have risked every thing to
attend him? Ought a fleet to have been equipped for an experiment? Was
there not plainly an imposture in the management of this affair? 14. He
says to Keymis, in his orders, "Bring but a basket full of ore, and
it will satisfy the king that my project was not imaginary." This was
easily done from the Spanish mines, and he seems to have been
chiefly displeased at Keymis for not attempting it. Such a view was a
premeditated apology to cover his cheat. 15. The king in his declaration
imputes it to Raleigh, that as soon as he was at sea, he immediately
fell into such uncertain and doubtful talk of his* mine, and said that
it would be sufficient if he brought home a basket full of ore. From
the circumstance last mentioned, it appears that this imputation was not
without reason. 16. There are many other circumstances of great weight
in the king's declaration: that Raleigh, when he fell down to Plymouth,
took no pioneers with him, which he always declared to be his intention;
that he was nowise provided with instruments for working a mine, but had
a sufficient stock of warlike stores; that young Raleigh, in attacking
the Spaniards, employed the words, which, in the narration, I have
put in his mouth; that the mine was movable, and shifted as he saw
convenient; not to mention many other public facts, which prove him to
have been highly criminal against his companions as well as his country.
Howel, in his letters, says, that there lived in London, in 1645, an
officer, a man of honor, who asserted that he heard young Raleigh speak
these words, (vol. ii. letter 63.) That was a time when there was no
interest in maintaining such a fact. 17. Raleigh's account of his first
voyage to Guiana proves him to have been a man capable of the most
extravagant credulity or most impudent imposture. So ridiculous are the
stories which he tells of the Inca's chimerical empire in the midst
of Guiana; the rich city of El Dorado, or Manao, two days' journey in
length, and shining with gold and silver; the old Peruvian prophecies
in favor of the English, who, he says, were expressly named as the
deliverers of that country, long before any European had ever touched
there; the Amazons, or republic of women; and in general, the vast and
incredible riches which he saw on that continent, where nobody has
yet found any treasures. This whole narrative is a proof that he was
extremely defective either in solid understanding, or mora