and there are so many trees and woods overflown, as if any boat but touch upon any tree or stake it is impossible to save any one person therein.  And ere we departed the land it ran with such swiftness as we drave down, most commonly against the wind, little less than an hundred miles a day.  Besides, our vessels were no other than wherries, one little barge, a small cock-boat, and a bad galiota which we framed in haste for that purpose at Trinidad; and those little boats had nine or ten men apiece, with all their victuals and arms.  It is further true that we were about four hundred miles from our ships, and had been a month from them, which also we left weakly manned in an open road, and had promised our return in fifteen days.

Others have devised that the same ore was had from Barbary, and that we carried it with us into Guiana.  Surely the singularity of that device I do not well comprehend.  For mine own part, I am not so much in love with these long voyages as to devise thereby to cozen myself, to lie hard, to fare worse, to be subjected to perils, to diseases, to ill savours, to be parched and withered, and withal to sustain the care and labour of such an enterprise, except the same had more comfort than the fetching of marcasite in Guiana, or buying of gold ore in Barbary.  But I hope the better sort will judge me by themselves, and that the way of deceit is not the way of honour or good opinion.  I have herein consumed much time, and many crowns; and I had no other respect or desire than to serve her Majesty and my country thereby.  If the Spanish nation had been of like belief to these detractors we should little have feared or doubted their attempts, wherewith we now are daily threatened.  But if we now consider of the actions both of Charles the Fifth, who had the maidenhead of Peru and the abundant treasures of Atabalipa, together with the affairs of the Spanish king now living, what territories he hath purchased, what he hath added to the acts of his predecessors, how many kingdoms he hath endangered, how many armies, garrisons, and navies he hath, and doth maintain, the great losses which he hath repaired, as in Eighty-eight above an hundred sail of great ships with their artillery, and that no year is less infortunate, but that many vessels, treasures, and people are devoured, and yet notwithstanding he beginneth again like a storm to threaten shipwrack to us all; we shall find that these abilities rise not from the trades of sacks and Seville oranges, nor from aught else that either Spain, Portugal, or any of his other provinces produce; it is his Indian gold that endangereth and disturbeth all the nations of Europe; it purchaseth intelligence, creepeth into counsels, and setteth bound loyalty at liberty in the greatest monarchies of Europe.  If the Spanish king can keep us from foreign enterprises, and from the impeachment of his trades, either by offer of invasion, or by besieging us in Britain, Ireland, or elsewhere, he hath then brought the work of our peril in great forwardness.