluted with congratulation for liberty, he doth answer, No, I am still the Queen of England's poor captive. I wish him to conceal it, because here it doth diminish his credit, which I do vow to you before God is greater among the mariners than I thought for. I do grace him as much as I may, for I find him marvelously greedy to do anything to recover the conceit of his brutish offence. Raleigh broke into a rage at finding so many of his treasures lost, and he gave out that if he met with any London jewelers or goldsmiths in Devonshire, wear it on the wildest teeth in all the country, he would strip them as naked as when they were born. He raved against the commissioners and the captains, against Cecil and against Cross. As was his want he showed no tact or consideration towards those who were engaged with or just above him, but about the end of September business cooled his wrath, and he settled down to a division of the prize. On September 27th the commissioners of Inquiry sent in to Burley and Howard a report of their proceedings with respect to the Madre de Dios. This report is signed by Cecil, Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake and three other persons. They had carried on their search for stolen treasure so rigorously that even the admiral's chests were examined against his will. They confessed their disappointment at finding in them nothing more tempting than some taffetas embroidered with Chinese gold and a bunch of seed pearl. Sir Walter Raleigh now married or acknowledged Elizabeth Throck Morton and in February 1593 Sir Robert Cecil procured some sort of surly recognition of the marriage from the Queen. For this Lady Raleigh thinks him in a strange flowery letter of the 8th of that month in which she excuses her husband for his denial of her, if faith were broken with me it was yet far away, and shows an affectionate solicitude for his future. It seems that Raleigh's first idea on finding himself free was to depart on an expedition to America, and this Lady Raleigh strongly objects to. In her alambicated style she says to Cecil, I hope for my sake you will rather draw for Walter towards the east than help him forward toward the sunset, if any respect to me or love to him be not forgotten. But every month hath his flower and every season his contentment and you great counsellors are so full of new councils as you are steady in nothing, but we poor souls that have bought sorrow at a high price, desire and can be pleased with the same misfortune we hold, fearing alterations will but multiply misery of which we have already felt sufficient. The poor woman had her way for the present and for two full years her husband contended himself with a quiet and obscure life among the woods of Sherbourne. For the next year we get scanty traces of Raleigh's movements from his own letters. In May 1593 his health, shaken by his imprisonment, gave him some uneasiness and he went to Bath to drink the waters, but without advantage. In August of that year we find him busy in Gillingham Forest and he gives Sir Robert Cecil a ron gilding in exchange for a rare Indian falcon. In the autumn he is engaged on the south coast in arranging quarrels between English and French fishermen. In April 1594 he captures a live Jesuit, a notable stout villain with all his copes and bulls, in Lady Sturton's house, which was a very warren of dangerous reconnaissance. But he soon gets tired of these small activities. The sea at Weymouth and at Plymouth put out its arms to him and wooed him. To hunt notable Jesuit naives and to sit on the granite judgment seat of the Stannery's were well, but life offered more than this to Raleigh. In June 1594 he tells Cecil that he will serve the Queen as a poor private mariner or soldier if he may only be allowed to be stirring abroad, and the following month there is a still more urgent appeal for permission to go with the Lord Admiral to Brittany. He has a quarrel meanwhile with the Dean and Chapter of Serum, who have let his sharebone farms over his head to one Fitz-Janes, and who could not deal with me worse with all if I were a Turk. But a month later release has come, the plague has broken up his home, his wife and son are sent in opposite directions, and he himself has lived to be free at last. With God's favour and the Queen's he will sail into the sunset that Lady Raleigh had feared so much, and will conquer for England the fabulous golden cities of Guyana. End of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 of Raleigh. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mary Ann. Raleigh by Edmund Gossa. Chapter 4. Guyana. The vast tract in the northeast of the southern continent of America, which is now divided between Venezuela and three European powers, was known in the 16th century by the name of Guyana. Of this district the three territories now styled English, Dutch, and French Guyana respectively, formed but an insignificant coastline, actually lying outside the vague eastern limit of the traditional empire of Guyana. As early as 1539 a brother of the great Pizarro had returned to Peru with a legend of a prince of Guyana whose body was smeared with turpentine and then blown up with gold dust so that he strode naked among his people like a majestic golden statue. This prince was Eldarado, 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 Guyana. Spanish and German adventurers made effort after effort to reach this laguna, starting now from Peru, now from Quinto, now from Trinidad, but they never found it. Little advance was made in knowledge or authority, nor did Spain raise any definite pretensions to Guyana, 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 Guyana. 