enote: _Indigenous Marvels._]

On they voyaged as far as Aromaia and its port, Morequito, 300 miles
from the sea. Here Ralegh was visited by wise Topiowari, King of
Aromaia, 110 years old. His nephew and predecessor, Morequito, had been
murdered by the Spaniards. He himself had been dragged for seventeen
days in a chain, like a dog, till he ransomed himself with a hundred
plates of gold and several chains of spleen stones. The old chief, who
walked to and fro, twenty-eight miles, brought a present of flesh, fish,
fowl, Guiana pine-apples, the prince of fruits, declares Ralegh, bread,
wine, parakeets, and an armadillo, which Ralegh afterwards ate. Ralegh
told him he had been sent by his Queen to deliver the Indians from
Spanish tyranny. Thence he would have ascended the Caroni, but his men
could not row a stone's throw in an hour. So he pushed on by land to
view the falls, ten or a dozen in number, each as high above the other
as a church tower. Deer flitted across every path. Birds at evening sang
a thousand different tunes. Cranes and herons, white, crimson,
carnation, perched on the banks. Fresh easterly breezes blew. Every
stone they stooped to take up promised either gold or silver by its
complexion. A Captain George, who had been captured with Berreo, had
told them a rich silver mine was near the Caroni. Topiowari's only son,
Caworako, informed him of the Carolians. He said they were foes to the
Spaniards. They had a feud also with the Epirumei, subjects of the Inca
of Manoa, who abounded in gold. The Carolians and three tribes at the
head of the Caroni, he asserted, would help Ralegh against both Spain
and the Inca. He spoke too of the Ewaipanomas, with eyes in their
shoulders and mouths in their breasts, living on the Caora. He was sure
of the eyes and mouths, for they had lately fought and slain many
hundreds of his father's people. Ralegh vouches neither for the Amazons
in the province of Topago, nor for these Ewaipanomas, 'For my part I saw
them not, but am resolved that so many people did not all combine, or
forethink to make the report.' Nineteen years later he took occasion in
his History to justify by the Greek belief in Amazons 'mine own relation
of them, which was held for vain and improbable.'

[Sidenote: _Sparrow and Goodwin._]

By this time the summer was over. Winter in the Tropics is the rainy
season. It shows itself less by any sensible change of vegetation than
by floods, gusts, thunder and ligh