t to persuade the king to yield to him
some further help, especially for that this land hath never been sacked,
the mines never wrought, and in the Indies their works were well spent,
and the gold drawn out with great labour and charge. He also despatched
messengers to his son in Nuevo Reyno to levy all the forces he could,
and to come down the river Orenoque to Emeria, the province of Carapana,
to meet him; he had also sent to Santiago de Leon on the coast of the
Caracas, to buy horses and mules.

After I had thus learned of his proceedings past and purposed, I told
him that I had resolved to see Guiana, and that it was the end of my
journey, and the cause of my coming to Trinidad, as it was indeed,
and for that purpose I sent Jacob Whiddon the year before to get
intelligence: with whom Berreo himself had speech at that time, and
remembered how inquisitive Jacob Whiddon was of his proceedings, and of
the country of Guiana. Berreo was stricken into a great melancholy and
sadness, and used all the arguments he could to dissuade me; and also
assured the gentlemen of my company that it would be labour lost, and
that they should suffer many miseries if they proceeded. And first he
delivered that I could not enter any of the rivers with any bark or
pinnace, or hardly with any ship's boat, it was so low, sandy, and full
of flats, and that his companies were daily grounded in their canoes,
which drew but twelve inches water. He further said that none of the
country would come to speak with us, but would all fly; and if we
followed them to their dwellings, they would burn their own towns. And
besides that, the way was long, the winter at hand, and that the rivers
beginning once to swell, it was impossible to stem the current; and that
we could not in those small boats by any means carry victuals for half
the time, and that (which indeed most discouraged my company) the kings
and lords of all the borders of Guiana had decreed that none of them
should trade with any Christians for gold, because the same would be
their own overthrow, and that for the love of gold the Christians meant
to conquer and dispossess them of all together.

Many and the most of these I found to be true; but yet I resolving to
make trial of whatsoever happened, directed Captain George Gifford, my
Vice-Admiral, to take the Lion's Whelp, and Captain Caulfield his bark,
to turn to the eastward, against the mouth of a river called Capuri,
whose entrance I had