A brief Discourse of divers Voyages made unto the goodly Country of Guinea and the great River of the Amazons; relating also the present Plantation there.
It is not unknown how that most Industrious and honourable Knight, Sir Walter Rawleigh, in the Year of Our Lord 1595, taking the Isle of Trinidado, fell with the Coast of Guiana, Northward of the Line 10 degrees, and coasted the Coast, and searched up the River Oranoco; where understanding that twenty several Voyages had been made by the Spaniards; in discovering this Coast and River, to find a passage to the great City of Mano, called by them the Eldorado, or the Golden City: he did his utmost to have found some better Satisfaction than Relations: {MN-1} But means failing him, he left his trusty Servant Francis Sparrow to seek it, who wandring up and down those Countries, some fourteen or fifteen years, unexpectedly returned; I have heard him say, he was led blinded into this City by Indians; but little Discourse of any purpose, touching the largeness of the report of it; his body seeming as a Man of an uncurable Consumption, shortly died here after in England. There are above thirty fair Rivers that fall into the Sea, between the River of Amazons and Oranoco, which are some nine degrees asunder. {MN-2} In the year 1605, Captain Ley, Brother to that noble Knight, Sir Oliver Ley, with divers others, planted himself in the River Weapoco, wherein I should have been a Party; but he died, and there lies buried, and the supply miscarrying, the rest escaped as they could.
{MN-1} Sparrow left to seek the great city of Mano.
{MN-2} Captain Charles Ley.
{MN} Sir Thomas Roe, known to be a most Noble Gentleman, before he went Lord Ambassadour to the Great Mogul, or the Great Turk, spent a year or two upon this Coast, and about the River of the Amazons, {MN-2} wherein he most imployed Captain Matthew Morton, an expert Sea-man in the discovery of this famous River, a Gentleman that was the first shot, and mortally supposed wounded to Death, with me in Virginia, yet since hath been twice with command in East-Indies; {MN-3} Also Captain William White, and divers others worthy and industrious Gentlemen, both before and since, hath spent much time and charge to discover it more perfectly, but nothing more effected for a Plantation, till it was undertaken by Captain Robert Harcote 1609.
{MN-1} Sir Thomas Roe.
{MN-2} Captain Morton.
{MN-3} Captain White.