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 captain certain letters sent home to the king of Spain, announcing that on April 23, 1593, at a place called Guareseramo, on the Orinoco, Antonio de Borrello, the governor of Trinidad, had annexed Guyana 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 minds of diamonds and of gold, that the innocent people were longing to exchange their jewels for Jew-harps. Raleigh was aroused at once, less by the splendors 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 Widom, an old servant of his, to act as a pioneer and get what knowledge he could of Guyana. Widom went to Trinidad, Sabarillo, was put off by him with various treacherous excuses and returned to England in the winter of 1594 with but scanty stock of fresh information. It was enough, however, to encourage Raleigh to start for Guyana 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 2nd 1595 he is still at Sherbourne, only gazing for a wind to carry me to my destiny. At last on February 6th 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 know where 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, boatkeepers, boys, and all sorts. So Robert Cecil was to have adventured his own ship, the Lion Wealth, and for her Raleigh waited seven or eight days among the Canaries but she did not arrive. On the 17th they captured at Fuerta Ventura, two ships, Spanish and Flemish, and stocked their own vessels with wine from the latter. They then sailed on to the west, and on March 22nd 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 vanguard 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 endeavored 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 Berio, the governor, had privately sent for reinforcements to Margarita 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. Berio 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 Berio. 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. Berio seems to have submitted with considerable tact. He insinuated himself into Raleigh's confidence and, like the familiar poet and Shakespeare's sonnet, nightly gulled him with intelligence. His original idea probably was that by inflaming Raleigh's imagination, with the wonders of Guyana, 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 Berio, 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. Berio showed him a copy he held of a journal kept by a certain Juan Martinez, who professed to have penetrated, as far as Manawa, the capital of Guyana. 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 Berio realized 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 gentleman of my company that it would be a labor 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 Manquerio branch, which lies directly under the western extremity of Trinidad. After an unsuccessful effort here he started farther west on the Kenyo 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 Abbe, and in this way they 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 wearies, 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 in 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 unsavory that what with victuals being mostly 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 unsavory 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 were also exhausted. He told them that if they returned through the 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 pure they caught fish. Not knowing what they saw, they marveled at the birds of all colors, some carnation, orange tawny, which was Raleigh's own color, purple, green, watch it, and of all other sorts both simple and mixed. And 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 fouling pieces. These savannas are full of birds, and the brilliant macaws which excited Raleigh's admiration made an excellent stew with the flavor, according to Sir Robert Schomburg, of hair-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 sidestream for forty miles. It was probably the Kuchuina 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 Sherbourne. They were alarmed at the crowd 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 welp. 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, saltpeter, and diverse 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 weighted them over the shoes in the morning outward we were covered to the shoulder's homeward the very same day. Sir K. Schomburg found exactly the same to be the case when he explored Guyana 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 and the summits of the mountains which divide the Orinoco from the the same evening favored by a strong northerly wind they came inside of the great Orinoco itself and anchored in it a little to the east of the present settlement of San Rafael de Barancas. 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 Guyana. A friendly chieftain carried them off to his village where to preserve the delightful spelling of the age some of our captains garoused with his wine till they were reasonably pleasant. This wine was probably the cassavi or fermented juice of the sweet potato. It redounced to Raleigh's a special credit that in an age when great license was customary in dealing with savages he strictly prohibited his men under the threat of punishment by death from insulting the Indian women. His just admiration of the fair caribs, however, was quite enthusiastic. The casacay 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 favored woman. She was a good stature with black eyes, fat of body, of an excellent countenance and taking great pride therein. I have seen the lady in England so like her as but for the difference of color 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 Kinto. It has been noticed that Raleigh passed close to the Spanish settlement of Guiana Vea which Berio 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 