and they were
already some four hundred miles from their ships in little open boats
and in the heart of a strange country.

Suddenly, too, the river began to rise, to "rage and overflow very
fearfully," rain came down in torrents accompanied by great gusts of
wind, and the crews with no change of clothes got wet through, sometimes
ten times a day. "Whosoever had seen the fury of that river after it
began to rise would perchance have turned his back somewhat sooner
than we did if all the mountains had been gold or precious stones,"
remarked Raleigh, who indeed was no coward. So they turned the boats
for home, and at a tremendous rate they spun down the stream, sometimes
doing as much as one hundred miles a day, till after sundry adventures
they safely reached their ships at anchor off Trinidad. Raleigh had
not reached the golden city of Manoa, but he gave a very glowing account
of this country to his Queen.

"Guiana," he tells her, "is a country that hath yet her maidenhood.
The face of the earth hath not been torn, the graves have not been
opened for gold. It hath never been entered by any army of strength,
and never conquered by any Christian prince. Men shall find here more
rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with gold, than either
Cortes found in Mexico or Pizarro in Peru, and the shining glory of
this conquest will eclipse all those of the Spanish nation."

But Raleigh had brought back no gold, and his schemes for a conquest
of Guiana were received coldly by the Queen. She could not share his
enthusiasm for the land--

"Where Orinoco, in his pride,
Rolls to the main no tribute tide,
But 'gainst broad Ocean wages far
A rival sea of roaring war;
While in ten thousand eddies driven
The billows fling their foam to heaven;
And the pale pilot seeks in vain
Where rolls the river, where the main."

But, besides the Orinoco in South America, there was the St. Lawrence
in North America, still very imperfectly known. Since Jacques Cartier
had penetrated the hitherto undisturbed regions lying about the "river
of Canada," little had been explored farther west, till Samuel
Champlain, one of the most remarkable men of his day, comes upon the
scene, and was still discovering land to the west when Raleigh was
making his second expedition to Guiana in the year 1617.

[Illustration: RALEIGH'S MAP OF GUINEA, EL DORADO, AND THE ORINOCO
COAST. From the original map, drawn by Raleigh, i