There is a lacuna in the evidence as to what actually happened early in 1592; the late Mr. J. P. Collier filled up this gap with a convenient letter, which has found its way into the histories of Raleigh, but the original of which has never been seen by other eyes than the transcriber's. What is certain is that Raleigh contrived to conceal the state of things from the Queen, and to steal away to sea on the pretext that he was merely accompanying Sir Martin Frobisher to the mouth of the Channel. He says himself that on May 13, 1592, he was 'about forty leagues off the Cape Finisterre.' It was reported that the Queen sent a ship after him to insist on his return, but such a messenger would have had little chance of finding him when once he had reached the latitude of Portugal, and it is more reasonable to suppose that after straying away as far as he dared, he came back again of his own accord. On June 8 he was still living unmolested in Durham House, and dealing, as a person in authority, with certain questions of international navigation. Three weeks later the Queen seems to have discovered, what everyone about her knew already, the nature of Raleigh's relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton. On July 28 Sir Edward Stafford wrote to Anthony Bacon: 'If you have anything to do with Sir Walter Raleigh, or any love to make to Mrs. Throckmorton, at the Tower to-morrow you may speak with them.' It was four years before Raleigh was admitted again to the presence of his enraged Belphoebe.

Needless prominence has been given to this imprisonment of Raleigh's, which lasted something less than two months. He was exceedingly restive under constraint, however, and filled the air with the picturesque clamour of his distress. His first idea was to soften the Queen's heart by outrageous protestations of anxious devotion to her person. The following passage from a letter to Sir Robert Cecil is remarkable in many ways, curious as an example of affected passion in a soldier of forty for a maiden of sixty, curious as a piece of carefully modulated Euphuistic prose in the fashion of the hour, most curious as the language of a man from whom the one woman that he really loved was divided by the damp wall of a prison:

My heart was never broken till this day, that I hear the Queen goes away so far off, whom I have followed so many years with so great love and desire, in so many journeys, and am now left behind her, in a dark prison all alone. While she was yet nigher at hand, that I might hear of her once in two or three days, my sorrows were the less; but even now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery. I that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks, like a nymph; sometime sitting in the shade like a goddess; sometime singing like an angel; sometime playing like Orpheus. Behold the sorrow of this world! Once amiss, hath bereaved me of all. O Glory, that only shineth in misfortune, what is become of thy assurance? All wounds have scars, but that of fantasy; all affections their relenting, but that of womankind. Who is the judge of friendship, but adversity? or when is grace witnessed, but in offences? There were no divinity, but by reason of compassion for revenges are brutish and mortal. All those times past, the loves, the sights, the sorrows, the desires, can they not weigh down one frail misfortune? Cannot one drop of salt be hidden in so great heaps of sweetness? I may then conclude, Spes et fortuna, valete! She is gone in whom I trusted, and of me hath not one thought of mercy, nor any respect of that that was. Do with me now, therefore, what you list. I am more weary of life than they are desirous I should perish.

He kept up this comedy of passion with wonderful energy. One day, when the royal barge, passing down to Gravesend, crossed below his window, he raved and stormed, swearing that his enemies had brought the Queen thither 'to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus' torment.' Another time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman, and just catch a sight of the Queen, or else his heart would break. He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Carew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur Gorges, because he said they were restraining him from the sight of his Mistress. He proposed to Lord Howard of Effingham at the close of a business letter, that he should be thrown to feed the lions, 'to save labour,' as the Queen was still so cruel. Sir Arthur Gorges was in despair; he thought that Raleigh was going mad. 'He will shortly grow,' he said, 'to be Orlando Furioso, if the bright Angelica persevere against him a little longer.'

It was all a farce, of course, but underneath the fantastic affectation there was a very real sentiment, that of the intolerable tedium of captivity. Raleigh had been living a life of exaggerated activity, never a month at rest, now at sea, now in Devonshire, now at Court, hurrying hither and thither, his horse and he one veritable centaur. Among the Euphuistic 'tears of fancy' which he sent from the Tower, there occurs this little sentence, breathing the most complete sincerity: 'I live to trouble you at this time, being become like a fish cast on dry land, gasping for breath, with lame legs and lamer lungs.' There was no man then in England whom it was more cruel to shut up in a cage. This reference to his lungs is the first announcement of the failure of his health. Raleigh's constitution was tough, but he had a variety of ailments, and a tendency to rheumatism and to consumption was among them. In later years we shall find that the damp cells of the Tower filled his joints with pain, and reduced him with a weakening cough. But long before his main imprisonment his joints and his lungs were troublesome to him.

Meanwhile the great privateering expedition in which Raleigh had launched his fortune was proceeding to its destination in the Azores. No such enterprise had been as yet undertaken by English adventurers. It was a strictly private effort, but the Queen in her personal capacity had contributed two ships and 1,800l., and the citizens of London 6,000l., but Raleigh retained by far the largest share. Raleigh had been a week in the Tower, when Admiral Sir John Burrough, who had divided the fleet and had left Frobisher on the coast of Spain, joined to his contingent two London ships, the 'Golden Dragon' and the 'Prudence,' and lay in wait under Flores for the great line of approaching carracks. The largest of these, the 'Madre de Dios,' was the most famous plate-ship of the day, carrying what in those days seemed almost incredible, no less than 1,800 tons. Her cargo, brought through Indian seas from the coast of Malabar, was valued when she started at 500,000l. She was lined with glowing woven carpets, sarcenet quilts, and lengths of white silk and cyprus; she carried in chests of sandalwood and ebony such store of rubies and pearls, such porcelain and ivory and rock crystal, such great pots of musk and planks of cinnamon, as had never been seen on all the stalls of London. Her hold smelt like a garden of spices for all the benjamin and cloves, the nutmegs and the civet, the ambergris and frankincense. There was a fight before Raleigh's ship the 'Roebuck' could seize this enormous prize, yet somewhat a passive one on the part of the lumbering carrack, such a fight as may ensue between a great rabbit and the little stoat that sucks its life out. When she was entered, it was found that pilferings had gone on already at every port at which she had called; and the English sailors had done their share before Burrough could arrive on board; the jewels and the lighter spices were badly tampered with, but in the general rejoicing over so vast a prize this was not much regarded. Through seas so tempestuous that it seemed at one time likely that she would sink in the Atlantic, the 'Madre de Dios' was at last safely brought into Dartmouth, on September 8.

The arrival of the 'Madre de Dios' on the Queen's birthday had something like the importance of a national event. No prize of such value had ever been captured before. When all deduction had been made for treasure lost or pilfered or squandered, there yet remained a total value of 141,000l. in the money of that day. The fact that all this wealth was lying in Dartmouth harbour was more than the tradesmen of London could bear. Before the Queen's commissioners could assemble, half the usurers and shopkeepers in the City had hurried down into Devonshire to try and gather up a few of the golden crumbs. Raleigh, meanwhile, was ready to burst his heart with fretting in the Tower, until it suddenly appeared that this very concourse and rabble at Dartmouth would render his release imperative. No one but he could cope with Devonshire in its excitement, and Lord Burghley determined on sending him to Dartmouth. Robert Cecil, writing from Exeter to his father on September 19, reported that for seven miles everybody he met on the London road smelt of amber or of musk, and that you could not open a bag without finding seed-pearls in it. 'My Lord!' he says, 'there never was such spoil.' Raleigh's presence was absolutely necessary, for Cecil could do nothing with the desperate and obstinate merchants and sailors.

On September 21, Raleigh arrived at Dartmouth with his keeper, Blount. Cecil was amazed to find the disgraced favourite so popular in Devonshire. 'I assure you,' he says, 'his poor servants to the number of one hundred and forty, goodly men, and all the mariners, came to him with such shouts and joy as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them in my life. But his heart is broken, for he is extremely pensive longer than he is busied, in which he can toil terribly, but if you did hear him rage at the spoils, finding all the short wares utterly devoured, you would laugh as I do, which I cannot choose. The meeting between him and Sir John Gilbert was with tears on Sir John's part; and he belike finding it known he had a keeper, wherever he is saluted with congratulation for liberty, he doth answer, "No, I am still the Queen of England's poor captive." I wished him to conceal it, because here it doth diminish his credit, which I do vow to you before God is greater among the mariners than I thought for. I do grace him as much as I may, for I find him marvellously greedy to do anything to recover the conceit of his brutish offence.'

