The taking of Caracas in 1595 showed him as not only an able leader,
but as an extraordinarily gifted tactician. It was in the course of this
attack, by the way, that the fine old hidalgo, Alonso Andrea de Ledesma,
mounted his horse, and, shield on arm, lance in rest, charged full tilt
single handed against the English force, who would have spared him had
he permitted it. But his onslaught was too impetuous for that. All the
invaders could do for the gallant old knight was to give him an
honourable and reverent burial.

After a while, Queen Elizabeth herself now lending open support to the
adventurers, Drake's expeditions became more and more daring, and, until
he died of fever at Porto Bello, his personality was one which gave
sleepless nights from time to time to responsible persons on the coasts
of the great Continent.

The name of Raleigh, "poet, statesman, courtier, schemer, patriot,
soldier, freebooter, discoverer, colonist, castle-builder, historian,
philosopher, chemist, prisoner, and visionary," is, of course, from the
romantic point of view, principally associated with El Dorado, and his
quest of the magic and imaginary land of gold. It was for this reason
that Raleigh's dealings with the Spaniards in South America were more
circumscribed than those of many of his colleagues. Led to the belief,
both by his own fanciful convictions and by the legends brought him by
the Indians, he had conceived El Dorado as situated somewhere in the
Guianas, and thus his operations were chiefly confined to this part of
the world and to the neighbourhood of the Orinoco River.

Raleigh's quest, on paper, certainly sounds one of the most fascinating
and entrancing of those undertaken in the great Continent. That which
the average reader hears of less are the fevers, noxious insects, heat,
and the general climatic hardships and perils involved in one of the
most tropical of all countries, to say nothing of the brushes with the
Spaniards; for Raleigh, courtier, poet, and philosopher though he was,
was no more gentle in his dealing with his enemies than any other
freebooter of his period.

[Illustration: OLINDA DE PERNAMBUCO, NOW PERNAMBUCO.

Attacked by Dutch war vessels.]

In the end Raleigh returned from the Orinoco laden with no gold, but
with heavy tales of the countless booty which he had failed to obtain,
and in the existence of which he implicitly believed, as his spirited
defence against the charges of his disappointed