long at the most moderate calculation, throwing
into the shade the Japanese street of ten
miles, and making London little better than
a well-sized village. But large dimensions
suited both the times and the place. Could
the chief city be anything but in harmony
with mountains that no man could ascend,
rivers like seas, inland seas like oceans, with
plains as large as European nations, and
forests that no foot could traverse? South
American scenery demanded heroic measure,
and Martinez was too good an artist to
violate the laws of local colouring. When
a Japanese royal palace can contain forty
thousand inhabitants, why may not Central
America have had a city that took a full day
and a half to traverse from end to end?
However, true or not, Martinez was none the
less a sixteenth century Munchausen.

Inga, who knew at once that he was a
Christian, "for it was not long before that
his brothers Guascar and Atabalipa were
vanquished by the Spaniards in Peru,"
treated him handsomely, causing him to be
lodged in his palace and well entertained.
After he had lived there seven months,
and had begun to speak the language, Inga
asked him which he would prefer, to remain
with them in Manoa, or to return to his own
people? Martinez chose the latter; whereupon
the generous emperor set him on board
his canoe again, laden with gold and silver.
But some borderers (thieves, as all borderers
are,) fell in with him, and robbed him of his
treasure, leaving him only "two great bottels
of gords, which were filled with beads of gold
curiously wrought, which those Orenoqueponi
thought had been no other thing than his
drink, or meate, or graine for foode." These
gourds he gave to Holy Mother Church,
when he was dying, to buy masses for his
soul. No man ever saw them again; but
their destination sufficiently explained this.
In Manoa, said Martinez, the ordinary
metal was gold or silver, with sometimes
copper for the greater hardness thereof. All
the commonest household utensils were made
of the precious metals; the streets were
paved, and the houses overlaid with the
same; huge statues and large artificial
gardens peopled with artificial nature beyond
the size of nature, all of pure gold, were set
about the royal palace; while the emperor
and his lords went to their feasts rubbed
over with an odoriferous balsamic gum, most
rare and precious, then covered from head
foot with gold-dust, so that they looked like
so many moving, breathing, glittering, golden
statues. Of all fashions in dress certainly
the most original.

This, then, was the narration which fired
Raleigh's adventurous blood and swift
imagination; and it was for the discovery and
conquest of this golden city of Manoa that
he set sail from England in the year fifteen
hundred and ninety-five. He went, as he
fondly believed, to glory and conquest, the
aggrandisement of his queen and country, and
to his own deathless renown and prosperity.

Raleigh did not find Manoa; but he saw a
good many curious things worthy of note.
He saw oysters growing on trees: which
statement was received by the enlightened
men of the day with a burst of derision—
forming one of the palpable lies sneered at by
Hume. Yet he told no lie. The mangoes
growing by the sea-shore in South America,
within the limits of high- water mark, may be
found to this day covered with certain kinds
of oysters, which Raleigh said were "very
salt and wel tasted,"  but which modern
fastidiousness rejects as, at the best, mere
insipid substitutes for their European cousins,
And he saw the great pitch-lake, Lake Brea,
of which he made satisfactory trial in tarring
his ship; finding that it withstood the heat of
the sun better than the Norwegian pitch, and
was therefore very profitable for ships trading
to the south.  In our own days, Admiral
Cochrane made a more decided attempt to
turn the Brea lake to account; but he found
it required so much oil to render it sutficiently
pliable, that it was far more expensive to
use than common pitch. Raleigh was more
sanguine, and seemed to consider it of vast
future commercial importance and advantage.

At Puertos de los Hispanioles, in Trinidad,
some Spaniards went aboard Raleigh's ship
to buy linen. The wily knight plied them
with wine, and they, waxing boastful and
romancing under the unwonted luxury, plied
him in turn with such wonderful stories of
all they had seen and heard in Guiana, that
his hopes and resolution were strengthened
fourfold.  So, taking Berreo prisoner, who
"the yeare before betraied eight of Captain
Whiddon's men,"  and, showing to the
naturals her majesty's .picture, "which they
so admired and honoured as it had been
easie to have brought them idolatrous thereof,"
he once more went forward on his
journey in search of the golden city and the
golden king, leaving his ships at Trinidad,
while he and a chosen number set out in
boats. He crossed the sea, first skirting the
island till he came to the Serpent's Mouth,
where he entered the river Manamo, which
he calls Amana, by which he hoped to join
the Orinoco.

On his way he inquired for the warlike
women, the Amazons, of whom Thevet and
Oreliana had brought such wild accounts
into Europe,— accounts that mixed up together
classic legends and the unlicensed
imaginations of the early West Indian
travellers, into one monstrous fable. The
Cacique of whom Raleigh inquired
confirmed the report of the existence of such a
tribe; saying, that a race of warrior-women
was really to be found some sixty leagues
inland; women who admitted no men within
their territories, and who met their male
neighbours only once a-year, during the
month of April, which time they spent in