Raleigh broke into rage at finding so many of his treasures lost, and he gave out that if he met with any London jewellers or goldsmiths in Devonshire, were it on the wildest heath in all the county, he would strip them as naked as when they were born. He raved against the commissioners and the captains, against Cecil and against Cross. As was his wont, he showed no tact or consideration towards those who were engaged with or just above him; but about the end of September business cooled his wrath, and he settled down to a division of the prize. On September 27, the Commissioners of Inquiry sent in to Burghley and Howard a report of their proceedings with respect to the 'Madre de Dios'; this report is signed by Cecil, Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, and three other persons. They had carried on their search for stolen treasure so rigorously that even the Admiral's chests were examined against his will. They confess their disappointment at finding in them nothing more tempting than some taffetas embroidered with Chinese gold, and a bunch of seed-pearl.

Sir Walter Raleigh now married or acknowledged Elizabeth Throckmorton, and in February 1593 Sir Robert Cecil procured some sort of surly recognition of the marriage from the Queen. For this Lady Raleigh thanks him in a strange flowery letter[6] of the 8th of that month, in which she excuses her husband for his denial of her—'if faith were broken with me, I was yet far away'—and shows an affectionate solicitude for his future. It seems that Raleigh's first idea on finding himself free was to depart on an expedition to America, and this Lady Raleigh strongly objects to. In her alembicated style she says to Cecil, 'I hope for my sake you will rather draw for Walter towards the east than help him forward toward the sunset, if any respect to me or love to him be not forgotten. But every month hath his flower and every season his contentment, and you great councillors are so full of new councils, as you are steady in nothing, but we poor souls that have bought sorrow at a high price, desire, and can be pleased with, the same misfortune we hold, fearing alterations will but multiply misery, of which we have already felt sufficient.' The poor woman had her way for the present, and for two full years her husband contented himself with a quiet and obscure life among the woods of Sherborne.

For the next year we get scanty traces of Raleigh's movements from his own letters. In May 1593 his health, shaken by his imprisonment, gave him some uneasiness, and he went to Bath to drink the waters, but without advantage. In August of that year we find him busy in Gillingham Forest, and he gives Sir Robert Cecil a roan gelding in exchange for a rare Indian falcon. In the autumn he is engaged on the south coast in arranging quarrels between English and French fishermen. In April 1594 he captures a live Jesuit, 'a notable stout villain,' with all 'his copes and bulls,' in Lady Stourton's house, which was a very warren of dangerous recusants. But he soon gets tired of these small activities. The sea at Weymouth and at Plymouth put out its arms to him and wooed him. To hunt 'notable Jesuit knaves' and to sit on the granite judgment-seat of the Stannaries were well, but life offered more than this to Raleigh. In June 1594 he tells Cecil that he will serve the Queen as a poor private mariner or soldier if he may only be allowed to be stirring abroad, and the following month there is a still more urgent appeal for permission to go with the Lord Admiral to Brittany. He has a quarrel meanwhile with the Dean and Chapter of Sarum, who have let his Sherborne farms over his head to one Fitzjames, and 'who could not deal with me worse withal if I were a Turk.' But a month later release has come. The plague has broken up his home, his wife and son are sent in opposite directions, and he himself has leave to be free at last; with God's favour and the Queen's he will sail into 'the sunset' that Lady Raleigh had feared so much, and will conquer for England the fabulous golden cities of Guiana.



CHAPTER IV.

GUIANA.

The vast tract in the north-east of the southern continent of America which is now divided between Venezuela and three European powers, was known in the sixteenth century by the name of Guiana. Of this district the three territories now styled English, Dutch, and French Guiana respectively form but an insignificant coast-line, actually lying outside the vague eastern limit of the traditional empire of Guiana. As early as 1539 a brother of the great Pizarro had returned to Peru with a legend of a prince of Guiana whose body was smeared with turpentine and then blown upon with gold dust, so that he strode naked among his people like a majestic golden statue. This prince was El Dorado, the Gilded One. But as time went on this title was transferred from the monarch to his kingdom, or rather to a central lake hemmed in by golden mountains in the heart of Guiana. Spanish and German adventurers made effort after effort to reach this laguna, starting now from Peru, now from Quito, now from Trinidad, but they never found it: little advance was made in knowledge or authority, nor did Spain raise any definite pretensions to Guiana, although her provinces hemmed it in upon three sides.

There is no doubt that Raleigh, who followed with the closest attention the nascent geographical literature of his time, read the successive accounts which the Spaniards and Germans gave of their explorations in South America. But it was not until 1594 that he seems to have been specially attracted to Guiana. At every part of his career it was 'hatred of the tyrannous prosperity' of Spain which excited him to action. Early in 1594 Captain George Popham, sailing apparently in one of Raleigh's vessels, captured at sea and brought to the latter certain letters sent home to the King of Spain announcing that on April 23, 1593, at a place called Warismero, on the Orinoco, Antonio de Berreo, the Governor of Trinidad, had annexed Guiana to the dominions of his Catholic Majesty, under the name of El Nuevo Dorado. In these same letters various reports of the country and its inhabitants were repeated, that the chiefs danced with their naked bodies gleaming with gold dust, and with golden eagles dangling from their breasts and great pearls from their ears, that there were rich mines of diamonds and of gold, that the innocent people were longing to exchange their jewels for jews-harps. Raleigh was aroused at once, less by the splendours of the description than by the fact that this unknown country, with its mysterious possibilities, had been impudently added to the plunder of Spain. He immediately fitted out a ship, and sent Captain Jacob Whiddon, an old servant of his, to act as a pioneer, and get what knowledge he could of Guiana. Whiddon went to Trinidad, saw Berreo, was put off by him with various treacherous excuses, and returned to England in the winter of 1594 with but a scanty stock of fresh information. It was enough, however, to encourage Raleigh to start for Guiana without delay.

On December 26 he writes: 'This wind breaks my heart. That which should carry me hence now stays me here, and holds seven ships in the river of Thames. As soon as God sends them hither I will not lose one hour of time.' On January 2, 1595, he is still at Sherborne, 'only gazing for a wind to carry me to my destiny.' At last, on February 6 he sailed away from Plymouth, not with seven, but with five ships, together with small craft for ascending rivers. What the number of his crew was, he nowhere states. The section of them which he took up to the Orinoco he describes as 'a handful of men, being in all about a hundred gentlemen; soldiers, rowers, boat-keepers, boys, and all sorts.' Sir Robert Cecil was to have adventured his own ship, the 'Lion's Whelp,' and for her Raleigh waited seven or eight days among the Canaries, but she did not arrive. On the 17th they captured at Fuerteventura two ships, Spanish and Flemish, and stocked their own vessels with wine from the latter.

They then sailed on into the west, and on March 22 arrived on the south side of Trinidad, casting anchor on the north shore of the Serpent's Mouth. Raleigh personally explored the southern and western coasts of the island in a small boat, while the ships kept to the channel. He was amazed to find oysters in the brackish creeks hanging to the branches of the mangrove trees at low water, and he examined also the now famous liquid pitch of Trinidad. Twenty years afterwards, in writing The History of the World, we find his memory still dwelling on these natural wonders. At the first settlement the English fleet came to, Port of Spain, they traded with the Spanish colonists, and Raleigh endeavoured to find out what he could, which was but little, about Guiana. He pretended that he was asking merely out of curiosity, and was on his way to his own colony of Virginia.

While Raleigh was anchored off Port of Spain, he found that Berreo, the Governor, had privately sent for reinforcements to Marguerita and Cumana, meaning to attack him suddenly. At the same time the Indians came secretly aboard the English ships with terrible complaints of Spanish cruelty. Berreo was keeping the ancient chiefs of the island in prison, and had the singular foible of amusing himself at intervals by basting their bare limbs with broiling bacon. These considerations determined Raleigh to take the initiative. That same evening he marched his men up the country to the new capital of the island, St. Joseph, which they easily stormed, and in it they captured Berreo. Raleigh found five poor roasted chieftains hanging in irons at the point of death, and at their instance he set St. Joseph on fire. That very day two more English ships, the 'Lion's Whelp' and the 'Galleys,' arrived at Port of Spain, and Raleigh was easily master of the situation.

