colour he expressed by shewing a piece of red wood wherewith my tent was
supported, and that they were called Orejones and Epuremei; that those
had slain and rooted out so many of the ancient people as there were
leaves in the wood upon all the trees, and had now made themselves lords
of all, even to that mountain foot called Curaa, saving only of two
nations, the one called Iwarawaqueri and the other Cassipagotos; and
that in the last battle fought between the Epuremei and the Iwarawaqueri
his eldest son was chosen to carry to the aid of the Iwarawaqueri a
great troop of the Orenoqueponi, and was there slain with all his people
and friends, and that he had now remaining but one son; and farther told
me that those Epuremei had built a great town called Macureguarai at
the said mountain foot, at the beginning of the great plains of Guiana,
which have no end; and that their houses have many rooms, one over the
other, and that therein the great king of the Orejones and Epuremei kept
three thousand men to defend the borders against them, and withal daily
to invade and slay them; but that of late years, since the Christians
offered to invade his territories and those frontiers, they were all
at peace, and traded one with another, saving only the Iwarawaqueri
and those other nations upon the head of the river of Caroli called
Cassipagotos, which we afterwards discovered, each one holding the
Spaniard for a common enemy.

After he had answered thus far, he desired leave to depart, saying that
he had far to go, that he was old and weak, and was every day called for
by death, which was also his own phrase. I desired him to rest with
us that night, but I could not entreat him; but he told me that at my
return from the country above he would again come to us, and in the
meantime provide for us the best he could, of all that his country
yielded. The same night he returned to Orocotona, his own town; so as
he went that day eight-and-twenty miles, the weather being very hot, the
country being situate between four and five degrees of the equinoctial.
This Topiawari is held for the proudest and wisest of all the
Orenoqueponi, and so he behaved himself towards me in all his answers,
at my return, as I marvelled to find a man of that gravity and judgment
and of so good discourse, that had no help of learning nor breed. The
next morning we also left the port, and sailed westward up to the
river, to view the famous river called Caroli, as w