. This narrative was very shortly afterwards exposed as
'an invention of the fat friars of Puerto Rico,' but Raleigh believed
it, and it greatly encouraged him. When Berreo realised that he
certainly meant to attempt the expedition, his tone altered, and he 'was
stricken into a great melancholy and sadness, using all the arguments he
could to dissuade me, and also assuring the gentlemen of my company that
it would be labour lost,' but all in vain.

The first thing to be done was to cross the Serpent's Mouth, and to
ascend one of the streams of the great delta. Raleigh sent Captain
Whiddon to explore the southern coast, and determined from his report to
take the Capuri, or, as it is now called, the Macareo branch, which lies
directly under the western extremity of Trinidad. After an unsuccessful
effort here, he started farther west, on the Cano Manamo, which he calls
the River of the Red Cross. He found it exceedingly difficult to enter,
owing to the sudden rise and fall of the flood in the river, and the
violence of the current. At last they started, passing up the river on
the tide, and anchoring in the ebb, and in this way went slowly onward.
The vessels which carried them were little fitted for such a task.
Raleigh had had an old galley furnished with benches to row upon, and so
far cut down that she drew but five feet of water; he had also a barge,
two wherries, and a ship's boat, and in this miserable fleet, leaving
his large vessels behind him in the Gulf of Paria, he accomplished his
perilous and painful voyage to the Orinoco and back, with one hundred
persons and their provisions. Of the misery of these four hundred miles
he gives a graphic account:

We were all driven to lie in the rain and weather, in the open
air, in the burning sun, and upon the hard boards, and to dress
our meat, and to carry all manner of furniture, wherewith [the
boats] were so pestered and unsavoury, that what with victuals
being most fish, with the wet clothes of so many men thrust
together, and the heat of the sun, I will undertake there was
never any prison in England that could be found more unsavoury
and loathsome, especially to myself, who had for many years
before been dieted and cared for in a sort far different.

On the third day, as they were ascending the river, the galley stuck so
fast that they thought their expedition would have ended there; but
after casting out all her ballast, and af