Berreo seems to have submitted with considerable tact. He insinuated himself into Raleigh's confidence, and, like the familiar poet in Shakespeare's sonnet, 'nightly gulled him with intelligence.' His original idea probably was that by inflaming Raleigh's imagination with the wonders of Guiana, he would be the more likely to plunge to his own destruction into the fatal swamps of the Orinoco. It is curious to find even Raleigh, who was eminently humane in his own dealings with the Indians, speaking in these terms of such a cruel scoundrel as Berreo, 'a gentleman well descended, very valiant and liberal, and a gentleman of great assuredness, and of a great heart: I used him according to his estate and worth in all things I could, according to the small means I had.' Berreo showed him a copy he held of a journal kept by a certain Juan Martinez, who professed to have penetrated as far as Manoa, the capital of Guiana. This narrative was very shortly afterwards exposed as 'an invention of the fat friars of Puerto Rico,' but Raleigh believed it, and it greatly encouraged him. When Berreo realised that he certainly meant to attempt the expedition, his tone altered, and he 'was stricken into a great melancholy and sadness, using all the arguments he could to dissuade me, and also assuring the gentlemen of my company that it would be labour lost,' but all in vain.

The first thing to be done was to cross the Serpent's Mouth, and to ascend one of the streams of the great delta. Raleigh sent Captain Whiddon to explore the southern coast, and determined from his report to take the Capuri, or, as it is now called, the Macareo branch, which lies directly under the western extremity of Trinidad. After an unsuccessful effort here, he started farther west, on the Cano Manamo, which he calls the River of the Red Cross. He found it exceedingly difficult to enter, owing to the sudden rise and fall of the flood in the river, and the violence of the current. At last they started, passing up the river on the tide, and anchoring in the ebb, and in this way went slowly onward. The vessels which carried them were little fitted for such a task. Raleigh had had an old galley furnished with benches to row upon, and so far cut down that she drew but five feet of water; he had also a barge, two wherries, and a ship's boat, and in this miserable fleet, leaving his large vessels behind him in the Gulf of Paria, he accomplished his perilous and painful voyage to the Orinoco and back, with one hundred persons and their provisions. Of the misery of these four hundred miles he gives a graphic account:

We were all driven to lie in the rain and weather, in the open air, in the burning sun, and upon the hard boards, and to dress our meat, and to carry all manner of furniture, wherewith [the boats] were so pestered and unsavoury, that what with victuals being most fish, with the wet clothes of so many men thrust together, and the heat of the sun, I will undertake there was never any prison in England that could be found more unsavoury and loathsome, especially to myself, who had for many years before been dieted and cared for in a sort far different.

On the third day, as they were ascending the river, the galley stuck so fast that they thought their expedition would have ended there; but after casting out all her ballast, and after much tugging and hauling to and fro, they got off in twelve hours. When they had ascended beyond the limit of the tide, the violence of the current became a very serious difficulty, and at the end of the seventh day the crews began to despair, the temperature being extremely hot, and the thick foliage of the Ita-palms on either side of the river excluding every breath of air. Day by day the Indian pilots assured them that the next night should be the last. Raleigh had to harangue his men to prevent mutiny, for now their provisions also were exhausted. He told them that if they returned through that deadly swamp they must die of starvation, and that the world would laugh their memory to scorn.



Presently things grew a little better. They found wholesome fruits on the banks, and now that the streams were purer they caught fish. Not knowing what they saw, they marvelled at the 'birds of all colours, some carnation, orange tawny,' which was Raleigh's own colour, 'purple, green, watchet and of all other sorts both simple and mixed, as it was unto us a great good passing of the time to behold them, besides the relief we found by killing some store of them with our fowling pieces.' These savannahs are full of birds, and the brilliant macaws which excited Raleigh's admiration make an excellent stew, with the flavour, according to Sir Robert Schomburgk, of hare soup. Their pilot now persuaded them to anchor the galley in the main river, and come with him up a creek, on the right hand, which would bring them to a town. On this wild-goose chase they ascended the side-stream for forty miles; it was probably the Cucuina, which was simply winding back with them towards the Gulf of Paria. They felt that the Indian was tricking them, but about midnight, while they were talking of hanging him, they saw a light and heard the baying of dogs. They had found an Indian village, and here they rested well, and had plenty of food and drink. Upon this new river they were charmed to see the deer come feeding down to the water's brink, and Raleigh describes the scene as though it reminded him of his own park at Sherborne. They were alarmed at the crowds of alligators, and one handsome young negro, who leaped into the river from the galley, was instantly devoured in Raleigh's sight.

Next day they regained the great river, and their anxious comrades in the 'Lion's Whelp.' They passed on together, and were fortunate enough to meet with four Indian canoes laden with excellent bread. The Indians ran away and left their possessions, and Raleigh's dreams of mineral wealth were excited by the discovery of what he took to be a 'refiner's basket, for I found in it his quicksilver, saltpetre, and divers things for the trial of metals, and also the dust of such ore as he had refined.' He was minded to stay here and dig for gold, but was prevented by a phenomenon which he mentions incidentally, but which has done much to prove the reality of his narrative. He says that all the little creeks which ran towards the Orinoco 'were raised with such speed, as if we waded them over the shoes in the morning outward, we were covered to the shoulders homeward the very same day.' Sir R. Schomburgk found exactly the same to be the case when he explored Guiana in 1843.

They pushed on therefore along the dreary river, and on the fifteenth day had the joy of seeing straight before them far away the peaks of Peluca and Paisapa, the summits of the Imataca mountains which divide the Orinoco from the Essequibo. The same evening, favoured by a strong northerly wind, they came in sight of the great Orinoco itself, and anchored in it a little to the east of the present settlement of San Rafael de Barrancas. Their spirits were high again. They feasted on the eggs of the freshwater turtles which they found in thousands on the sandy islands, and they gazed with rapture on the mountains to the south of them which rose out of the very heart of Guiana. A friendly chieftain carried them off to his village, where, to preserve the delightful spelling of the age, 'some of our captaines garoused of his wine till they were reasonable pleasant,' this wine being probably the cassivi or fermented juice of the sweet potato. It redounds to Raleigh's especial credit that in an age when great license was customary in dealing with savages, he strictly prohibited his men, under threat of punishment by death, from insulting the Indian women. His just admiration of the fair Caribs, however, was quite enthusiastic:

The casique that was a stranger had his wife staying at the port where we anchored, and in all my life I have seldom seen a better-favoured woman. She was of good stature, with black eyes, fat of body, of an excellent countenance, and taking great pride therein. I have seen a lady in England so like her, as but for the difference of colour I would have sworn might have been the same.

They started to ascend the Orinoco, having so little just understanding of the geography of South America that they thought if they could only sail far enough up the river they would come out on the other side of the continent at Quito. It has been noticed that Raleigh passed close to the Spanish settlement of Guayana Vieja, which Berreo had founded four years before. Perhaps it was by this time deserted, and Raleigh may really have gone by it without seeing it. More probably, however, its existence interfered with his theory that all this territory was untouched by Europeans, and therefore open to be annexed in the name of her English Majesty. Passing up the Orinoco, he came at last to what he calls 'the port of Morequito,' where he made some stay, and enjoyed the luxury of pine-apples, which he styles 'the princess of fruits.' He was also introduced to that pleasing beast the armadillo, whose powers and functions he a little misunderstood, for he says of it, 'it seemeth to be all barred over with small plates like to a rhinoceros, with a white horn growing in his hinder parts, like unto a hunting horn, which they use to wind instead of a trumpet.' What Raleigh mistook for a hunting-horn was the stiff tail of the armadillo. Raleigh warned the peaceful and friendly inhabitants of Morequito against the villanies of Spain, and recommended England to them as a safe protector. He then pursued his westerly course to an island which he calls Caiama, and which is now named Fajardo, which was the farthest point he reached upon the Orinoco. This island lies at the mouth of the Caroni, the great southern artery of the watershed, and Raleigh's final expedition was made up this stream. He reached the foot of the great cataract, now named Salto Caroni, and his description of this noble natural wonder may be quoted as a favourable instance of his style, and as the crown of his geographical enterprise:

When we ran to the tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining to the river, we behold that wonderful breach of waters, which ran down Caroli [Caroni]; and might from that mountain see the river how it ran in three parts, above twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve overfalls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been all covered over with a great shower of rain; and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had risen over some great town. For mine own part, I was well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill footman, but the rest were all so desirous to go near the said strange thunder of waters, that they drew me on by little and little, till we came into the next valley, where we might better discern the same. I never saw a more beautiful country, nor more lively prospects, hills so raised here and there over the valleys, the river winding into divers branches, the plains adjoining without bush or stubble, all fair green grass, the ground of hard sand easy to march on either for horse or foot, the deer crossing in every path, the birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes, cranes and herons of white, crimson, and carnation perching on the river's side, the air fresh with a gentle easterly wind, and every stone that we stooped to take up promised either gold or silver by his complexion.

