"

For the next two hundred years the icebound regions of the north were
practically left free from invasion, silent, inhospitable,
unapproachable.

But while these Arctic explorers were busy battling with the northern
seas to find a passage which should lead them to the wealth of the
East, others were exploring the New World and endeavouring by land
and river to attain the same end.

CHAPTER XXXIX

SIR WALTER RALEIGH SEARCHES FOR EL DORADO

It is pleasant to turn from the icy regions of North America to the
sunny South, and to follow the fortunes of that fine Elizabethan
gentleman, Sir Walter Raleigh, to "the large, rich, and beautiful
Empire of Guiana and the Great and Golden City of Manoa (which the
Spaniards call El Dorado)." Ever since the conquest of Peru, sixty
years before, there had floated about rumours of a great kingdom
abounding in gold. The King of this Golden Land was sprinkled daily
with gold dust, till he shone as the sun, while Manoa was full of golden
houses and golden temples with golden furniture. The kingdom was
wealthier than Peru; it was richer than Mexico. Expedition after
expedition had left Spain in search of this El Dorado, but the region
was still plunged in romantic mists. Raleigh had just failed to
establish an English colony in Virginia. To gain a rich kingdom for
his Queen, to extend her power and enrich her treasury was now his
greatest object in life. What about El Dorado?

"Oh, unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it
seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and
but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires
of El Dorado."

February 1595 found him ready and leaving England with five ships and,
after a good passage of forty-six days, landing on the island of
Trinidad, and thence making his way to the mouth of the Orinoco. Here
Raleigh soon found that it was impossible to enter the Orinoco with
his English ships, but, nothing daunted, he took a hundred men and
provisions for a month in three little open boats, and started forward
to navigate this most difficult labyrinth of channels, out of which
they were guided by an old Indian pilot named Ferdinando. They had
much to observe. The natives, living along the river-banks, dwelt in
houses all the summer, but in the winter months they constructed small
huts to which they ascended by means of ladders.

These folk were cannibals, but cannibals of a refined s