the purpose of the English, talked freely about his
former expedition and gave his captor a good deal of very useful
information. One thing Raleigh learned was that his ships could not be
taken up the Orinoco, on account of the sand-banks at its mouth and its
dangerous channels. He therefore felt it necessary to leave the ships at
Trinidad and cross to the mainland in the boats he had brought with him.

One hundred men were chosen for the journey, the others being left to
guard the fleet. An old galley, a barge, a ship's-boat, and two wherries
carried them, and a young Indian pilot, who claimed to be familiar with
the coast, was taken along. Trinidad lies at no great distance from the
mainland, but stormy weather assailed the voyagers, and they were glad
enough to enter one of the mouths of the river and escape the ocean
billows. But here new troubles surrounded them, the nature of which
Raleigh described later, in his account of the expedition. He wrote:

"If God had not sent us help, we might have wandered a whole year in that
labyrinth of rivers, ere we had found any way. I know all the earth does
not yield the like confluence of streams and branches, the one crossing
the other so many times, and all so fair and large, and so like one
another as no man can tell which to take. And if we went by the sun or
compass, hoping thereby to go directly one way or the other, yet that way
also we were carried in a circle among multitudes of islands. Every island
was so bordered with big trees as no man could see any farther than the
breadth of the river or length of the branch."

The Indian pilot proved to be useless in this medley of water-ways, and
only chance extricated the voyagers from the labyrinth in which they were
involved. This chance was the meeting and capturing a canoe with three
natives, who became friendly when they found they had nothing to fear from
the strange white men. One of them was an old man who knew the river
thoroughly, and whom presents and kind words induced to guide them past
their difficulties.

Resting that night on a little knoll on the wooded banks of the stream,
they were off again early the next morning. The river was still swift and
violent, broken here and there with rapids, where they had to land and
pull the boats. There were shoals also, which they had much trouble in
getting over. And the banks were so crowded with trees and high reeds that
they could not land, and were almost stifled f