The last touch spoils an exquisite picture. It is at once dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, it is sometimes disseminated in an almost imperceptible manner in the mass of granite rocks itself, without our being able to admit that there is a ramification and an interlacing of small veins.' It is plain that Raleigh got hold of unusually rich specimens of the sparse auriferous quartz. He was accused on his return of having brought his specimens from Africa, but no one suggested that they did not contain gold. No doubt much of the sparkling dust he saw in the rocks was simply iron pyrites, or some other of the minerals which to this day are known to the wise in California as 'fool's gold.' His expedition had come to America unprovided with tools of any kind, and Raleigh confesses that such specimens of ore as they did not buy from the Indians, they had to tear out with their daggers or with their fingers.

It has been customary of late, in reaction against the defamation of Raleigh in the eighteenth century, to protest that gold was not his chief aim in the Guiana enterprise, but that his main wish, under cover of the search for gold, was to form a South American colony for England, and to open out the west to general commerce. With every wish to hold this view, I am unable to do so in the face of the existing evidence. More humane, more intelligent than any of the adventurers who had preceded him, it yet does not seem that Raleigh was less insanely bitten with the gold fever than any of them. He saw the fleets of Spain return to Europe year after year laden with precious metals from Mexico, and he exaggerated, as all men of his age did, the power of this tide of gold. He conceived that no one would stem the dangerous influence of Spain until the stream of wealth was diverted or divided. He says in the most direct language that it is not the trade of Spain, her exports of wines and Seville oranges and other legitimate produce, that threatens shipwreck to us all; 'it is his Indian gold that endangereth and disturbeth all the nations of Europe; it purchased intelligence, creepeth into councils, and setteth bound loyalty at liberty in the greatest monarchies of Europe.' In Raleigh's exploration of Guiana, his steadfast hope, the hope which led him patiently through so many hardships, was that he might secure for Elizabeth a vast auriferous colony, the proceeds of which might rival the revenues of Mexico and Peru. But we must not make the mistake of supposing him to have been so wise before his time as to perceive that the real wealth which might paralyse a selfish power like that of Spain would consist in the cereals and other products which such a colony might learn to export.

Resting among the friendly Indians in the heart of the strange country to which he had penetrated, Raleigh became in many ways the victim of his ignorance and his pardonable credulity. Not only was he gulled with diamonds and sapphires that were really rock-crystals, but he was made to believe that there existed west of the Orinoco a tribe of Indians whose eyes were in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts. He does not pretend that he saw such folks, however, or that he enjoyed the advantage of conversing with any of the Ewaipanoma, or men without heads, or of that other tribe, 'who have eminent heads like dogs, and live all the day-time in the sea, and speak the Carib language.' Of all these he speaks from modest hearsay, and less confidently than Othello did to Desdemona. It is true that he relates marvellous and fabulous things, but it is no less than just to distinguish very carefully between what he repeats and what he reports. For the former we have to take the evidence of his interpreters, who but dimly understood what the Indians told them, and Raleigh cannot be held personally responsible; for the latter, the testimony of all later explorers, especially Humboldt and Schomburgk, is that Raleigh's narrative, where he does not fall into obvious and easily intelligible error, is remarkably clear and simple, and full of internal evidence of its genuineness.

They had now been absent from their ships for nearly a month, and Raleigh began to give up all hope of being able on this occasion to reach the city of Manoa. The fury of the Orinoco began to alarm them; they did not know what might happen in a country subject to such sudden and phenomenal floods. Tropical rains fell with terrific violence, and the men would get wetted to the skin ten times a day. It was cold, it was windy, and to push on farther seemed perfectly hopeless. Raleigh therefore determined to return, and they glided down the vast river at a rapid pace, without need of sail or oar. At Morequito, Raleigh sent for the old Indian chief, Topiawari, who had been so friendly to him before, and had a solemn interview with him. He took him into his tent, and shutting out all other persons but the interpreter, he told him that Spain was the enemy of Guiana, and urged him to become the ally of England. He promised to aid him against the Epuremi, a native race which had oppressed him, if Topiawari would in his turn act in Guiana for the Queen of England. To this the old man and his followers warmly assented, urging Raleigh to push on, if not for Manoa, at least for Macureguarai, a rich city full of statues of gold, that was but four days' journey farther on. This, Raleigh, in consideration of the sufferings of his followers, declined to do, but he consented to an odd exchange of hostages, and promised the following year to make a better equipped expedition to Manoa. He carried off with him the son of Topiawari, and he left behind at Morequito a boy called Hugh Goodwin. To keep this boy company, a young man named Francis Sparrey volunteered to stay also; he was a person of some education, who had served with Captain Gifford. Goodwin had a fancy for learning the Indian language, and when Raleigh found him at Caliana twenty-two years later, he had almost forgotten his English. He was at last devoured by a jaguar. Sparrey, who 'could describe a country with his pen,' was captured by the Spaniards, taken to Spain, and after long sufferings escaped to England, where he published an account of Guiana in 1602. Sparrey is chiefly remembered by his own account of how he purchased eight young women, the eldest but eighteen years of age, for a red-hafted knife, which in England had cost him but a halfpenny. This was not the sort of trade which Raleigh left him behind to encourage.

As they passed down the Orinoco, they visited a lake where Raleigh saw that extraordinary creature the manatee, half cow, half whale; and a little lower they saw the column of white spray, rising like the tower of a church, over the huge cascades of the crystal mountains of Roraima. At the village of a chieftain within earshot of those thundering waters, they witnessed one of the wild drinking feasts of the Indians, who were 'all as drunk as beggars, the pots walking from one to another without rest.' Next day, the contingent led by Captain Keymis found them, and to celebrate the meeting of friends, they passed over to the island of Assapana, now called Yayo, in the middle of the Orinoco, and they enjoyed a feast of the flesh of armadillos. On the following day, increased cold and violent thunderstorms reminded them that the autumn was far spent, and they determined to return as quickly as possible to the sea. Their pilots told them, however, that it was out of the question to try to descend the River of the Red Cross, which they had ascended, as the current would baffle them; and therefore they attempted what is now called the Macareo channel, farther east. Raleigh names this stream the Capuri.

They had no further adventures until they reached the sea; but as they emerged into the Serpent's Mouth, a great storm attacked them. They ran before night close under shore with their small boats, and brought the galley as near as they could. The latter, however, very nearly sank, and Raleigh was puzzled what to do. A bar of sand ran across the mouth of the river, covered by only six feet of water, and the galley drew five. The longer he hesitated, the worse the weather grew, and therefore he finally took Captain Gifford into his own barge, and thrust out to sea, leaving the galley anchored by the shore. 'So being all very sober and melancholy, one faintly cheering another to show courage, it pleased God that the next day, about nine of the clock, we descried the island of Trinidad, and steering for the nearest part of it, we kept the shore till we came to Curiapan, where we found our ships at anchor, than which there was never to us a more joyful sight.'

In spite of the hardships of the journey, the constant wettings, the bad water and insufficient food, the lodging in the open air every night, he had only lost a single man, the young negro who was snapped up by the alligator at the mouth of the Cucuina. At the coast there are dangerous miasmata which often prove fatal to Europeans, but the interior of this part of South America is reported by later travellers to be no less wholesome than Raleigh found it.

During Raleigh's absence his fleet had not lain idle at Trinidad. Captain Amyas Preston, whom he had left in charge, determined to take the initiative against the Spanish forces which Berreo had summoned to his help. With four ships Preston began to harry the coast of Venezuela. On May 21 he appeared before the important town of Cumana, but was persuaded to spare it from sack upon payment of a large sum by the inhabitants. Captain Preston landed part of his crew here, and they crossed the country westward to Caracas, which they plundered and burned. The fleet proceeded to Coro, in New Granada, which they treated in the same way. When they returned is uncertain, but Raleigh found them at Curiapan when he came back to Trinidad, and with them he coasted once more the northern shore of South America. He burned Cumana, but was disappointed in his hopes of plunder, for he says, 'In the port towns of the province of Vensuello [Venezuela] we found not the value of one real of plate.' The fact was that the repeated voyages of the English captains—and Drake was immediately to follow in Raleigh's steps—had made the inhabitants of these northern cities exceedingly wary. The precious products were either stored in the hills, or shipped off to Spain without loss of time.

