anything to do with the matter. The juice
of the plant Strychnos toxifera, with the
name of which we are all unhappily familiar,
is assumed to be the active principle of the
preparation. But, as there is only one tribe
of Indians which prepares it, and as the
whole process is kept a profound secret,
the best that can be done, even by analytical
chemistry, is but a guess. Still onward
and upward till they gained the port of
Morequito, the very place whence Juan
Martinez dated his adventures, and where
the Indians brought them  "victuall in great
plenty, as venison, porke, hens, chickens,
foule, fish, with divers sorts of excellent
fruits and rootes, and great abundance of
pinas (pine apples), the princesse of fruits
that grow under the sun, especially those of
Guiana;"   also stores of bread and wine, and
a sort of paraquitos, no bigger than wrens,
and a beast, called by the Spaniards armadillo,
but by the Indians capacam, of which our
English knight gives some curiously apocryphal
details. After much pleasant talk with
the old king, who gave Raleigh particulars
concerning the rich town called Macureguarai
that still fed his hopes, he passed on his way,
until he came to the great cataracts. And
here he thought himself on the threshold of
his hopes. Not only the beauty of the
scenery, the wide savannahs stretching miles
away in their bush luxuriance, the wonderfully
lovely flowers and noble forest trees,
the exquisite plumage and melody of the
birds, and the grace and fearless courage of
the animals— not only all this delighted him,
poet and fervid artist as he was, but every
stone which he stooped to pick up "promised
either silver or gold by his complexion."
What alchemist but saw his hope in every
straw-coloured bubble floating in his crucible!
What adventurer but met the shadow of the
coming consummation in every dead leafi
fluttering drily to the ground!  Rock crystals,
which he believes a kind of sapphire, and
crystals growing diamond-wise, therefore not
so far from kin with the royal diamond itself,
stones which cunning Spaniards pronounce
the true mother-of-gold, and not base
marquesite (pyrites) at all; all these to Raleigh,
half maddened with his dreams, were so many
indications of the wealth to come—of the
wealth that might be gathered even here
where they stand, but which is to be found
in such abundance in the city of Manoa
beyond.  If they could but reach that city of
Manoa!  If they could but come to where
they might gather gold and precious stones,
as those Spanish men at home thrust out
their hands for figs and grapes!  All their
sufferings, all their hardships, would be
forgotten then; nay, turned to greater triumphs,
as love roots itself always deepest round
pain. But Manoa was not yet at hand.
And, instead of the civilised and humane
Inga of Martinez in his gorgeous city, Raleigh
heard of that strange tribe of Indians which,
unfortunately, no later traveller has
discovered, "who have their eyes in their
shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of
their breasts, and a long train of hair growing
backward between their shoulders."  He
met with more beautiful slave-girls, sold for
three or four hatchets a-piece. But no
Manoa.

Then the rain came down in those
fearful tropical torrents of which we all have
read or heard; the Orinoco began to swell
and rage, the crew cried out against their
hardships, and Raleigh's brave heart sank.
He drew a veil between his hopes and his
hand, turned his boat's head to the east, and
sailed down the stream, though against the
wind, at the rate of a hundred miles a day.
So gained once more the port of Morequito,
and had another interview with old Topiawari.
Topiawari, still holding to the tradition
of a  ''rich and appareled nation,"  where
gold, found in pieces as large as small stones,
was the common metal, and where they made
images of birds and beasts and men in gold,
advised Raleigh to wait until he had a larger
company, and a more suitable season; also
until he had gained over to his side all the
intervening tribes, enemies of El Doradans.
To clinch this last most sensible argument,
Topiawari told him a fearful story of
how three hundred Spaniards, wearied and
hungered, were journeying through the
plains of Macureguarai, where they were
surrounded and burnt to death; the Indians
setting fire to the long, dry, crackling prairie
grass. As a proof of his goodwill, he gave
his only son to Raleigh, to take with him to
England; and the adventurer departed,
leaving with the tribe two of his own men,
then turning his face seaward again. They
struggled down the river Macareo, until they
crossed the sea again, and finally gained the
Island of Trinidad. There they found their
ships at anchor; than which was never a more
joyful sight to wearied, disappointed, hopeless
men.  So ended this first English expedition
in search of the city of Manoa, and
the fabled land of gold and precious stones.

On the twenty-sixth of March, sixteen
hundred and seventeen, Raleigh, released
from a long and iniquitous imprisonment,
sailed out from the Thames on his second
and more completely organised expedition.
Of this, though so ostentatious and
complete in all its arrangements, but little
need be said. It was even more entirely a
failure than the first; a failure in its object,
and of infinite disastrousness to himself; for
by it he lost his friends, his son, his hopes,
fortune, health, and ultimately his noble life.
His son was killed in the taking of Sante
Thomé from the Spaniards.  Keymis, under
whom he fought, succeeding only in taking,
not in holding, the town; getting nothing by
the feat but the honour of embroiling two
allied nations, and the bitter reproaches of
his chief.  Reproaches so bitter, perhaps so