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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 Belphœbe 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 forty he should have rebelled at last against this 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 1592; the late Mr. J. P. 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 transcriber's. What is certain is that Raleigh contrived to conceal the state of things from the Queen, and to steal away to sea on the pretext that he was merely accompanying Sir Martin Frobisher to the mouth of the Channel. He says himself that on May 13, 1592, he was 'about forty leagues off the Cape 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 8 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 everyone about her knew already, the nature of Raleigh's relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton. On July 28 Sir Edward 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 to-morrow you may speak with them.' It was four years before Raleigh was admitted again to the presence of his enraged Belphœbe.

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 forty for a maiden of sixty, curious as a piece of carefully modulated Euphuistic 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 nigher 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 wont 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; sometime sitting in the shade like a goddess; sometime singing like an angel; sometime 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 their 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? Cannot 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 weary 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 thither 'to break his gall in sunder 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 Carew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur Gorges, 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 Gorges 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 affectation 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 Euphuistic '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 lamer 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 cough. 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 1,800l., and the citizens of London 6,000l., but Raleigh retained by far the largest share. Raleigh had been a week in the Tower, when Admiral Sir John Burrough, 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 under 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 500,000l. She was lined with glowing woven carpets, sarcenet quilts, and lengths of white silk and cyprus; 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 smelt like a garden of spices for all the benjamin and cloves, the nutmegs and the civet, the ambergris and frankincense. There was a fight before Raleigh's ship the 'Roebuck' could seize this 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 stoat 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 Burrough could arrive on board; the jewels and the lighter spices were badly tampered 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 8.

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 141,000l. 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 shopkeepers 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 and rabble at Dartmouth would render his release imperative. No one but he could cope with Devonshire in its excitement, and Lord Burghley determined on sending him to Dartmouth. Robert Cecil, writing from Exeter to his father on September 19, reported that for seven miles everybody he met on the London road smelt of amber or of musk, and that you 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 21, 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 men, and all the mariners, came 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 busied, 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 belike 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 wished 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 marvellously greedy to do anything to recover the conceit of his brutish offence.'

Raleigh broke into rage at finding so many of his treasures lost, and he gave out that if he met with any London jewellers or goldsmiths in Devonshire, were it on the wildest heath in all the county, 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 wont, 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 27, the Commissioners of Inquiry sent in to Burghley 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 confess 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 Throckmorton, and in February 1593 Sir Robert Cecil procured some sort of surly recognition of the marriage from the Queen. For this Lady Raleigh thanks him in a strange flowery letter⁶ of the 8th of that month, in which she excuses her husband for his denial of her – 'if faith were broken with me, I 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 alembicated 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 councillors 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 contented himself with a quiet and obscure life among the woods of Sherborne.

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 roan gelding 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 Stourton's house, which was a very warren of dangerous recusants. 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 knaves' and to sit on the granite judgment-seat of the Stannaries 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 Sarum, who have let his Sherborne farms over his head to one Fitzjames, and 'who could not deal with me worse withal 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 leave 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 Guiana.

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: