In addition to her West Indian islands, Great Britain CHAPTER VIII. possesses two mainland dependencies on or near the Caribbean Sea, viz. British Honduras in Central America, and British Guiana in South America. They are neither of them peninsulas, all-but-islands, such as she owns in the Old World1, but blocks of land cut out of the continent, ill-defined and of large extent.

of Guiana.

British Guiana lies outside and to the south-east of the General Caribbean islands, and the story of its colonisation is a description record of settlement at the mouths and on the banks of great rivers as opposed to the island colonies of which a sketch has been given in the preceding pages. Guiana 2, which the early Dutch settlers knew as the Wild Coast, is the vast district of South America lying between the Orinoco and the Amazon, cut off from the rest of the continent by the interlacing of their tributaries, and often spoken of as an island. The courses of these two great rivers in their relation to each other are somewhat analogous to those of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi in North America. In either case the headwaters of the two rivers or their feeders 3

1 See the author's Introduction to a Historical Geography of the British Colonies, p. 112.

2 The derivation of the name Guiana is doubtful. Sir R. Schomburgk in his Description of British Guiana says: 'It is said to have received its name from a small river, a tributary of the Orinoco.' He is probably referring to the Waini or Guainia river, but the explanation does not carry any further, and it can only be said that the name would seem to denote water in some form. Guiana is sometimes called in old works the Arabian coast, the word being a corruption of Arabisci, perhaps itself a corruption of Carabisci, i.e. Caribbean.

The Rio Negro, one of the great tributaries of the Amazon, is actually joined to the Orinoco by a natural canal, the Casiquiari.

II.

SECTION are not far distant from each other, and, flowing in different directions, they enclose between them a large stretch of continent and a long line of coast marked out as a distinct sphere of European colonisation, while each great stream is a water highway leading into the heart of the continent. It may be said broadly that the Orinoco formed the boundary of Spanish dominion, though not of Spanish claims, on the north coast of South America, while the Amazon was the limit of the Portuguese in Brazil. Between them Dutch, French, and English found room to trade and to settle, and at the present day all three nations own provinces side by side, each of which bears the name of Guiana. Many rivers small in comparison with the Orinoco and Amazon, but still in themselves great and noble streams, flow to the sea along this northern coast, among others the Essequibo, the Demerara, the Berbice, the Corentyne, the Surinam, the Maroni, and the Oyapok. The first three of these are the chief rivers of what is now called British Guiana; the Corentyne separates British Guiana from Surinam or Dutch Guiana; the Maroni separates Dutch from French Guiana; and the Oyapok is commonly taken as the eastern limit of French Guiana.

Discovery

In 1498, as has been already seen1, Columbus came to of Guiana. the mouth of the Orinoco and landed on the coast of the Gulf of Paria. In the following year, 1499, Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci, reached South America somewhere about Surinam, and coasted westward along Guiana and the Spanish main to the further side of the Gulf of Venezuela. In January 1500 Pinzon crossed the line of the equator, sighted Brazil near Pernambuco, and then sailing northwest discovered the mouth of the Amazon, whence he passed on along the whole coast of Guiana to the Orinoco. Thus in less than three years the main outline of the shores of Guiana was traced by Spanish sailors.

See above, pp. 231-2.

VIII.

The El

As the discovery of Florida was due to the search for the CHAPTER stream of perpetual youth', so a myth of a golden city long attracted European adventurers to the country watered by the Amazon and the Orinoco. The history of Africa from Dorado earliest to latest days has shown that great rivers are at once myth. the highways for explorers of dark continents, and the sources of romantic stories and travellers' tales. So it may easily be imagined how the early visitors from Europe to the South American coast, finding rivers beyond all others in size and volume, which poured down with many tributaries through rich, tropical lands, drew for themselves a picture of vastness and riches, and gave it definite form and shape as a city or a land of gold. The El Dorado myth is usually dated back to about the year 1531. At that time, so the story goes, a Spanish soldier, one of an exploring expedition up the Orinoco, was set adrift by his companions; and, on finding his way back some months afterwards to his own countrymen, he told how he had been taken by Indians to a great inland lake with golden sands, on which stood a vast city roofed with gold. The lake was given the name of Parima 2: the city was, in Ralegh's words, 'Manoa the Imperial city of Guiana, which the Spaniards call Eldorado.' By this time, it must be remembered, Pizzaro had found his way to Peru, and his countrymen, ever athirst for gold, had sufficient evidence of a great kingdom with untold

