Being too feeble from sickness to go himself, he sent forward an expedition, under Capt. Keymis, to enter the Orinoco, and take possession of the mines. Five companies of fifty men each, in five shallops, composed the expedition; Raleigh, with the remainder of his vessels, repairing to Trinidad to await the result.
Since Raleigh's former expedition, the Spaniards had made a settlement upon the main land, and founded a town to which they gave the name of St. Thomas. The governor resided there, and there were in all about five hundred inhabitants. On the 12th of January, the English flotilla reached a part of the river twelve leagues from St. Thomas; and an Indian fisherman carried the alarm to that place. The governor, Palameque, mustered immediately the little force which he had at hand. This consisted of fifty-seven men only. Messengers were sent to summon those men who were at their farms, and two horsemen were sent out to watch the invaders' movements.
At eleven in the forenoon, the vessels anchored about a league from the town. The men landed, and the scouts hastened back with the intelligence. A Spanish officer, with ten men, was placed in ambush near the city. As soon as he was informed of the direction which the English were taking, he cut a match-cord in pieces, which he lighted at dark, and placed at intervals, where they might deceive the invaders by presenting the appearance of a greater force. The first discharge was from two pieces of cannon against the boats. The Spaniard, with his little band, then opened his fire upon the troops, and kept it up from the bushes as he retired before them. This skirmishing continued about an hour and a half, till he had fallen back to the place where the governor and his people were drawn up, at the entrance of the city, to make a stand. It was now nine at night. Raleigh says, in his account of the action, that some of the English, at the first charge, began to pause and recoil shamefully; whereupon his son, not tarrying for any musketeers, ran up at the head of a company of pikemen, and received a shot wound. Pressing then upon a Spanish captain with his sword, the Spaniard, taking the small end of his musket in his hand, struck him on the head with the stock, and felled him. His last words were, "Lord, have mercy upon me, and prosper the enterprise!" and his death was instantly avenged by his sergeant, who thrust the Spaniard through with his halberd. In the heat of the fight, and in the confusion which the darkness occasioned, the Spanish commander was separated from his people, and slain. The Spaniards, however, had the advantage of knowing the ground; and, betaking themselves to the houses, they fired from them on the English, and killed many, till the assailants set fire to the houses; thus depriving themselves of that booty which was their main object. The English were now masters of the place; the remainder of the defendants, with the women and children, under the command of Grados, the officer who had deported himself so well in the first ambush, effecting their escape across the river. Grados stationed them at a place about ten miles distant from the town, where a few slight huts were erected for the women and children.
The captors searched in vain for gold in the city; but they had an idea that there was a rich gold-mine a short distance up the river. Accordingly, two launches, with twenty or thirty men in each, were despatched up the Orinoco. They came to the mouth of the creek, which led to the place where Grados had hutted the women and children; and the largest of the launches was about to enter, when Grados, who had posted nine of the invalids in ambush there, with about as many Indian bowmen, fired upon them so unexpectedly, and with such good aim, that only one of the crew is said to have escaped unhurt. The other launch also suffered some loss. Three days after, three launches were sent to take vengeance for this defeat; but Grados had removed his charge some two leagues into the country, and these vessels went up the river about a hundred leagues, treating with the Indians, to whom they made presents and larger promises, and after eighteen or twenty days returned, having effected nothing of importance.
The English had now been four weeks in the city, annoyed by the Spaniards and Indians, and losing many of their men, cut off in their foraging excursions by ambushes. After the unsuccessful attempt to discover the mine, no further effort was made for that purpose; Keymis alleging in his excuse, that "the Spaniards, being gone off in a whole body, lay in the woods between the mine and us, and it was impossible, except they had been beaten out of the country, to pass up the woods and craggy hills without the loss of the commanders, without whom the rest would easily be cut to pieces." The English, accordingly, retreated from the city, setting fire to the few houses that remained, and promising the Indians, as they went, that they would return next year, and complete the destruction of the Spaniards.
Raleigh was by no means satisfied with Keymis's excuses for his failure to discover the mine, and reproached him with so much severity, that Keymis, after the interview, retired to his cabin, and shot himself through the heart.
When Raleigh arrived in England, he found that the tidings of his attack on the Spaniards, and the utter failure of his expedition, had reached there before him. The Spanish ambassador was clamorous for punishment on what he called a piratical proceeding; and the king and the nation, who might have pardoned a successful adventurer, had no indulgence to extend to one so much the reverse. Finding a proclamation had been issued for his arrest, Raleigh endeavored to escape to France, but was taken in the attempt, and committed close prisoner to the Tower. He was made a victim to court intrigue. The weak king, James, was then negotiating a Spanish match for his son, and, to gratify the King of Spain and his court, sacrificed one of the noblest of his subjects. Without being put on trial for his late transactions, Raleigh's old sentence, which had been suspended sixteen years, was revived against him; and on the 29th of October, 1618, four months after his arrival, he was beheaded on the scaffold.
The fate of Raleigh caused a great sensation at the time, and has not yet ceased to excite emotion. The poet Thomson, in his "Summer," finely alludes to the various circumstances of his history, which we have briefly recorded:—
"But who can speak
The numerous worthies of the 'Maiden reign'?
In Raleigh mark their every glory mixed,—
Raleigh, the scourge of Spain, whose breast with all
The sage, the patriot, and the hero, burned.
Nor sunk his vigor when a coward reign
The warrior fettered, and at last resigned
To glut the vengeance of a vanquished foe:
Then, active still and unrestrained, his mind
Explored the vast extent of ages past,
And with his prison-hours enriched the world;
Yet found no times in all the long research
So glorious or so base as those he proved
In which he conquered and in which he bled."