in the brackish creeks hanging to the branches of
the mangrove trees at low water, and he examined also the now famous
liquid pitch of Trinidad. Twenty years afterwards, in writing _The
History of the World_, we find his memory still dwelling on these
natural wonders. At the first settlement the English fleet came to,
Port of Spain, they traded with the Spanish colonists, and Raleigh
endeavoured to find out what he could, which was but little, about
Guiana. He pretended that he was asking merely out of curiosity, and was
on his way to his own colony of Virginia.

While Raleigh was anchored off Port of Spain, he found that Berreo, the
Governor, had privately sent for reinforcements to Marguerita and
Cumana, meaning to attack him suddenly. At the same time the Indians
came secretly aboard the English ships with terrible complaints of
Spanish cruelty. Berreo was keeping the ancient chiefs of the island in
prison, and had the singular foible of amusing himself at intervals by
basting their bare limbs with broiling bacon. These considerations
determined Raleigh to take the initiative. That same evening he marched
his men up the country to the new capital of the island, St. Joseph,
which they easily stormed, and in it they captured Berreo. Raleigh found
five poor roasted chieftains hanging in irons at the point of death, and
at their instance he set St. Joseph on fire. That very day two more
English ships, the 'Lion's Whelp' and the 'Galleys,' arrived at Port of
Spain, and Raleigh was easily master of the situation.

Berreo seems to have submitted with considerable tact. He insinuated
himself into Raleigh's confidence, and, like the familiar poet in
Shakespeare's sonnet, 'nightly gulled him with intelligence.' His
original idea probably was that by inflaming Raleigh's imagination with
the wonders of Guiana, he would be the more likely to plunge to his own
destruction into the fatal swamps of the Orinoco. It is curious to find
even Raleigh, who was eminently humane in his own dealings with the
Indians, speaking in these terms of such a cruel scoundrel as Berreo, 'a
gentleman well descended, very valiant and liberal, and a gentleman of
great assuredness, and of a great heart: I used him according to his
estate and worth in all things I could, according to the small means I
had.' Berreo showed him a copy he held of a journal kept by a certain
Juan Martinez, who professed to have penetrated as far as Manoa, the
capital of Guiana