d
encounter, how the country lieth and is bordered, the passage of Ximenes
and Berreo, mine own discovery, and the way that I entered, with all the
rest of the nations and rivers, your lordship shall receive in a large
chart or map, which I have not yet finished, and which I shall most
humbly pray your lordship to secrete, and not to suffer it to pass
your own hands; for by a draught thereof all may be prevented by other
nations; for I know it is this very year sought by the French, although
by the way that they now take, I fear it not much. It was also told me
ere I departed England, that Villiers, the Admiral, was in preparation
for the planting of Amazons, to which river the French have made divers
voyages, and returned much gold and other rarities. I spake with a
captain of a French ship that came from thence, his ship riding in
Falmouth the same year that my ships came first from Virginia; there was
another this year in Helford, that also came from thence, and had been
fourteen months at an anchor in Amazons; which were both very rich.

Although, as I am persuaded, Guiana cannot be entered that way, yet no
doubt the trade of gold from thence passeth by branches of rivers into
the river of Amazons, and so it doth on every hand far from the country
itself; for those Indians of Trinidad have plates of gold from Guiana,
and those cannibals of Dominica which dwell in the islands by which our
ships pass yearly to the West Indies, also the Indians of Paria, those
Indians called Tucaris, Chochi, Apotomios, Cumanagotos, and all those
other nations inhabiting near about the mountains that run from Paria
through the province of Venezuela, and in Maracapana, and the cannibals
of Guanipa, the Indians called Assawai, Coaca, Ajai, and the rest (all
which shall be described in my description as they are situate) have
plates of gold of Guiana. And upon the river of Amazons, Thevet writeth
that the people wear croissants of gold, for of that form the Guianians
most commonly make them; so as from Dominica to Amazons, which is above
250 leagues, all the chief Indians in all parts wear of those plates of
Guiana. Undoubtedly those that trade Amazons return much gold, which
(as is aforesaid) cometh by trade from Guiana, by some branch of a river
that falleth from the country into Amazons, and either it is by the
river which passeth by the nations called Tisnados, or by Caripuna.

I made enquiry amongst the most ancient and best travelled