The Discovery of Guiana | Page 2

due. It is true that as my errors were great, so they have yielded very grievous effects; and if aught might have been deserved in former times, to have counterpoised any part of offences, the fruit thereof, as it seemeth, was long before fallen from the tree, and the dead stock only remained. I did therefore, even in the winter of my life, undertake these travails, fitter for bodies less blasted with misfortunes, for men of greater ability, and for minds of better encouragement, that thereby, if it were possible, I might recover but the moderation of excess, and the least taste of the greatest plenty formerly possessed. If I had known other way to win, if I had imagined how greater adventures might have regained, if I could conceive what farther means I might yet use but even to appease so powerful displeasure, I would not doubt but for one year more to hold fast my soul in my teeth till it were performed. Of that little remain I had, I have wasted in effect all herein. I have undergone many constructions; I have been accompanied with many sorrows, with labour, hunger, heat, sickness, and peril; it appeareth, notwithstanding, that I made no other bravado of going to the sea, than was meant, and that I was never hidden in Cornwall, or elsewhere, as was supposed. They have grossly belied me that forejudged that I would rather become a servant to the Spanish king than return; and the rest were much mistaken, who would have persuaded that I was too easeful and sensual to undertake a journey of so great travail. But if what I have done receive the gracious construction of a painful pilgrimage, and purchase the least remission, I shall think all too little, and that there were wanting to the rest many miseries. But if both the times past, the present, and what may be in the future, do all by one grain of gall continue in eternal distaste, I do not then know whether I should bewail myself, either for my too much travail and expense, or condemn myself for doing less than that which can deserve nothing. From myself I have deserved no thanks, for I am returned a beggar, and withered; but that I might have bettered my poor estate, it shall appear from the following discourse, if I had not only respected her Majesty's future honour and riches.
It became not the former fortune, in which I once lived, to go journeys of picory (marauding); it had sorted ill with the offices of honour, which by her Majesty's grace I hold this day in England, to run from cape to cape and from place to place, for the pillage of ordinary prizes. Many years since I had knowledge, by relation, of that mighty, rich, and beautiful empire of Guiana, and of that great and golden city, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the naturals Manoa, which city was conquered, re-edified, and enlarged by a younger son of Guayna-capac, Emperor of Peru, at such time as Francisco Pizarro and others conquered the said empire from his two elder brethren, Guascar and Atabalipa, both then contending for the same, the one being favoured by the orejones of Cuzco, the other by the people of Caxamalca. I sent my servant Jacob Whiddon, the year before, to get knowledge of the passages, and I had some light from Captain Parker, sometime my servant, and now attending on your Lordship, that such a place there was to the southward of the great bay of Charuas, or Guanipa: but I found that it was 600 miles farther off than they supposed, and many impediments to them unknown and unheard. After I had displanted Don Antonio de Berreo, who was upon the same enterprise, leaving my ships at Trinidad, at the port called Curiapan, I wandered 400 miles into the said country by land and river; the particulars I will leave to the following discourse.
The country hath more quantity of gold, by manifold, than the best parts of the Indies, or Peru. All the most of the kings of the borders are already become her Majesty's vassals, and seem to desire nothing more than her Majesty's protection and the return of the English nation. It hath another ground and assurance of riches and glory than the voyages of the West Indies; an easier way to invade the best parts thereof than by the common course. The king of Spain is not so impoverished by taking three or four port towns in America as we suppose; neither are the riches of Peru or Nueva Espana so left by the sea side as it can be easily washed away with a great flood, or spring tide, or left dry upon the