Moraquito where he made some stay and enjoyed the luxury of pineapples 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 all to be 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 used 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 Moraquito against the villainies of Spain and recommended England to them as a safe protector. He then perused his westerly course to an island which he calls and which is now named which was the furthest 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 favorable 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 beheld that wonderful breach of waters which ran down 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 diverse 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. This last touch spoils an exquisite picture. It is at once dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant be fooled by the madness of gold and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guyana, 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 Guyana 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 this sparse aquiferous 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 confessed 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 by the gold fever than any of them. He saw the fleets of Spain return to England 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 civil oranges and other legitimate produce that threatened shipwreck to all of us. It is his Indian goal that endangereth and disturbeth all the nations of Europe. It purchased intelligence, creepeth into councils, and seteth bound loyalty at liberty in the greatest monarchies of Europe. In Raleigh's exploration of Guyana, his steadfast hope, the hope which led him patiently through so many hardships, was that he might secure for Elizabeth a vast or a fairest 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 ewa panoma or men without heads, or of that other tribe who have eminent heads like dogs and live all the daytime in the sea and speak the carob language. Of all these he speaks from modest hearsay and less confidently than Othello did to Desdemona. It is true that he relates marvelous 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 Schomburg is that Raleigh's narrative where he does not fall into obvious and easily intelligible air is remarkably clear and simple and full of internal evidences of its genuineness. They had now been absent from their ships for nearly a month and Raleigh began to give up all hope of being able on this occasion to reach the city of Manoa. The fury of the Orinoco began to alarm them. They did not know what might happen in a country subject to such sudden and phenomenal floods. Tropical rains fell with terrific violence and the men would get wetted to the skin ten times a day. It was cold, it was windy, and to push on further seemed perfectly hopeless. Raleigh therefore determined to return and they glided down the vast river at a rapid pace without need of sail or ore. At Morroquito Raleigh sent for the old Indian chief, Topayawari, who had been so friendly to him before and had a solemn interview with him. He took him into his tent and shutting out all other persons but the interpreter he told him that Spain was the enemy of Guyana and urged him to become the ally of England. He promised to aid him against the Empurimi, a native race which had oppressed him, if Topayawari would in his turn act in Guyana for the Queen of England. To this the old man and his followers warmly assented, urging Raleigh to push on, if not for Manawa, at least for Makire Gaware, a rich city full of statues of gold that was but four days' journey farther on. This, Raleigh, in consideration of the sufferings of his followers, declined to do, but he consented to an odd exchange of hostages and promised the following year to make a better equipped expedition to Manawa. He carried off with him the son of Topayaware and he left behind at Murakito, a boy called Hugh Goodwin. To keep this boy company a young man named Francis Berry volunteered to stay also. He was a person of some education who had served with Captain Gifford. Goodwin had a fancy for learning the Indian language and when Raleigh found him at Kalyana twenty-two years later he had almost forgotten his English. He was at last devoured by Jaguar. Berry, who could describe a country with his pen, was captured by the Spaniards, taken to Spain, and after long sufferings escaped to England where he published an account of Guyana in 1602. Berry is chiefly remembered by his own account of how he purchased eight young women, the eldest but eighteen years of age, for a red-hifted knife which in England had cost him but a half penny. This was not the sort of trade which Raleigh left him behind to encourage. As they passed down the Orinoco they visited a lake where Raleigh saw that extraordinary creature, the manatee, half cow, half whale, and a little lower they saw the column of white spray rising like the tower of a church over the huge cascades of the crystal mountains at Roryama. At the village of Achifden within earshot of these thundering waters they witnessed one of the wild drinking feasts of the Indians who were all as drunk as beggars, the pots walking from one to another without rest. Next day the contingent led by Captain Chemus found them and to celebrate the meeting of friends they passed over to the island of Asepana, now called Yayo, in the middle of the Orinoco, and they enjoyed a feast of the flesh of armadillos. On the following day increased cold and violent thunderstorms reminded them that the autumn was far spent and they determined to return as quickly as possible to the sea. Their pilots told them, however, that it was out of the question to try to descend the river of the Red Cross which they had ascended, as the current would baffle them, and therefore they attempted what is now called the Makario Channel further east. Raleigh names this stream the Kapuri. They had no further adventures until they reached the sea, but as they merged into the serpent's mouth a great storm attacked them. They ran before night close under shore with their small boats and brought the galley as near as they could. The latter however very nearly sank and Raleigh was puzzled what to do. A bar of sand ran across the mouth of the river covered by only six feet of water and the galley drew five. The longer he hesitated the worse the weather grew and therefore he finally took Captain Gifford into his own barge and thrust out to sea, leaving the galley anchored by the shore. So being all very sober and melancholy, one faintly cheering another to show courage, it pleased God that the next day, about nine o'clock, we described the island of Trinidad and, steering from the nearest part of it, we kept the shore till we came to Curiapen where we found our ships at anchor, then which there was never to us a more joyful sight. In spite of the hardships of the journey, the constant weddings, the bad water and the insufficient food, the lodgings and the open air every night, he had only lost a single man, the young Negro who was snapped up by the alligator at the mouth of the Cucina. At the coast there are dangerous maismata, which often prove fatal to Europeans, but the interior of this part of South America is reported by later travelers to be no less wholesome than Raleigh found it. During Raleigh's absence his fleet had not lain idle at Trinidad. Captain Amayas, Preston, whom he had left in charge, determined to take the initiative against the Spanish forces, which Barrio had summoned to his help. With four ships, Preston began to harry the coast of Venezuela. On May 21st he appeared before the important town of Cumana, but was persuaded to spare it from SAC upon payment of a large sum by the inhabitants. Captain Preston landed part of his crew here, and they crossed the country westward to Caracas, which they then plundered and burned. The fleet proceeded to Coro, in Nucaronada, which they treated in the same way, when they returned as uncertain, but Raleigh found them at Curiepan when he came back to Trinidad, and with them he coasted once more the northern shore of South America. He burned Cumana, but was disappointed in his hopes for plunder, for he says, in the port towns of the province of Venezuela, we found not the value of one real of plate. The fact was that the repeated voyages of the English captains, and Drake was immediately to follow in Raleigh's steps, had made the inhabitants of these northern cities exceedingly wary. The precious products were either stored in the hills or shipped off to Spain without loss of time. Raleigh's return to England was performed without any publicity. He stole home so quietly that some people declared that he had been all the time snug in some Cornish haven. His biographers, including Mr. Edwards, have dated his return in August, being led away by a statement of Davis's manifestly and accurately dated, that Raleigh and Preston were sailing off the coast of Cuba in July. This is incompatible with Raleigh's fear of the rapid approach of winter while he was still in Guiana. It would also be difficult to account for the entire absence of reference to him in England before the winter. It is more likely that he found his way back to Falmouth or Dartmouth towards the end of October 1595. On November 10th he wrote to Cecil, plainly smarting under the neglect which he had received. He thought that coming from the west, with an empire in his hand as a gift for Elizabeth, the queen, would take him into favor again, but he was mistaken. He writes to Cecil nominally to offer his services against a rumored fleet of Spain but really to feel the ground about Guiana and the interest which the government might take in it. What becomes of Guiana I much desire to hear, whether it pass for a history or a fable, I hear Mr. Dudley, Sir Robert Dudley, and others are sending thither. If it be so, farewell all good from thence, for although myself, like a coxcomb, did rather prefer the future in respect of others and rather sought to win the kings to her majesty's service than to sack them, I know what others will do when those kings shall come singly into their hands. Meanwhile he had been writing an account of his travels, and on November 13th, 1595, he sent a copy of this in manuscript to Cecil, no doubt in hope that it might be shown to Elizabeth. In the interesting letter which accompanied this manuscript he enclosed a map of Guiana, long supposed to have been lost, which was found by Mr. Singin in the archives of Semancas, signed with Raleigh's name, and in perfect condition. It is evident that Raleigh could hardly endure the disappointment of her pulse. He says, I know the like fortune was never offered to any Christian prince, and losing his balance altogether in his extravagant pertinacity, he declares to Cecil that the city of Manoa contains stories of golden statues, not one of which can be worth less than one hundred thousand pounds. If the English government would not prosecute the enterprise that he had sketched out, Spain and France will shortly do so, and Raleigh, in the face of such apathy, concludes that we are cursed of God. Amid all this excitement it is pleasant to find him remembering to be humane and begging Cecil to impress the queen with the need of not soiling this enterprise with cruelty, nor permitting any to proceed to Guiana whose object shall only be the plunder of the Indians. He sends Cecil an amethyst with a strange blush of carnation and another stone, which, if it be no