"And so in canoes he fell down from the river of Orinoco to Trinidad and from thence to Margarita, and also to Saint Juan de Puerto Eico, where remaining a long time for passage into Spain, he died. In the time of his extreme sickness, and when he was without hope of life, receiving the Sacrament at the hands of his confessor, he delivered these things, with the relation of his travels, and also called for his calabazas or gourds of the gold beads which he gave to the church and friars to be prayed for.
"This Martinez was he that christened the city of Manoa by the name of El Dorado, and as Berreo informed me, upon this occasion; Those Guianians, and also the borderers, and all others in that tract which I have seen, are marvelous great drunkards; in which vice, I think no nation can compare with them; and at the times of their solemn feasts when the emperor carouseth with his captains, tributaries, and governors the manner is thus:
"All those that pledge him are first stripped naked, and their bodies anointed all over with a kind of white balsam (by them called curca) of which there is great plenty, and yet very dear amongst them, and it is of all other the most precious, whereof we have had good experience. When they are anointed all over, certain servants of the emperor, having prepared gold made into fine powder, blow it through hollow canes upon their naked bodies, until they be all shining from the foot to the head: and in this sort they sit drinking by twenties, and hundreds, and continue in drunkenness sometimes six or seven days together.
"The same is also confirmed by a letter written into Spain, which was intercepted, which Mr. Robert Dudley told me he had seen. Upon this sight, and for the abundance of gold which he saw in the city, the images of gold in their temples, the plates, armors, and shields of gold which they used in the wars, he called it El Dorado."
After mentioning in detail the several ill-fated expeditions of the Spanish to find the El Dorado, Raleigh reviews the mass of evidence in favor of the existence of the hidden and magnificent city, and as gravely relates the current reports of other wonders as prodigious as this. He it was who carried back to Europe the story of the Amazons, "being very desirous to understand the truth of those warlike women, because of some it is believed, of others not. And although I digress from my purpose, yet I will set down that which hath been delivered me for truth of those women, and I spake with a caique or lord of the people, that told me he had been in the river and beyond it.... They are said to be very cruel and bloodthirsty, especially to such as offer to invade their territories. These Amazons have likewise great stores of these plates of gold which they recover chiefly by exchange for a kind of green stones." That the natures of these stern ladies had a softer side is prettily indicated by Raleigh in the statement that in the month of April "all kings of the border assemble, and queens of the Amazons; and after the queens have chosen, the rest cast lots for their Valentines. This one month they feast, dance, and drink of their wines in abundance; and the moon being done, they all depart to their own provinces."
Among the perils that beset the road to El Dorado was a terrible nation of men with no heads upon their shoulders. Raleigh did not happen to encounter them during his voyage up the Orinoco, but nevertheless he took pains to set down in his narrative, "which though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine part I am resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirm the same. They are called Ewaipanoma; they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts and that a long train of hair groweth backward between their shoulders.[[7]] The son of Topiawari, which I brought with me into England told me that they are the most mighty men of all the land, and use bows, arrows, and clubs thrice as big as any of Guiana, or of the Orinoco, and that one of the Iwarawakeri took a prisoner of them the year before our arrival there, and brought him into the borders of Aromaia, his father's country. And farther when I seemed to doubt of it, he told me that it was no wonder among them, but that they were as great a nation, and as common as any other in all the provinces, and had of late years slain many hundreds of his father's people: but it was not my chance to hear of them until I was come away, and if I had but spoken but one word of it while I was there, I might have brought one of them with me to put the matter out of doubt. Such a nation was written of by Mandeville[[8]] whose reports were holden for fables many years, and yet since the East Indies were discovered, we find his relations true of all things as heretofore were held incredible. Whether it be true or no, the matter is not great, neither can there be any profit in the imagination. For my own part, I saw them not, but I am resolved that so many people did not all combine or forethink to make the report.
"When I came to Cumana in the West Indies, afterwards by chance I spake with a Spaniard dwelling not far from thence, a man of great travel, and after he knew that I had been in Guiana, and so far directly west as Caroli, the first question he asked me was, whether I had seen any of the Ewaipanoma, which are those without heads: who being esteemed a most honest man of his word, and in all things else, told me he had seen many of them."
That Sir Walter Raleigh, the finest flower of manhood that blossomed in his age, should have believed these and other wonders does not belittle his fame. He lived and fought and sailed in a world that had not been explored and mapped and charted and photographed and written about until all the romance and mystery were driven out of it. The globe had not shrunk to a globule around which excursionists whiz in forty days on a coupon ticket. Men truly great, endowed with the courage and resourcefulness of epic heroes, and the simple faith of little children, were voyaging into unknown seas to find strange lands, ready to die, and right cheerfully, for God and their King. Sir Walter Raleigh was bound up, heart and soul, in winning Guiana as a great empire for England, and when his enemies at home scouted his reports and accused him of trying to deceive the nation with his tales of El Dorado, he replied with convincing sincerity and pathos:
"A strange fancy it had been in me, to have persuaded my own son whom I have lost, and to have persuaded my wife to have adventured the eight thousand pounds which his Majesty gave them for Shelborne, and when that was spent, to persuade my wife to sell her house at Mitcham in hope of enriching them by the mines of Guiana, if I myself had not seen them with my own eyes! For being old and weakly, thirteen years in prison, and not used to the air, to travel and to watching, it being ten to one that I should ever have returned,—and of which, by reason of my violent sickness, and the long continuance thereof, no man had any hope, what madness would have made me undertake the journey, but the assurance of this mine."[[9]]
He was referring here to his fourth and last voyage in quest of El Dorado. Elizabeth was dead, and James I bore Raleigh no good will. After the long imprisonment, for thirteen years under suspended sentence of death, he was permitted to leave the Tower and embark with a fleet of thirteen ships in 1617, it being particularly enjoined that he should engage in no hostilities with his dearest enemy, Spain. It is generally believed that King James hoped and expected that such a clash of interests as was almost inevitable in the attempt to plant the English flag in Guiana would give him a pretext to send Raleigh to the headman's block. It was on this voyage that Raleigh lost his eldest son, besides several of his ships, and utterly failed in the high-hearted purpose of setting up a kingdom whose capital city should be that splendid lost city of Manoa. He was unable to avoid battles with the insolent Spanish, it was in one of these that his son was killed, and when he returned to England, the price was exacted and paid. Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in the palace yard, Westminster, and thus perished one who brought great glory to England by land and sea.