considering also that as Berreo
himself, like Raleigh, was just about to cross the gulf to Guiana in
search of El Dorado, and expected supplies from Spain; 'to leave a
garrison in my back, interested in the same enterprise, I should
have savoured very much of the asse.' So Raleigh fell upon the
'Corps du Guard' in the evening, put them to the sword, sent Captain
Caulfield with sixty soldiers onward, following himself with forty
more, up the Caroni river, which was then navigable by boats; and
took the little town of San Josef.

It is not clear whether the Corps du Guard which he attacked was at
Port of Spain itself, or at the little mud fort at the confluence of
the Caroni and San Josef rivers, which was to be seen, with some old
pieces of artillery in it, in the memory of old men now living. But
that he came up past that fort, through the then primeval forest,
tradition reports; and tells, too, how the prickly climbing palm,
{58} the Croc-chien, or Hook-dog, pest of the forests, got its
present name upon that memorable day. For, as the Spanish soldiers
ran from the English, one of them was caught in the innumerable
hooks of the Croc-chien, and never looking behind him in his terror,
began shouting, 'Suelta mi, Ingles!' (Let me go, Englishman!)--or,
as others have it, 'Valga mi, Ingles!' (Take ransom for me,
Englishman!)--which name the palm bears unto this day.

So Raleigh, having, as one historian of Trinidad says, 'acted like a
tiger, lest he should savour of the ass,' went his way to find El
Dorado, and be filled with the fruit of his own devices: and may
God have mercy on him; and on all who, like him, spoil the noblest
instincts, and the noblest plans, for want of the 'single eye.'

But before he went, he 'called all the Caciques who were enemies to
the Spaniard, for there were some that Berreo had brought out of
other countreys and planted there, to eat out and waste those that
were natural of the place; and, by his Indian interpreter that he
had brought out of England, made them understand that he was the
servant of a Queene, who was the great Cacique of the North, and a
virgin, and had more Caciques under her than there were trees in
that island; and that she was an enemy to the Castellani in respect
of their tyranny and oppression, and that she delivered all such
nations about her as were by them oppressed, and, having freed all
the northern world from their servitude