appeal for permission to go with the Lord Admiral to Brittany. He has a
quarrel meanwhile with the Dean and Chapter of Sarum, who have let his
Sherborne farms over his head to one Fitzjames, and 'who could not deal
with me worse withal if I were a Turk.' But a month later release has
come. The plague has broken up his home, his wife and son are sent in
opposite directions, and he himself has leave to be free at last; with
God's favour and the Queen's he will sail into 'the sunset' that Lady
Raleigh had feared so much, and will conquer for England the fabulous
golden cities of Guiana.

CHAPTER IV.

GUIANA.

The vast tract in the north-east of the southern continent of America
which is now divided between Venezuela and three European powers, was
known in the sixteenth century by the name of Guiana. Of this district
the three territories now styled English, Dutch, and French Guiana
respectively form but an insignificant coast-line, actually lying
outside the vague eastern limit of the traditional empire of Guiana. As
early as 1539 a brother of the great Pizarro had returned to Peru with a
legend of a prince of Guiana whose body was smeared with turpentine and
then blown upon with gold dust, so that he strode naked among his people
like a majestic golden statue. This prince was El Dorado, the Gilded
One. But as time went on this title was transferred from the monarch to
his kingdom, or rather to a central lake hemmed in by golden mountains
in the heart of Guiana. Spanish and German adventurers made effort after
effort to reach this _laguna_, starting now from Peru, now from Quito,
now from Trinidad, but they never found it: little advance was made in
knowledge or authority, nor did Spain raise any definite pretensions to
Guiana, although her provinces hemmed it in upon three sides.

There is no doubt that Raleigh, who followed with the closest attention
the nascent geographical literature of his time, read the successive
accounts which the Spaniards and Germans gave of their explorations in
South America. But it was not until 1594 that he seems to have been
specially attracted to Guiana. At every part of his career it was
'hatred of the tyrannous prosperity' of Spain which excited him to
action. Early in 1594 Captain George Popham, sailing apparently in one
of Raleigh's vessels, captured at sea and brought to the latter certain
letters sent home to the King of Spain announcing that on April 23,
1593, at a place