Raleigh's return to England was performed without any publicity. He stole home so quietly that some people declared that he had been all the time snug in some Cornish haven. His biographers, including Mr. Edwards, have dated his return in August, being led away by a statement of Davis's, manifestly inaccurately dated, that Raleigh and Preston were sailing off the coast of Cuba in July. This is incompatible with Raleigh's fear of the rapid approach of winter while he was still in Guiana. It would also be difficult to account for the entire absence of reference to him in England before the winter. It is more likely that he found his way back into Falmouth or Dartmouth towards the end of October 1595. On November 10, he wrote to Cecil, plainly smarting under the neglect which he had received. He thought that coming from the west, with an empire in his hand as a gift for Elizabeth, the Queen would take him into favour again, but he was mistaken. He writes to Cecil nominally to offer his services against a rumoured fleet of Spain, but really to feel the ground about Guiana, and the interest which the Government might take in it. 'What becomes of Guiana I much desire to hear, whether it pass for a history or a fable. I hear Mr. Dudley [Sir Robert Dudley] and others are sending thither; if it be so, farewell all good from thence. For although myself, like a cockscomb, did rather prefer the future in respect of others, and rather sought to win the kings to her Majesty's service than to sack them, I know what others will do when those kings shall come singly into their hands.'

Meanwhile he had been writing an account of his travels, and on November 13, 1595, he sent a copy of this in manuscript to Cecil, no doubt in hope that it might be shown to Elizabeth. In the interesting letter which accompanied this manuscript he inclosed a map of Guiana, long supposed to have been lost, which was found by Mr. St. John in the archives of Simancas, signed with Raleigh's name, and in perfect condition. It is evident that Raleigh could hardly endure the disappointment of repulse. He says, 'I know the like fortune was never offered to any Christian prince,' and losing his balance altogether in his extravagant pertinacity, he declares to Cecil that the city of Manoa contains stores of golden statues, not one of which can be worth less than 100,000l. If the English Government will not prosecute the enterprise that he has sketched out, Spain and France will shortly do so, and Raleigh, in the face of such apathy, 'concludes that we are cursed of God.' Amid all this excitement, it is pleasant to find him remembering to be humane, and begging Cecil to impress the Queen with the need of 'not soiling this enterprise' with cruelty; nor permitting any to proceed to Guiana whose object shall only be to plunder the Indians. He sends Cecil an amethyst 'with a strange blush of carnation,' and another stone, which 'if it be no diamond, yet exceeds any diamond in beauty.'

Raleigh now determined to appeal to the public at large, and towards Christmas 1595 he published his famous volume, which bears the date 1596, and is entitled, after the leisurely fashion of the age, The Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a Relation of the Great and Golden City of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the Provinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and other Countries, with their Rivers, adjoining. Of this volume two editions appeared in 1596, it was presently translated into Latin and published in Germany, and in short gained a reputation throughout Europe. There can be no doubt that Raleigh's outspoken hatred of Spain, expressed in this printed form, from which there could be no escape on the ground of mere hearsay, was the final word of his challenge to that Power. From this time forth Raleigh was an enemy which Spain could not even pretend to ignore.

The Discovery of Guiana was dedicated to the Lord Admiral Howard and to Sir Robert Cecil, with a reference to the support which the author had found in their love 'in the darkest shadow of adversity.' There was probably some courtly exaggeration, mingled with self-interest, in the gratitude expressed to Cecil. Already the relation of this cold-blooded statesman to the impulsive Raleigh becomes a crux to the biographers of the latter. Cecil's letters to his father from Devonshire on the matter of the Indian carracks in 1592 are incompatible with Raleigh's outspoken thanks to Cecil for the trial of his love when Raleigh was bereft of all but malice and revenge, unless we suppose that these letters represented what Burghley would like to hear rather than what Robert Cecil actually felt. In 1596 Burghley, in extreme old age, was a factor no longer to be taken into much consideration. Moreover, Lady Raleigh had some hold of relationship or old friendship on Cecil, the exact nature of which it is not easy to understand. At all events, as long as Raleigh could hold the favour of Cecil, the ear of her Majesty was not absolutely closed to him.

The Discovery possesses a value which is neither biographical nor geographical. It holds a very prominent place in the prose literature of the age. During the five years which had elapsed since Raleigh's last publication, English literature had been undergoing a marvellous development, and he who read everything and sympathised with every intellectual movement could not but be influenced by what had been written. During those five years, Marlowe's wonderful career had been wound up like a melodrama. Shakespeare had come forward as a poet. A new epoch in sound English prose had been inaugurated by Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. Bacon was circulating the earliest of his Essays. What these giants of our language were doing for their own departments of prose and verse, Raleigh did for the literature of travel. Among the volumes of navigations, voyages, and discoveries, which were poured out so freely in this part of the reign of Elizabeth, most of them now only remembered because they were reprinted in the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas, this book of Raleigh's takes easily the foremost position. In comparison with the bluff and dull narratives of the other discoverers, whose chief charm is their naivete, the Discovery of Guiana has all the grace and fullness of deliberate composition, of fine literary art, and as it was the first excellent piece of sustained travellers' prose, so it remained long without a second in our literature. The brief examples which it has alone been possible to give in this biography, may be enough to attract readers to its harmonious and glowing pages.

Among the many allusions found to this book in contemporary records, perhaps the most curious is an epic poem on Guiana, published almost immediately by George Chapman, who gave his enthusiastic approval to Raleigh's scheme. It is the misfortune of Chapman's style that in his grotesque arrogance he disdained to be lucid, and this poem is full of tantalising hints, which the biographer of Raleigh longs to use, but dares not, from their obscurity. These stately verses are plain enough, but show that Chapman was not familiar with the counsels of Elizabeth:

Then in the Thespiads' bright prophetic font, Methinks I see our Liege rise from her throne, Her ears and thoughts in steep amaze erect, At the most rare endeavour of her power; And now she blesses with her wonted graces The industrious knight, the soul of this exploit, Dismissing him to convoy of his stars:

Chapman was quite misinformed; and to what event he now proceeds to refer, it would be hard to say:

And now for love and honour of his wrath, Our twice-born nobles bring him, bridegroom like, That is espoused for virtue to his love, With feasts and music ravishing the air, To his Argolian fleet; where round about His bating colours English valour swarms In haste, as if Guianian Orenoque With his full waters fell upon our shore.

Early in 1596, Raleigh sent Captain Lawrence Keymis, who had been with him the year before, on a second voyage to Guiana. He did not come home rich, but he did the special thing he was enjoined to do—that is to say, he explored the coast of South America from the mouth of the Orinoco to that of the Amazon. About the same time Raleigh drew up the very remarkable paper, not printed until 1843, entitled Of the Voyage for Guiana. In this essay he first makes use of those copious quotations from Scripture which later on became so characteristic of his writing. His hopes of interesting the English Government in Guiana were finally frustrated by the excitement of the Cadiz expedition, and by the melancholy fate of Sir Francis Drake. It is said that during this winter he lived in great magnificence at Durham House, but this statement seems improbable. All the letters of Raleigh's now in existence, belonging to this period, are dated from Sherborne.



CHAPTER V.

CADIZ.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada had inflicted a wound upon the prestige of Spain which was terrible but by no means beyond remedy. In the eight years which had elapsed since 1588, Spain had been gradually recovering her forces, and endangering the political existence of Protestant Europe more and more. Again and again the irresolution of Elizabeth had been called upon to complete the work of repression, to crush the snake that had been scotched, to strike a blow in Spanish waters from which Spain never would recover. In 1587, and in 1589, schemes for a naval expedition of this kind had been brought before Council, and rejected. In 1596, Charles Lord Howard of Effingham, with the support of Cecil, forced the Government to consent to fit out an armament for the attack of Cadiz. The Queen, however, was scarcely to be persuaded that the expenditure required for this purpose could be spared from the Treasury. On April 9, levies of men were ordered from all parts of England, and on the 10th these levies were countermanded, so that the messengers sent on Friday from the Lords to Raleigh's deputies in the West, were pursued on Saturday by other messengers with contrary orders.

The change of purpose, however, was itself promptly altered, and the original policy reverted to. The Earl of Essex was joined in commission with the Lord Admiral Howard, and as a council of war to act with these personages were named Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Thomas Howard. The Dutch were to contribute a fleet to act with England. It is an interesting fact that now for the first time the experience and naval skill of Raleigh received their full recognition. From the very first he was treated with the highest consideration. Howard wrote to Cecil on April 16—and Essex on the 28th used exactly the same words—'I pray you, hasten away Sir Walter Raleigh.' They fretted to be gone, and Raleigh was not to be found; malignant spirits were not wanting to accuse him of design in his absence, of a wish to prove himself indispensable. But fortunately we possess his letters, and we see that he was well and appropriately occupied. In the previous November he had sent in to the Lords of the Council a very interesting report on the defences of Cornwall and Devon, which he had reason to suppose that Spain meant to attack. He considered that three hundred soldiers successfully landed at Plymouth would be 'sufficient to endanger and destroy the whole shire,' and he discussed the possibility of levying troops from the two counties to be a mutual protection. It was doubtless his vigour and ability in performing this sort of work which led to his being selected as the chief purveyor of levies for the Cadiz expedition, and this was what he was doing in the spring of 1596, when the creatures of Essex whispered to one another that he was malingering.

