ness, and
of a great heart. He had his defects. He tortured natives, and was so
ignorant as not to know east from west. These blemishes of feeling and
education did not prevent Ralegh from behaving as a polished English
gentleman to a polished Spanish hidalgo. They lived together in great
amity, and conversed much. Berreo was so far from showing rancour that
he told all he knew of previous attempts upon Guiana. He did not
under-rate the difficulties, partly because he had reason to believe in
them, partly from a wish to put his captor off a project he hoped
hereafter to accomplish himself. Among other impediments to an entrance
he mentioned that the main land was 600 miles farther from the sea than
Whiddon had understood it to be. Ralegh concealed the disquieting fact
from his men.

[Sidenote: _A Maze of Waters._]

He assembled a conclave of island chiefs. His Sovereign, a virgin Queen,
he informed them, had commissioned him to free them from the Castilian
yoke. Then he set forth from Curiapan in an old gallego boat cut down
to draw but five feet of water. It was fitted with banks of oars. Sixty
officers and gentlemen volunteers embarked with him. A boat, two
wherries, and a barge carried forty more. They were victualled for a
month. The ships anchored near los Gallos in the Gulf of Paria. Twenty
miles of sea were crossed 'in a great billow' to Guanipa Bay, where
dwelt savages who shot poisoned arrows. Then the expedition was
entangled in a labyrinth of rivers. These were the eight branches of the
Orinoko. 'All the earth,' wrote Ralegh, 'doth not yield the like
confluence of streams.' That is hardly an exaggerated statement about
the Orinoko, which is fed by more than 436 rivers, and a couple of
thousand rivulets. A young Indian pilot, whom Ralegh had brought, named
Ferdinando, became bewildered. The boats might have wandered a whole
year had not, partly by force, and partly by good treatment, the
services of an old native been secured. Though often sorely perplexed,
he piloted them along a succession of narrow reaches of the Cano Manamo.
By Ralegh's orders he and the other Indian promised an outlet by every
next day, to cheer the crews. All were, however, on the verge of utter
despair, when suddenly the tangled thickets on the banks opened up into
a lovely champaign country. It was a paradise of birds and beasts. The
turf was diversified by groves of trees, disposed in order as if by all
the art and labour in the wor