the New World, and, to their
ignorant cupidity, appeared the only important object of research and
acquisition in regions where the eye of political wisdom would have
discerned so many superior inducements to colonization or to conquest.
The fabulous city of El Dorado,--which became for some time proverbial
in our language to express the utmost profusion and magnificence of
wealth,--was placed by the romantic narrations of voyagers somewhere in
the centre of this vast country, and nothing could be more flattering to
the mania of the age than the project of exploring its hidden
treasures. Raleigh conceived this idea; the court and the city vied in
eagerness to share the profits of the enterprise; a squadron was
speedily fitted out, though at great expense; and in February 1595 the
ardent leader weighed anchor from the English shore. Proceeding first to
Trinidad, he possessed himself of the town of St. Joseph; then, with the
numerous pinnaces of his fleet, he entered the mouth of the great river
Oronoco, and sailing upwards penetrated far into the bosom of the
country. But the intense heat of the climate, and the difficulties of
this unknown navigation, compelled him to return without any more
valuable result of his enterprise than that of taking formal possession
of the land in her majesty's name. Raleigh however, unwilling to
acknowledge a failure, published on his return an account of Guiana,
filled with the most disgraceful and extravagant falsehoods;--falsehoods
to which he himself became eventually the victim, when, on the sole
credit of his assurances, king James released him from a tedious
imprisonment to head a second band of adventurers to this disastrous
shore.

A still more unfortunate result awaited an expedition of greater
consequence, which sailed during the same year, under Hawkins and Drake,
against the settlements of Spanish America. Repeated attacks had at
length taught the Spaniards to stand on their defence; and the English
were first repulsed from Porto Rico, and afterwards obliged to
relinquish the attempt of marching across the isthmus of Darien to
Panama. But the great and irreparable misfortune of the enterprise was
the loss, first of the gallant sir John Hawkins, the kinsman and early
patron of Drake, and afterwards of that great navigator himself, who
fell a victim to the torrid climate, and to fatigue and mortification
which conspired to render it fatal. A person of such eminence, and whose
g