On May 3, he wrote to Cecil: 'I am not able to live, to row up and down every tide from Gravesend to London, and he that lies here at Ratcliff can easily judge when the rest, and how the rest, of the ships may sail down.' And again, from a lower point of the Thames, at Blackwall, he is still waiting for men and ships that will not come, and is 'more grieved than ever I was, at anything in this world, for this cross weather.'

Through the month of May, we may trace Raleigh hard at work, recruiting for the Cadiz expedition round the southern coast, of England. On the 4th he is at Northfleet, disgusted to find how little her Majesty's authority is respected, for 'as fast as we press men one day, they come away another, and say they will not serve. I cannot write to our generals at this time, for the Pursuevant found me at a country village, a mile from Gravesend, hunting after runaway mariners, and dragging in the mire from alehouse to alehouse, and could get no paper.' On the 6th he was at Queenborough, on the 13th at Dover, whence he reports disaster by a storm on Goodwin Sands, and finally on the 21st he arrived at Plymouth. His last letters are full of recommendations of personal friends to appointments in the gift or at the command of Sir Robert Cecil. He brought with him to Plymouth two of Bacon's cousins, the Cookes, and his own wife's brother, Arthur Throckmorton. Unfortunately, just as the fleet was starting, the last-mentioned, 'a hot-headed youth,' in presence not only of the four generals, but of the commanders of the Dutch contingent also, took Raleigh's side in some dispute at table so intemperately and loudly that he was dismissed from the service. This must have been singularly annoying to Raleigh, who nevertheless persuaded his colleagues, no doubt on receipt of due apology, to restore the young man to his rank, and allow him to proceed. At Cadiz, Throckmorton fought so well that Essex himself knighted him.

The generals had other troubles at Plymouth. The men that Raleigh had pressed along the coast hated their duty, and some of them had to be tried for desertion and mutiny. Before the fleet got under way, two men were publicly hanged, to encourage the others, 'on a very fair and pleasant green, called the Hoe.' At last, on June 1, the squadrons put to sea. Contrary winds kept them within Plymouth Sound until the 3rd. On the 20th they anchored in the bay of St. Sebastian, half a league to the westward of Cadiz. The four English divisions of the fleet contained in all ninety-three vessels, and the Dutch squadron consisted of twenty-four more. There were about 15,500 men, that is to say 2,600 Dutchmen, and the rest equally divided between English soldiers and sailors.

The events of the next few days were not merely a crucial and final test of the relative strength of Spain and England, closing in a brilliant triumph for the latter, but to Raleigh in particular they were the climax of his life, the summit of his personal prosperity and glory. The records of the battle of Cadiz are exceedingly numerous, and were drawn up not by English witnesses only, but by Dutch and Spanish historians also. Mr. Edwards has patiently collected them all, and he gives a very minute and lucid account of their various divergencies. Of them all the most full and direct is that given by Raleigh himself, in his Relation of the Action in Cadiz Harbour, first published in 1699. In a biography of Raleigh it seems but reasonable to view such an event as this from Raleigh's own standpoint, and the description which now follows is mainly taken from the Relation. The joint fleet paused where the Atlantic beats upon the walls of Cadiz, and the Spanish President wrote to Philip II. that they seemed afraid to enter. He added that it formed la mas hermosa armada que se ha visto, the most beautiful fleet that ever was seen; and that it was French as well as English and Dutch, which was a mistake.

Raleigh's squadron was not part of the fleet that excited the admiration of Gutierrez Flores. On the 19th he had been detached, in the words of his instructions, 'with the ships under his charge, and the Dutch squadron, to anchor near the entrance of the harbour, to take care that the ships riding near Cadiz do not escape,' and he took up a position that commanded St. Lucar as well as Cadiz. He was 'not to fight, except in self-defence,' without express instructions. At the mouth of St. Lucar he found some great ships, but they lay so near shore that he could not approach them, and finally they escaped in a mist, Raleigh very nearly running his own vessel aground. Meanwhile Essex and Charles Howard, a little in front of him, came to the conclusion in his absence that it would be best to land the soldiers and assault the town, without attempting the Spanish fleet.

Two hours after this determination had been arrived at, much to the dismay of many distinguished persons in the fleet whose position did not permit them to expostulate, Raleigh arrived to find Essex in the very act of disembarking his soldiers. There was a great sea on from the south, and some of the boats actually sank in the waves, but Essex nevertheless persisted, and was about to effect a landing west of the city. Raleigh came on board the 'Repulse,' 'and in the presence of all the colonels protested against the resolution,' showing Essex from his own superior knowledge and experience that by acting in this way he was running a risk of overthrowing 'the whole armies, their own lives, and her Majesty's future safety.' Essex excused himself, and laid the responsibility on the Lord Admiral.

Raleigh having once dared to oppose the generals, he received instant moral support. All the other commanders and gentlemen present clustered round him and entreated him to persist. Essex now declared himself convinced, and begged Raleigh to repeat his arguments to the Lord Admiral. Raleigh passed on to Howard's ship, 'The Ark Royal,' and by the evening the Admiral also was persuaded. Returning in his boat, as he passed the 'Repulse' Raleigh shouted up to Essex 'Intramus,' and the impetuous Earl, now as eager for a fight by sea as he had been a few hours before for a fight by land, flung his hat into the sea for joy, and prepared at that late hour to weigh anchor at once.

It took a good deal of time to get the soldiers out of the boats, and back into their respective ships. Essex, whom Raleigh seems to hint at under the cautious word 'many,' 'seeming desperately valiant, thought it a fault of mine to put off [the attack] till the morning; albeit we had neither agreed in what manner to fight, nor appointed who should lead, and who should second, whether by boarding or otherwise.' Raleigh, in his element when rapid action was requisite, passed to and fro between the generals, and at last from his own ship wrote a hasty letter to the Lord Admiral, giving his opinion as to the best way to arrange the order of battle, and requesting him to supply a couple of great fly-boats to attack each of the Spanish galleons, so that the latter might be captured before they were set on fire.

Essex and Howard were completely carried away by Raleigh's vehement counsels. The Lord Admiral had always shown deference to Raleigh's nautical science, and the Earl was captivated by the qualities he could best admire, courage and spirit and rapidity. Raleigh's old faults of stubbornness and want of tact abandoned him at this happy moment. His graceful courtesy to Essex, his delicacy in crossing dangerous ground, won praise even from his worst enemies, the satellites of Essex. It was Raleigh's blossoming hour, and all the splendid gifts and vigorous charms of his brain and character expanded in the sunrise of victory. Late in the busy evening of the 20th, the four leaders held a final council of war, amiably wrangling among themselves for the post of danger. At last the others gave way to what Raleigh calls his 'humble suit,' and it was decided that he should lead the van. Essex, Lord Howard of Effingham, and the Vice-Admiral, Lord Thomas Howard, were to lead the body of the fleet; but it appeared next morning that the Vice-Admiral had but seemed to give way, and that his ambition was still to be ahead of Raleigh himself. As Raleigh returned to sleep on board the 'War Sprite,' the town of Cadiz was all ablaze with lamps, tapers, and tar barrels, while there came faintly out to the ears of the English sailors a murmur of wild festal music.

Next day was the 21st of June. As Mr. St. John pleasantly says, 'that St. Barnabas' Day, so often the brightest in the year, was likewise the brightest of Raleigh's life.' At break of day, the amazed inhabitants of Cadiz, and the sailors who had caroused all night on shore and now hurried on board the galleons, watched the magnificent squadron sweep into the harbour of their city. First came the 'War Sprite' itself; next the 'Mary Rose,' commanded by Sir George Carew; then Sir Francis Vere in the 'Rainbow,' carrying a sullen heart of envy with him; then Sir Robert Southwell in the 'Lion,' Sir Conyers Clifford in the 'Dreadnought,' and lastly, as Raleigh supposed, Robert Dudley (afterwards Duke of Northumberland, and a distinguished author on naval tactics) in the 'Nonparilla.' As a matter of fact, the Vice-Admiral, hoping to contrive to push in front, had persuaded Dudley to change ships with him. These six vessels were well in advance of all the rest of the fleet. In front of them, ranged under the wall of Cadiz, were seventeen galleys lying with their prows to flank the English entrance, as Raleigh ploughed on towards the galleons. The fortress of St. Philip and other forts along the wall began to scour the channel, and with the galleys concentrated their fire upon the 'War Sprite.' But Raleigh disdained to do more than salute the one and then the other with a contemptuous blare of trumpets. 'The "St. Philip,"' he says, 'the great and famous Admiral of Spain, was the mark I shot at, esteeming those galleys but as wasps in respect of the powerfulness of the others.'

