We find Raleigh, after fortune began to smile upon him, engaged in a second expedition, with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, for discovery and colonization in America. He furnished, from his own means, a ship called "The Raleigh," on board of which he embarked; but when a few days out, a contagious disease breaking out among the crew, he put back into port, and relinquished the expedition. Sir Humphrey, with the rest of the squadron, consisting of five vessels, reached Newfoundland without accident, took possession of the island, and left a colony there. He then set out exploring along the American coast to the south, he himself doing all the work in his little ten-ton cutter; the service being too dangerous for the larger vessels to venture on. He spent the summer in this labor till toward the end of August, when, in a violent storm, one of the larger vessels, "The Delight," was lost with all her crew. "The Golden Hind" and "Squirrel" were now left alone of the five ships. Their provisions were running short, and the season far advanced; and Sir Humphrey reluctantly concluded to lay his course for home. He still continued in the small vessel, though vehemently urged by his friends to remove to the larger one. "I will not forsake my little company, going homeward," said he, "with whom I have passed so many storms and perils." On the 9th of September, the weather was rough, and the cutter was with difficulty kept afloat, struggling with the violence of the waves. When the vessels came within hearing distance, Sir Humphrey cried out to his companions in "The Hind," "Be of good courage: we are as near to heaven by sea as by land." "That night, at about twelve o'clock," writes the historian of the voyage, who was himself one of the adventurers, "the cutter being ahead of us in 'The Golden Hind,' suddenly her lights were out, and the watch cried, 'The general is cast away!' which was too true." So perished a Christian hero. It was a fine end for a mortal man. Let us not call it sad or tragic, but heroic and sublime.
Raleigh, not discouraged by the ill success of this expedition, shortly after obtained letters-patent for another enterprise of the same kind, on the same terms as had been granted to Sir Humphrey. Two barks were sent to explore some undiscovered part of America north of Florida, and look out for a favorable situation for the proposed colony. This expedition landed on Roanoke Island, near the mouth of Albemarle Sound. Having taken formal possession of the country for the Queen of England and her servant Sir Walter Raleigh, they returned, and gave so favorable an account of the country, that her Majesty allowed it to be called Virginia, after herself, a virgin queen. The next year, Raleigh sent out a second expedition, and left a colony of a hundred men, which was the first colony planted by Englishmen on the continent of America. Soon after, Raleigh sent a third expedition with a hundred and fifty colonists; but having now expended forty thousand pounds upon these attempts, and being unable to persist further, or weary of waiting so long for profitable returns, he assigned over his patent to a company of merchants, and withdrew from further prosecution of the enterprise.
The years which followed were the busiest of Raleigh's adventurous life. He bore a distinguished part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada; and, in the triumphant procession to return thanks at St. Paul's for that great deliverance, he was conspicuous as commander of the queen's guard. He was a member of Parliament, yet engaged personally in two naval expeditions against the Spaniards, from which he reaped honor, but no profit; and was at the height of favor with the queen. But, during his absence at sea, the queen discovered that an intrigue existed between Raleigh and one of the maids of honor, which was an offence particularly displeasing to Elizabeth, who loved to fancy that all her handsome young courtiers were too much attached to herself to be capable of loving any other object. Raleigh, on his return, was committed a prisoner to the Tower, and, on being released after a short confinement, retired to his estate in Dorsetshire. It was during this retirement that he formed his scheme for the discovery and conquest of Eldorado. It had long been a subject of meditation to Raleigh, who declares in the dedication of his "History of Guiana," published after his return, that "many years since, he had knowledge, by relation, of that mighty, rich, and beautiful empire of Guiana, and of that great and golden city which the Spaniards call Eldorado, and the naturals Manoa."—"It is not possible," says one of the historians of these events, "that Raleigh could have believed the existence of such a kingdom. Credulity was not the vice of his nature; but, having formed the project of colonizing Guiana, he employed these fables as baits for vulgar cupidity." Other writers judge him more favorably. It is probably true that he believed in the existence of such a country as Eldorado; but we can hardly suppose that he put faith in all the marvellous details which accompanied the main fact in popular narration.
CHAPTER V.
RALEIGH'S FIRST EXPEDITION.