1 See above, p. 76.

2 Ralegh speaks of the lake as 'a lake of salt water of 200 leagues long like unto Mare Caspium.' It appears under the name Parima on maps down to the end of the last century, and in some cases even later (see note to page 54 of the Introduction to the Discoverie of Guiana, Hakluyt Series). It was located in the far south-west of British Guiana, where the inundations of the rivers, possibly coupled with the effect of tropical mists, may be supposed to have given birth to the myth; its non-existence was proved by Humboldt. It is worth noticing that there are mountains and a river in this part of the world still bearing the name of Parima. Reference should be made to the book already quoted, Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana, edited for the Hakluyt Society by Sir R. Schomburgk, and to Humboldt's Travels, vol. iii, in Bohn's edition.

SECTION Wealth to stimulate the search for the fabled city. So eager adventurers pressed on inland from the west as well as up the Orinoco and the Amazon.

II.

Ralegh's explora

Around the central myth others grew up. Orellana crossed the Andes by Quito in 1541 with the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro, and sailed down the Amazon. Meeting with women who fought side by side with men, he revived in the New World the old tale of a nation of female warriors. Thus the great river, first called Orellana after him, took its lasting name from the story which he brought; and Ralegh, to stir up his queen to the conquest of Guiana, reminded her that 'where the south border of Guiana reacheth to the dominion and empire of the Amazons, those women shall hereby hear the name of a virgin, which is not only able to defend her own territories and her neighbours but also to invade and conquer so great empires and so far removed.' Travellers told too,

'Of the cannibals that each other eat. The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders 1.'

In short, while Europe was growing too old for fairy tales and medieval myths, they found a new birth in a new world on the banks of the great South American rivers.

All through the sixteenth century the search for the Eldorado continued. As far as the Spaniards were concerned, it led to no colonisation within the region of Guiana beyond the establishment of a Jesuit station towards the end of the century, some way up the Orinoco, which developed into the village or town of San Thome.

At length Englishmen too joined in the quest; for, where

1 Othello, Act i. Sc. 3. Ralegh speaks of 'a nation of people, whose heads appear not above their shoulders' as reputed to live on a tributary of the Orinoco, and called Ewaipanoma; and he states his belief in the story. His account was published on his return from his voyage in 1595, and the first known production of Othello was in 1604. There can be little doubt that Shakespeare had 'the Discoverie of Guiana' before him in writing these lines.

VIII.

discovery was to be made and riches and honour possibly to CHAPTER be won, the Devonshire sailors of Elizabeth's age were not likely to leave the Spaniards alone in the field. So in 1594 tions of Ralegh turned his hand to the work. In that year he sent Guiana. out Captain Whiddon as a pioneer, and in 1595 he followed himself. His visit to Trinidad on this occasion has already been noticed1: the Governor of that island, Berreo, whom he took prisoner, had been one of the greatest and most determined explorers of Guiana; and, with him on board, he took his way to the Orinoco. After exploring the river as far as the junction of the Caroni, he returned to England in the same year, and gave to the world in the 'Discoverie of Guiana' an account of what he had seen and what he had heard and read, recalling in its mixture of fact and fable the stories of Herodotus. In the following year, 1596, he sent out Keymis, who carefully explored the coast, noting the rivers and the tribes, from the Amazon to the Orinoco; and later in the same year he fitted out another ship commanded by Leonard Berrie, and having on board a 'gentleman of the company' Thomas Masham, who wrote an account of the voyage.

In 1603 James the First succeeded Elizabeth, and Court sympathy with what was daring and chivalrous in Englishmen at once grew cold. Ralegh was sent to the Tower till 1616, when he was released on parole to follow up his search for gold in the far off land. He sailed from Plymouth on his last disastrous voyage in July 1617, and remained in the Gulf of Paria while some of his ships under his staunch follower Keymis were sent up the Orinoco to find the gold mine which was the object of the expedition. Keymis found no mine, but he lost the life of his master's son in a fight with the Spaniards, and, after burning their settlement to the ground, returned to Trinidad and killed himself in a fit of selfreproach. After a year's absence Ralegh came back to 1 See above, p. 234.