CHAPTER VI.
RALEIGH'S ADVENTURES CONTINUED.
When Raleigh, on his first arrival, broke up the Spanish settlement in Trinidad, he took Berrio, the governor, prisoner, and carried him with him in his voyage up the river. Berrio seems to have borne his fate with good temper, and conciliated the good will of Raleigh; so that, when the expedition returned to the mouth of the river, he was set at liberty, and collected his little colony again. Berrio probably shared the same belief as Raleigh in the existence of the kingdom of Eldorado within the limits of his province, and was naturally desirous to avail himself of the respite which he gained by the termination of Raleigh's expedition, until it should return in greater force to penetrate to Eldorado, and take possession for himself and his countrymen. With these views, he sent an officer of his, Domingo de Vera, to Spain, to levy men; sending, according to Raleigh's account, "divers images, as well of men as of beasts, birds, and fishes, cunningly wrought in gold," in hopes to persuade the king to yield him some further help. This agent was more successful than Raleigh in obtaining belief. He is described as a man of great ability, and little scrupulous as to truth. Having been favorably received by the government, he attracted notice by appearing in a singular dress, which, as he was of great stature, and rode always a great horse, drew all eyes, and made him generally known as the Indian chief of Eldorado and the rich lands. Some trinkets in gold he displayed, of Indian workmanship, and some emeralds, which he had brought from America, and promised stores of both; and, by the aid of influential persons, he obtained seventy thousand dollars at Madrid, and five thousand afterwards at Seville, authority to raise any number of adventurers (though Berrio had asked only for three hundred men), and five good ships to carry them out. Adventurers flocked to him in Toledo, La Mancha, and Estremadura. The expedition was beyond example popular. Twenty captains of infantry, who had served in Italy and Flanders, joined it. Not only those who had their fortunes to seek were deluded: men of good birth and expectations left all to engage in the conquest of Eldorado; and fathers of families gave up their employments, and sold their goods, and embarked with their wives and children. Solicitations and bribes were made use of by eager volunteers. The whole expedition consisted of more than two thousand persons.
They reached Trinidad after a prosperous voyage, and took possession of the town. The little mischief which Raleigh had done had been easily repaired; for indeed there was little that he could do. The place did not contain thirty families, and the strangers were to find shelter as they could. Rations of biscuit and salt meat, pulse, or rice, were served out to them; but, to diminish the consumption as much as possible, detachments were sent off in canoes to the main land, where Berrio had founded the town of St. Thomas. Some flotillas effected their progress safely; but one, which consisted of six canoes, met with bad weather, and only three succeeded in entering the river, after throwing their cargoes overboard. The others made the nearest shore, where they were descried by the Caribs, a fierce tribe of natives, who slew them all, except a few women whom they carried away, and one soldier, who escaped to relate the fate of his companions.
The city of St. Thomas contained at that time four hundred men, besides women and children. Berrio, to prepare the way for the discovery and conquest of Eldorado, sent out small parties of the new-comers under experienced persons, that they might be seasoned to the difficulties which they would have to undergo, and learn how to conduct themselves in their intercourse with the Indians. They were to spread the news that the king had sent out many Spaniards, and a large supply of axes, caps, hawk-bells, looking-glasses, combs, and such other articles of traffic as were in most request. They saw no appearance of those riches which Raleigh had heard of, nor of that plenty which he had found. The people with whom they met had but a scanty subsistence for themselves, and so little of gold or silver or any thing else to barter for the hatchets and trinkets of the Spaniards, that they were glad of the chance to labor as boatmen, or give their children, in exchange for them.
