

141 



ur own day P Arc 



. .L iiii-1 Australia to y. K-O to the fables of 



OH are great; chomiatry and 



IMIUI iii'hihtry ho* en- 



present century were 



let us not bo too sanguine now 



<>f our colonial possoHsions. Even gold itself 



u drug , ami liow n;ui that Htate of Bocloty would 



most precious of metals, having made all equally 



mill foil to purohaHo that human labour from which our 



Tii. TO has been also the fable of the kingdom of Paititi, a 

 eort of counterpart of El Dorado, another garden of the 



memory of the Devonshire knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, who intro- 

 .. potato and tobacco into England in the reign of Qoeaq 

 Elizabeth. Raleigh wa one of her mot favourite courtiers, 

 and took an active part in tho destruction of the Spanish 

 Armada in 1588. From thin time until the death of Elizabeth 

 he was employed in various expedition* against the Spaniard*, 

 and in 15U5 he Bailed to Guiana, and destroyed the capital of 

 Trinidad. The island of Trinidad lie* like a huge breakwater 

 across the month of the Gulf of Para, and in the sonth-wwt 

 corner of this gulf is tho Bay of Goanipa, into which flow* tho 

 river of the Bed Crosse, the stream that bounds the western 

 Bide of the great delta of tho Orinoco. Leaving his Teasel in the 

 Bay of Guonipa, Baloigh made hi* way in a canoe up thi* river 



14/93 ^enfrak cml^oo \ 



FAC-SIMILE OP A MAP OF AFRICA WHICH BELONGED TO JUAN DE LA COS.\, THE PILOT OF CHRISTOPHER COLVMBCS. 



Hespcrides, where inexhaustible treasures awaited tho happy 

 mortal sufficiently well instructed to follow the track. This 

 tingdom or empire was supposed to be situated in tho fertile 

 plains of the Maranon, and to have been founded ty the Incas 

 of Peru, whoso descendants knew how to conceal them from the 

 view of the Spaniards by powerful enchantments ! By degrees 

 this myth was embellished with a thousand wonders, and tho 

 Catholic missionaries themselves contributed not a little to 

 propagate the conviction that this imaginary kingdom was a 

 reality. This state of things continued even in the second 

 half of tho seventeenth century. The close of the Middle 

 Ages, therefore, had its mythical or fabulous geography, not- 

 withstanding tho real and ultimate proerress made by the 

 voyages of discovery. Tnie science had not yet made its 

 appearance. 



The name "El Dorado" is intimately associated with the 



as far as the main channel of the Orinoco, and at last reached 

 tho point where it is joined by tho river Caroni. In the angle 

 formed by the cast bank of tho Caroni and the south bank of 

 the Orinoco, at the extremity of tho Mountains of Emeria, a 

 mountain range stretching from cast to west, from i 

 Guiana into tho interior, lies a hilly tract of country, n 

 Venezuelan province of Arromaia, and hero Sir Walter Raleigh 

 placed his "Land of Gold," and declared that gold mines > 

 there in which more wealth lay buried than in any other part of 

 tho world. In 1615 ho sailed to Guiana once more, in an 

 expedition to reach these mines. The expedition was a failure ; 

 ho returned homo to meet his fate ; and men said that the 

 minrs and their contents existed only in Raleigh's imagination. 

 But subsequent discoveries have proved that Raleigh was right 

 in saving that there was gold in Guiana, if not in such immense 

 quantities as he supposed, for, at the present time, in the pro- 



