discoverer of this unknown country. At all events, the notoriety it would procure him might be turned to some useful purpose.

Whatever his own persuasion or intention may have been, Sir Robert Cecil and the Lord High Admiral were favourably inclined to the scheme; the latter contributing one of his own ships, named the Lion's Whelp. The expedition consisted of five vessels, with tenders, barges, and wherries, for inland navigation. In addition to the crews of the ships, the officers, gentlemen adventurers, and soldiers amounted to one hundred. Nothing material occurred on the passage to Trinidad. Here Raleigh prepared for a voyage up the Orinoco, of the shores of which he has given a detailed account, much better and more correctly described since his time. He ascended 400 miles in one of the smaller vessels, a large barge, two wherries, and a boat of the Lion's Whelp, carrying a hundred persons, with a supply of victuals for a month. He gives a deplorable account of the misery of "being driven during the rain to be in the open air, under a burning sun, and sleeping on hard boards; to dress our meat, and to carry all manner of furniture in them; wherewith they were so pestered and unsavoury that, what with victuals, 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 loath

some, especially to myself, who had for many years before been dieted and cared for in a sort far differing."

Raleigh, however, in the midst of all this distress, gives a most flourishing description of the country, its fruits, flowers, and stately trees, birds of all colours-carnation, crimson, tawny, and purple -singing towards the evening on every tree with a thousand different tunes; then the plains and the hills, and the banks of the numerous streams flowing into the Orinoco, abound with pheasants, partridges, quails, herons, and many others of the fowl tribe; besides lions, tigers, leopards, and divers other sorts of game. In short, his description of Guiana and of its inhabitants abounds with every kind of extravagance; but nothing is said of those copious sources of wealth the discovery of which was the object of his voyage. As to mines of gold or silver he tells of none; indeed, he says graves have not been opened for gold; the mines not broken with sledges:" yet it was the discovery of those very unbroken mines, or the search for them, that brought him to the scaffold.

"the

He published on his return a narrative of his voyage; but, instead of it being welcomed as the production of a discoverer, his descriptions were received with coldness and suspicion. "On his return," says Hume, "he published an account of the * Tytler, from Discovery of Guiana.

country, full of the grossest and most palpable lies that were ever attempted to be imposed on the credulity of mankind." But, worse than all the rest, was the coldness of the Queen, who remained inexorable. Unable to make his way at the court, he dedicates his work to the Lord High Admiral and Sir Robert Cecil, in a very melancholy and complaining strain; that of his little remaining fortune the expedition had wasted all; that it was accompanied with many sorrows, with labour, hunger, heat, sickness and peril; and "I am returned á beggar and withered."

Sir Walter, however, was not a man to be discouraged by one failure. To give a bold front to his discovery, he forthwith sent off Captain Keymis a second time, with a ship and a small pinnace, to the mouth of the Orinoco to search for the gold mines, or get information concerning grains of gold to be found at the bottom of the rivers, and of the mountains of white stone, which Sir Walter said he had found to be rich in gold. Keymis' discoveries amounted to nothing; he returned safe with his ship, but was obliged to set fire to his pinnace at the mouth of the river. Nothing daunted, however, and as it were to inspire confidence by perseverance, he dispatched a single ship the same year, which made a short voyage, and added little or nothing on her return to former information.

While in a state of suspense, during these useless

and expensive voyages, good fortune threw a more suitable employment in his way. The failure and the death of the two eminent officers, Drake and Hawkins, on the West India voyage, and the short suspension of any hostile attacks on the part of England against the Indian possessions of Spain, had raised the pride and exultation of that power to such a height, that vast preparations were set on foot, more particularly in Cadiz, for a simultaneous attack on the several ports of England and Ireland, with the view of destroying the naval resources of both kingdoms. To frustrate these designs, by retaliating the same measures upon themselves, Elizabeth signified her pleasure to the council, that a powerful fleet should be fitted out, with all possible expedition, which it was decided should consist of seventeen of her Majesty's ships, three of the Lord Admiral's, twenty-four of the Dutch, and about a hundred merchant ships, victuallers, &c., making in all one hundred and fifty sail.*

In this fleet the Lord High Admiral, with the consent of Lord Essex, gave to Sir Walter Raleigh the command of the Warspite. The Lords of the Council, in their instructions, ordained that two councillors should be appointed for the sea, and two for the land service; that Lord Thomas Howard and Sir Walter Raleigh should be for the first, and Sir Francis Vere and Sir Conier Clifford for the

* Speed. Camden.

second; to whom were added Sir George Carew, of the Ordnance, to make up five, by whom, or a majority of whom, all matters of dispute should be settled.

We have elsewhere entered upon a brief detail of the operations successfully carried on by this powerful armament, to the utter destruction of every kind of naval preparation in the harbour and arsenal of Cadiz, the occupation of the city, and the ransom for its restoration to Spain. By the arrangements made under the direction of the two Lords General, no confusion took place, very few lives were lost, and every protection was afforded to the inhabitants, and in particular to the females and children, as was strongly enjoined by the Queen in her Instructions. There does not appear to have been the slightest grounds for reports that got abroad, of any coolness, or jealousy, or counteraction between Essex and Raleigh. A slight difference of opinion arose, after the complete destruction of Cadiz, as to that part of the Queen's Instructions which leaves it to the consideration of the two Generals to send a part of the fleet to look after the returning richlyladen carracks from the Indies. The Earl of Essex was for the Azores and the carracks, in which he was supported by Lord Thomas Howard and the Dutch Admiral: but all the rest opposed it. Sir Walter Raleigh, when asked to go, alleged the scarcity of victuals, and the infection of his men;