Berrio was not discouraged by the result of these journeys. Like Raleigh, he was persuaded that the great and golden city stood on the banks of a great lake, from which the River Caroli issued, about twelve leagues east of the mouth whereof his town was placed. A force of eight hundred men was now ordered on the discovery. The command was given to Correa, an officer accustomed to Indian warfare. Three Franciscan monks, and a lay brother of the same order, accompanied the expedition. Having reached a spot where the country was somewhat elevated, and the temperature cooler than in the region they had passed, they hutted themselves on a sort of prairie, and halted there in the hope that rest might restore those who began to feel the effect of an unwholesome climate. The natives not only abstained from any acts of hostility, but supplied them with fruits, and a sort of cassava (tapioca). This they did in sure knowledge that disease would soon subdue these new-come Spaniards to their hands. It was not long before a malignant fever broke out among the adventurers, which carried off a third part of their number. One comfort only was left them: the friars continued every day to perform mass in a place where all the sufferers could hear it; and no person died without performing and receiving all the offices which the Romish Church has enjoined. Correa himself sank under the disease. He might possibly have escaped it, acclimated as he was, if he had not overtasked himself when food was to be sought from a distance, and carried heavy loads to spare those who were less equal to the labor: for now the crafty Indians no longer brought supplies, but left the weakened Spaniards to provide for themselves as they could; and when Correa was dead, of whom, as a man accustomed to Indian war, they stood in fear, they collected their forces, and fell upon the Spaniards, who apprehended no danger, and were most of them incapable of making any defence. The plan appears to have been concerted with a young Indian chief who accompanied the Spaniards under pretence of friendship; and the women whom the Indians brought with them to carry home the spoils of their enemies bore their part with stones and stakes in the easy slaughter. The Spaniards who escaped the first attack fled with all speed, some without weapons, and some without strength to use them. The friars were the last to fly. With the soldiers to protect them, they brought off their portable altar, two crosses, and a crucifix. No attempt at resistance was made, except when a fugitive fell by the way. The word then passed for one of the fathers: some soldiers stood with their muskets to protect him while he hastily confessed and absolved the poor wretch, whom his countrymen then commended to God, and left to the mercy of the Indians.
In some places, the enemy set fire to the grass and shrubbery, which in that climate grow with extreme luxuriance; by which means many of this miserable expedition perished. Not quite thirty out of the whole number got safe back to the town of St. Thomas. That place was in a deplorable state, suffering at once from a contagious disease and from a scarcity of provisions. To add to the distress, about a hundred persons more had just arrived from Trinidad. They came of necessity; for there were no longer supplies of food at Trinidad to sustain them. But they came with high-raised hopes, only repining at their ill luck in not having been in the first expedition, by which they supposed the first spoils of Eldorado had already been shared. They arrived like skeletons at a city of death. Not only were provisions scarce, but the supply of salt had altogether failed; and, without it, health in that climate cannot be preserved. To add to their misery, the shoes had all been consumed, and the country was infested by that insect (the chigua) which burrows in the feet, and attacks the flesh wherever the slightest wound gives it access. The torment occasioned by these insects was such, that the men willingly submitted to the only remedy they knew of, and had the sores cauterized with hot iron.
Among those who had come from Spain to enter upon this land of promise, there was a "beata," or pious woman, who had been attached to a convent in Madrid, and accompanied a married daughter and her husband on this unhappy adventure, and devoted herself to the service of the sick. Some of the women, and she among them, looking upon the governor, Berrio, as the cause of their miseries, and thinking, that, as long as he lived, there was no hope of their escaping from this fatal place, resolved to murder him, and provided themselves with knives for the purpose. The indignation against him was so general, that they hesitated not to impart their design to one of the friars; and, luckily for Berrio, he interposed his influence to prevent it. One of the women who had sold her possessions in Spain to join the expedition made her way to the governor when the officers and friars were with him, and, emptying upon the ground before him a bag which contained one hundred and fifty doubloons, said, "Tyrant, take what is left, since you have brought us here to die." Berrio replied, with less of anger than of distress in his countenance, "I gave no orders to Domingo de Vera that he should bring more than three hundred men." He offered no opposition to the departure of such as would. Many who had strength or resolution enough trusted themselves to the river in such canoes as they could find, without boatmen or pilot, and endeavored to make their way back to Trinidad; some perishing by the hands of the natives, others by drowning, others by hunger, on the marshy shores which they reached. Vera soon died of a painful disease in Trinidad; and Berrio did not long survive him. Such was the issue of this great attempt for the conquest of the golden empire; "of which," says an old Spanish historian, "it may be said, that it was like Nebuchadnezzar's image, beginning in gold, but continuing through baser metal, till it ended in rude iron and base clay."