The 'St. Philip' had a special attraction for him. It was six years since his dear friend and cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, under the lee of the Azores, with one little ship, the 'Revenge,' had been hemmed in and crushed by the vast fleet of Spain, and it was the 'St. Philip' and the 'St. Andrew' that had been foremost in that act of murder. Now before Raleigh there rose the same lumbering monsters of the deep, that very 'St. Philip' and 'St. Andrew' which had looked down and watched Sir Richard Grenville die, 'as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his country, queen, religion, and honour.' It seems almost fabulous that the hour of pure poetical justice should strike so soon, and that Raleigh of all living Englishmen should thus come face to face with those of all the Spanish tyrants of the deep. As he swung forward into the harbour and saw them there before him, the death of his kinsman in the Azores was solemnly present to his memory, 'and being resolved to be revenged for the "Revenge," or to second her with his own life,' as he says, he came to anchor close to the galleons, and for three hours the battle with them proceeded.

It began by the 'War Sprite' being in the centre and a little to the front; on the one side, the 'Nonparilla,' in which Raleigh now perceived Lord Thomas Howard, and the 'Lion;' on the other the 'Mary Rose' and the 'Dreadnought;' these, with the 'Rainbow' a little farther off, kept up the fight alone until ten o'clock in the morning; waiting for the fly-boats, which were to board the galleons, and which, for some reason or other, did not arrive. Meanwhile, Essex, excited beyond all restraint by the volleys of culverin and cannon, slipped anchor, and passing from the body of the fleet, lay close up to the 'War Sprite,' pushing the 'Dreadnought' on one side. Raleigh, seeing him coming, went to meet him in his skiff, and begged him to see that the fly-boats were sent, as the battery was beginning to be more than his ships could bear. The Lord Admiral was following Essex, and Raleigh passed on to him with the same entreaty. This parley between the three commanders occupied about a quarter of an hour.

Meanwhile, the men second in command had taken an unfair advantage of Raleigh's absence. He hurried back to find that the Vice-Admiral had pushed the 'Nonparilla' ahead, and that Sir Francis Vere, too, in the 'Rainbow,' had passed the 'War Sprite.' Finding himself, 'from being the first to be but the third,' Raleigh skilfully thrust in between these two ships, and threw himself in front of them broadside to the channel, so that, as he says, 'I was sure no one should outstart me again, for that day.' Finally, Essex and Lord Thomas Howard took the next places. Sir Francis Vere, the marshal, who seems to have been mad for precedence, 'while we had no leisure to look behind us, secretly fastened a rope on my ship's side toward him, to draw himself up equally with me; but some of my company advertising me thereof, I caused it to be cut off, and so he fell back into his place, whom I guarded, all but his very prow, from the sight of the enemy.' In his Commentaries Vere has his revenge, and carefully disparages Raleigh on every occasion.

For some reason or other, the fly-boats continued to delay, and Raleigh began to despair of them. What he now determined to do, and what revenge he took for Sir Richard Grenville, may best be told in his own vigorous language:

Having no hope of my fly-boats to board, and the Earl and my Lord Thomas having both promised to second me, I laid out a warp by the side of the 'Philip' to shake hands with her—for with the wind we could not get aboard; which when she and the rest perceived, finding also that the 'Repulse,' seeing mine, began to do the like, and the rear-admiral my Lord Thomas, they all let slip, and ran aground, tumbling into the sea heaps of soldiers, as thick as if coals had been poured out of a sack in many ports at once, some drowned and some sticking in the mud. The 'Philip' and the 'St. Thomas' burned themselves; the 'St. Matthew' and the 'St. Andrew' were recovered by our boats ere they could get out to fire them. The spectacle was very lamentable on their side, for many drowned themselves, many, half-burned, leaped into the water; very many hanging by the ropes' end, by the ships' side, under the water even to the lips; many swimming with grievous wounds, stricken under water, and put out of their pain; and withal so huge a fire, and such tearing of the ordnance in the great 'Philip' and the rest, when the fire came to them, as, if a man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most lively figured. Ourselves spared the lives of all, after the victory, but the Flemings, who did little or nothing in the fight, used merciless slaughter, till they were by myself, and afterwards by my Lord Admiral, beaten off.

The official report of the Duke of Medina Sidonia to Philip II. does not greatly differ from this, except that he says that the English set fire to the 'St. Philip.' Before the fight was over Raleigh received a very serious flesh wound in the leg, 'interlaced and deformed with splinters,' which made it impossible for him to get on horseback. He was, therefore, to his great disappointment, unable to take part in Essex's land-attack on the town. He could not, however, bear to be left behind, and in a litter he was carried into Cadiz. He could only stay an hour on shore, however, for the agony in his leg was intolerable, and in the tumultuous disorder of the soldiers, who were sacking the town, there was danger of his being rudely pushed and shouldered. He went back to the 'War Sprite' to have his wound dressed and to sleep, and found that in the general rush on shore his presence in the fleet was highly desirable.

Early next morning, feeling eased by a night's rest, he sent on shore to ask leave to follow the fleet of forty carracks bound for the Indies, which had escaped down the Puerto Real river; this navy was said to be worth twelve millions. In the confusion, however, there came back no answer from Essex or Howard. A ransom of two millions had meanwhile been offered for them, but this also, in the absence of his chiefs, Raleigh had no power to accept. While he was thus uncertain, the Duke of Medina Sidonia solved the difficulty on June 23, by setting the whole flock of helpless and treasure-laden carracks on fire. From the deck of the 'War Sprite' Raleigh had the mortification of seeing the smoke of this priceless argosy go up to heaven. The waste had been great, for of all the galleons, carracks, and frigates of which the great Spanish navy had consisted, only the 'St. Matthew' and the 'St. Andrew' had come intact into the hands of the English. The Dutch sailors, who held back until the fight was decided, sprang upon the blazing 'St. Philip,' and saved a great part of her famous store of ordnance; while, as Raleigh pleasantly puts it, 'the two Apostles aforesaid' were richly furnished, and made an agreeable prize to bring back to England.

The English generals, engaged in sacking the palaces and razing the fortifications of Cadiz, were strangely indifferent to the anxieties of their friends at home. In England the wildest rumours passed from mouth to mouth, but it was a fortnight before anyone on the spot thought it necessary to communicate with the Home Government. It is said that Raleigh's letter to Cecil, written ten leagues to the west of Cadiz, on July 7, and carried to England by Sir Anthony Ashley, contained the first intimation of the victory. In this letter Raleigh is careful to do himself justice with the Queen, and to claim a complete pardon on the score of services so signal, for it was already patent to him that on a field where every man that would be helped must help himself, his wounded leg had shut him out of all hope of plunder. The cause of his standing so far as ten leagues away from shore was that an epidemic had broken out on board his ship. It proved impossible to cope with this disease, and so it was determined that on August 1 the 'War Sprite' should return to England, in company with the 'Roebuck' and the 'John and Francis.' On the sixth day they arrived in Plymouth, and Raleigh found that, although seven weeks had elapsed since the victory, no authentic account of it had hitherto reached the Council. He was not well, and instead of posting up to London, where he easily perceived he would not be welcome, he asked pardon for staying with his ship. On August 12 he landed at Weymouth, and passed home to Sherborne. The rest of the fleet came back later in the autumn, and Essex, as he passed the coast of Portugal, swooped down upon the famous library of the Bishop of Algarve, which he presented on his return to Sir Thomas Bodley. The Bodleian Library at Oxford is now the chief existing memorial of that glorious expedition to Cadiz which shattered the naval strength of Spain.

As to prize-money, there proved to be very little of it for the captors. It was understood that the Lord Admiral was to have 5,000l., Essex as much, and Raleigh 3,000l.; but Essex, in his proud way, waived his claim in favour of the Queen, just in time to escape spoliation, for Elizabeth claimed everything. Her scandalous avarice had grown upon her year by year, and now in her old age her finer and more generous qualities were sapped by her greed for money. Even her political acumen had failed her; she was unable to see, in her vexation at the loss of the Indian carracks, that the blow to Spain had been one which relieved her of a constant and immense anxiety. She determined that no one should be the richer or the nobler for a victory which had resulted in the destruction of so much treasure which might have flowed into her coffers. Deeply disappointed at the Queen's surly ingratitude, Raleigh, whom she still refused to see, retired for the next nine months into absolute seclusion at Sherborne.

