breastplate, most probably along the old Indian path from San Fernando past Savannah Grande, and down the Ortoire to Mayaro on the east coast.  How hot he must have been.  How often, we will hope, he must have bathed on the journey in those crystal brooks, beneath the balisiers and the bamboos.  He found ’a fine-shaped and a gentle people, all naked and painted red’ (with roucou), ‘their commanders wearing crowns of feathers,’ and a country ’fertile and full of fruits, strange beasts and fowls, whereof munkeis, babions, and parats were in great abundance.’  His ‘munkeis’ were, of course, the little Sapajous; his ‘babions’ no true Baboons; for America disdains that degraded and dog-like form; but the great red Howlers.  He was much delighted with the island; and ’inskonced himself’—­i.e. built a fort:  but he found the Spanish governor, Berreo, not well pleased at his presence; ’and no gold in the island save Marcasite’ (iron pyrites); considered that Berreo and his three hundred Spaniards were ’both poore and strong, and so he had no reason to assault them.’  He had but fifty men himself, and, moreover, was tired of waiting in vain for Sir Walter Raleigh.  So he sailed away northward, on the 12th of March, to plunder Spanish ships, with his brains full of stories of El Dorado, and the wonders of the Orinoco—­among them ’four golden half-moons weighing a noble each, and two bracelets of silver,’ which a boat’s crew of his had picked up from the Indians on the other side of the Gulf of Paria.

He left somewhat too soon.  For on the 22d of March Raleigh sailed into Cedros Bay, and then went up to La Brea and the Pitch Lake.  There he noted, as Columbus had done before him, oysters growing on the mangrove roots; and noted, too, ’that abundance of stone pitch, that all the ships of the world might be therewith laden from thence; and we made trial of it in trimming our shippes, to be most excellent good, and melteth not with the sun as the pitch of Norway.’  From thence he ran up the west coast to ’the mountain of Annaparima’ (St. Fernando hill), and passing the mouth of the Caroni, anchored at what was then the village of Port of Spain.

There some Spaniards boarded him, to buy linen and other things, all which he ’entertained kindly, and feasted after our manner, by means whereof I learned as much of the estate of Guiana as I could, or as they knew, for those poore souldiers having been many years without wine, a few draughts made them merrie, in which mood they vaunted of Guiana and the riches thereof,’—­much which it had been better for Raleigh had he never heard.