As the attempts of Pizarro and Orellana were made by the route of the river of the Amazons, and that of Ribera by the river of Paraguay, Raleigh's approach was by the Orinoco, a river second in size only to the Amazons, and which flows in a course somewhat parallel to that, and some five or ten degrees farther to the north. The region of country where this river discharges itself into the Atlantic was nominally in possession of the Spaniards, though they had but one settlement in what was called the province of Guiana,—the town of St. Joseph, then recently founded; and another on the island of Trinidad, which lies nearly opposite the mouth of the river. Raleigh, arriving at Trinidad, stopped some days to procure such intelligence as the Spaniards resident there could afford him respecting Guiana. He then proceeded to the main land, destroyed the town which the Spaniards had lately built there, and took the governor, Berrio, on board his own ship. He used his prisoner well, and "gathered from him," he says, "as much of Guiana as he knew." Berrio seems to have conversed willingly upon his own adventures in exploring the country, having no suspicion of Raleigh's views. He discouraged Raleigh's attempts to penetrate into the country, telling him that he would find the river unnavigable for his ships, and the nations hostile. These representations had little weight with Raleigh, as he attributed them to a very natural wish on Berrio's part to keep off foreigners from his province; but, on trying to find the entrance to the river, he discovered Berrio's account to be true, so far as related to the difficulties of the navigation. After a thorough search for a practicable entrance, he gave up all hopes of passing in any large vessel, and resolved to go with the boats. He took in his largest boat, with himself, sixty men, including his cousin, his nephew, and principal officers. Another boat carried twenty, and two others ten each. "We had no other means," he says in his account afterward published, "but to carry victual for a month in the same, and also to lodge therein as we could, and to boil and dress our meat."
The Orinoco, at nearly forty leagues from the sea, forms, like the Nile, a kind of fan, strewed over with a multitude of little islands, that divide it into numerous branches and channels, and force it to discharge itself through this labyrinth into the sea by an infinity of mouths, occupying an extent of more than sixty leagues. "The Indians who inhabit those islands," says Raleigh, "in the summer, have houses upon the ground, as in other places; in the winter they dwell upon the trees, where they build very artificial towns and villages: for, between May and September, the river rises to thirty feet upright, and then are those islands overflowed twenty feet high above the level of the ground; and for this cause they are enforced to live in this manner. They use the tops of palmitos for bread; and kill deer, fish, and porks for the rest of their sustenance." Raleigh's account is confirmed by later travellers. Humboldt says, "The navigator, in proceeding along the channels of the delta of the Orinoco at night, sees with surprise the summits of the palm-trees illuminated by large fires. These are the habitations of the Guaraons, which are suspended from the trees. These tribes hang up mats in the air, which they fill with earth, and kindle, on a layer of moist clay, the fire necessary for their household wants."
Passing up with the flood, and anchoring during the ebb, Raleigh and his companions went on, till on the third day their galley grounded, and stuck so fast, that they feared their discovery must end there, and they be left to inhabit, like rooks upon trees, with these nations; but on the morrow, after casting out all her ballast, with tugging and hauling to and fro, they got her afloat. After four days more, they got beyond the influence of the tide, and were forced to row against a violent current, till they began to despair; the weather being excessively hot, and the river bordered with high trees, that kept away the air. Their provisions began to fail them; but some relief they found by shooting birds of all colors,—carnation, crimson, orange, purple, and of all other sorts, both simple and mixed. An old Indian whom they had pressed into their service was a faithful guide to them, and brought them to an Indian village, where they got a supply of bread, fish, and fowl. They were thus encouraged to persevere, and next day captured two canoes laden with bread, "and divers baskets of roots, which were excellent meat." Probably these roots were no other than potatoes; for the mountains of Quito, to which Sir Walter was now approaching, were the native country of the potato, and the region from whence it was first introduced into Europe. The Spaniards and Portuguese introduced it earlier than the English; but to Raleigh belongs the credit of making it known to his countrymen. The story is, that Sir Walter, on his return home, had some of the roots planted in his garden at Youghal, in Ireland, and that his gardener was sadly disappointed in autumn on tasting the apples of the "fine American fruit," and proceeded to root up the "useless weeds," when he discovered the tubers.