diamond, yet exceeds any diamond in beauty. Raleigh now determined to appeal to the public at large, and towards Christmas, 1595, he published his famous volume which bears the date of 1596, and is entitled after the leisurely fashion of the age, The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the provinces of Emeria, Eromaya, Amopea, and other countries with their rivers adjoining. Of this volume two additions appeared in 1596. It was presently translated into Latin and published in Germany, and in short gained a reputation throughout Europe. There can be no doubt that Raleigh's outspoken hatred of Spain expressed in this printed form from which there could be no escape on the ground of mere hearsay was the final word of his challenge to that power. From this time forth Raleigh was an enemy which Spain could not even pretend to ignore. The Discovery of Guiana was dedicated to the Lord Admiral Howard and to Sir Robert Cecil with a reference to the support which the author had found in their love in the darkest shadow of adversity. There was probably some courtly exaggeration, mingled with self-interest, in the gratitude expressed to Cecil. Already the relation of this cold-blooded statesman to the impulsive Raleigh becomes a crux to the biographers of the latter. Cecil's letters to his father from Devonshire on the matter of the Indian caracks in 1592 are incompatible with Raleigh's outspoken thanks to Cecil for the trial of his love when Raleigh was bereft of all but malice and revenge, unless we suppose that these letters represented what Burley would like to hear rather than what Robert Cecil actually felt. In 1596 Burley, in extreme old age, was a factor no longer to be taken into much consideration. Moreover Lady Raleigh had some hold of relationship or old friendship on Cecil the exact nature of which is not easy to understand. At all events as long as Raleigh continued to hold the favor of Cecil the ear of her majesty was not absolutely close to him. The discovery possesses a value which is neither biographical nor geographical. It holds a very prominent place in the prose literature of the age. During the five years which had elapsed since Raleigh's last publication English literature had been undergoing a marvelous development and he who read everything and sympathized with every intellectual movement could not but be influenced by what had been written. During these five years Marlowe's wonderful career had wound up like a melodrama. Shakespeare had come forward as a poet. A new epic in sound English prose had been inaugurated by Hooker's ecclesiastical polity. Bacon was circulating the earliest of his essays. What these giants of our language were doing for their own departments of prose and verse Raleigh did for the literature of travel. Among the volumes of navigations, voyages and discoveries which were poured out so freely in this part of the reign of Elizabeth most of them now only remembered because they were reprinted in the collections of High Colt and Purchase. This book of Raleigh's takes easily the foremost position. In comparison with the bluff and dull narratives of the other discoverers whose chief charm is in their naivety the discovery of Guiana has all the grace and fullness of deliberate composition, a fine literary art, and as it was the first excellent piece of sustained travellers prose so it remained long without a second in our literature. The brief examples which it has alone been possible to give in this biography may be enough to attract readers to its harmonious and glowing pages. Among the many illusions found to this book in contemporary records perhaps the most curious is an epic poem on Guiana published almost immediately by George Chapman who gave his enthusiastic approval to Raleigh's scheme. It is the misfortune of Chapman's style that in his grotesque arrogance he disdained to be lucid and this poem is full of tantalizing hints which the biographer of Raleigh longs to use but dares not from their obscurity. These stately verses are plain enough but show that Chapman was not familiar with the councils of Elizabeth. Then in Thespade's bright prophetic font me thinks I see our liege rise from her throne her ears and thoughts in steep amaze erect at the most rare endeavour of her power and now she blesses with her wanted graces the industrious night the soul of this exploit dismissing him to convoy of his stars. Chapman was quite misinformed and to what event he now proceeds to refer it would be hard to say. And now for love and honour of his wrath our twice-born nobles bring him, bridegroom-like, that is espoused for virtue to his love with feasts and music ravishing the air, to his argolian fleet where round about his baiting colours English valor swarms. In haste, as if Guyanian Oranoke with his full waters fell upon our shore. Early in 1596 Raleigh sent Captain Lawrence Keamus who had been with him the year before on a second voyage to Guiana. He did not come home rich but he did the special thing he was enjoying to do that is to say he explored the coast of South America from the mouth of the Oranoco to that of the Amazon. About the same time Raleigh drew up the very remarkable paper not printed until 1843 entitled Of the Voyage for Guiana. In this essay he first makes use of those copious quotations from Scripture which later on becomes so characteristic of his writing. His hopes of interesting the English government in Guiana were finally frustrated by the excitement of the Cadiz expedition and by the melancholy fate of Sir Francis Drake. It is said that during this winter he lived in great magnificence at Durham House but this statement seems improbable. All the letters of Raleigh's now in existence belonging to this period are dated from Sherbourne.