In his retirement Raleigh continued to remember that his function was, as Oldys put it, 'by his extraordinary undertakings to raise a grove of laurels, in a manner out of the seas, that should overspread our island with glory.' In October 1596 he was preparing for his third expedition to Guiana, which he placed under the command of Captain Leonard Berrie. This navigator was absent until the summer of the following year, when he returned, not having penetrated to Manoa, but confirming with an almost obsequious report Raleigh's most golden dreams. It is at this time, after his return from Cadiz, that we find Sir Walter Raleigh's name mentioned most lavishly by the literary classes in their dedications and eulogistic addresses. Whether his popularity was at the same time high with the general public is more easily asserted than proved, but there is no doubt that the victory at Cadiz was highly appreciated by the mass of Englishmen, and it is not possible but that Raleigh's prominent share in it should be generally recognised.

On January 24, 1597, Raleigh wrote from Sherborne a letter of sympathy to Sir Robert Cecil, on the death of his wife. It is interesting as displaying Raleigh's intimacy with the members of a family which was henceforth to hold a prominent place in the chronicle of his life, since it was Henry Brooke, Lady Cecil's brother, who became, two months later, at the death of his father, Lord Cobham. It was he and his brother George Brooke who in 1603 became notorious as the conspirators for Arabella Stuart, and who dragged Raleigh down with them. We do not know when Raleigh began to be intimate with the Brookes, and it is just at this time, when his fortunes had reached their climacteric, and when it would be of the highest importance to us to follow them closely, that his personal history suddenly becomes vague. If Cecil's letters to him had been preserved we should know more. As it is we can but record certain isolated facts, and make as much use of them as we can venture to do. In May 1597, nearly five years after his expulsion, we find him received again at Court. Rowland White says, 'Sir Walter Raleigh is daily in Court, and a hope is had that he shall be admitted to the execution of his office as Captain of the Guard, before he goes to sea.'

Cecil and Howard of Effingham had obtained this return to favour for their friend, and Essex, although his momentary liking for Raleigh had long subsided, did not oppose it. He could not, however, be present when Timias was taken back into the arms of his pardoning Belphoebe. On June 1, the Earl of Essex rode down to Chatham, and during his absence Sir Walter Raleigh was conducted by Cecil into the presence of the Queen. She received him very graciously, and immediately authorised him to resume his office of Captain of the Guard. Without loss of time, Raleigh filled up the vacancies in the Guard that very day, and spent the evening riding with her Majesty. Next morning he made his appearance in the Privy Chamber as he had been wont to do, and his return to favour was complete. Essex showed, and apparently felt, no very acute chagrin. He was busy in planning another expedition against Spain, and he needed Raleigh's help in arranging for the victualling of the land forces. In July all jealousies seemed laid aside, and the gossips of the Court reported, 'None but Cecil and Raleigh enjoy the Earl of Essex, they carry him away as they list.'

It lies far beyond the scope of the present biography to discuss the obscure question of 'the conceit of Richard the Second' with which these three amused themselves just before the Islands Voyage began. The bare facts are these. On July 6, 1597, Raleigh wrote to Cecil from Weymouth about the preparations for the expedition, and added: 'I acquainted the Lord General [Essex] with your letter to me, and your kind acceptance of your entertainment; he was also wonderful merry at your conceit of Richard the Second. I hope it shall never alter, and whereof I shall be most glad of, as the true way to all our good, quiet, and advancement, and most of all for His sake whose affairs shall thereby find better progression.' From this it would seem as though Cecil had offered a dramatic entertainment to Essex and Raleigh on their leaving town. This entertainment evidently consisted of Shakespeare's new tragedy, then being performed at the Globe Theatre and to be entered for publication just a month later. When this play was printed it did not contain what is called the 'Deposition Scene,' but it would appear that this was given on the boards at the time when Raleigh refers to it. It will be remembered that in 1601 the lawyers accused Essex of having feasted his eyes beforehand with a show of the dethronement of his liege; but Raleigh's words do not suggest any direct disloyalty.

Raleigh was in a state of considerable excitement at the prospect of the new expedition. Cecil wrote, 'Good Mr. Raleigh wonders at his own diligence, as if diligence and he were not familiars;' and the fact that Raleigh would sometimes write twice and thrice to him in one day, and on a single occasion at least, four times, proves that Cecil had a right to use this mild sarcasm. Several months before, Raleigh had attempted by his manifesto entitled The Spanish Alarum to stir up the Government to be in full readiness to guard against a revengeful invasion of England by her old enemy. He had thought out the whole situation, he had planned the defences of England by land and sea, and his new favour at Court had enabled him to put pressure on the royal parsimony, and to insist that things should be done as he saw fit. He was perfectly right in thinking that Philip II. would rather suffer complete ruin than not try once more to recover his position in Europe, but he saw that the late losses at Cadiz would force the Catholic king to delay his incursion, and he counselled a rapid and direct second attack on Spain. As soon as ever he was restored to power, he began to victual a fleet of ten men-of-war with biscuit, beef, bacon, and salt fish, and to call for volunteers. As the scheme seized the popular mind, however, it gathered in extent, and it was finally decided to fit up three large squadrons, with a Dutch contingent of twelve ships. These vessels met in Plymouth Sound.

On the night of Sunday, July 10, the fleet left Plymouth, and kept together for twenty-four hours. On the morning of the 12th, after a night of terrific storm, Raleigh found his squadron of four ships parted from the rest, and in the course of the next day only one vessel beside his own was in sight. This tempest was immortalised in his earliest known poem by John Donne, who was in the expedition, and was described by Raleigh as follows:

The storm on Wednesday grew more forcible, and the seas grew very exceeding lofty, so that myself and the Bonaventure had labour enough to beat it up. But the night following, the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the storm so increased, the ships were weighty, the ordnance great, and the billows so raised and enraged, that we could carry out no sail which to our judgment would not have been rent off the yards by the wind; and yet our ships rolled so vehemently, and so disjointed themselves, that we were driven either to force it again with our courses, or to sink. In my ship it hath shaken all her beams, knees, and stanchions well nigh asunder, in so much on Saturday night last we made account to have yielded ourselves up to God. For we had no way to work, either by trying, hauling, or driving, that promised better hope, our men being worsted with labour and watchings, and our ship so open everywhere, all her bulkheads rent, and her very cook-room of brick shaken down into powder.

Such were the miseries of navigation in the palmy days of English adventure by sea. The end of it was that about thirty vessels crept back to Falmouth and Tor Bay, some were lost altogether, and Raleigh, with the remainder, found harbour on July 18 at Plymouth. For a month they lay there, recovering their forces, and Essex, whose own ship was at Falmouth, came over to Plymouth and was Raleigh's guest on the 'War Sprite.' Raleigh writes to Cecil: 'I should have taken it unkindly if my Lord had taken up any other lodging till the "Lion" come: and now her Majesty may be sure his Lordship shall sleep somewhat the sounder, though he fare the worse, by being with me, for I am an excellent watchman at sea.' In this same letter, dated July 26, 1597, the fatal name of Cobham first appears in the correspondence of Raleigh: 'I pray vouchsafe,' he says, 'to remember me in all affection to my Lord Cobham.'

On August 18, in the face of a westerly wind, the fleet put out once more from Plymouth. In the Bay of Biscay the 'St. Andrew' and the 'St. Matthew' were disabled, and had to be left behind at La Rochelle. Off the coast of Portugal, Raleigh himself had a serious accident, for his mainyard snapped across, and he had to put in for help by the Rock of Lisbon, in company with the 'Dreadnought.' Essex left a letter saying that Raleigh must follow him as fast as he could to the Azores, and on September 8 the 'War Sprite' came in view of Terceira. On the 15th Raleigh's squadron joined the main fleet under Essex at Flores.

The distress of the voyage and its separations had told upon the temper of Essex, while he was surrounded by those who were eager to poison his mind with suspicion of Raleigh. When the latter dined with Essex in the 'Repulse' on the 15th, the Earl with his usual impulsiveness made a clean breast of his 'conjectures and surmises,' letting Raleigh know the very names of those scandalous and cankered persons who had ventured to accuse him, and assuring him that he rejected their counsel. On this day or the next a pinnace from India brought the news that the yearly fleet was changing its usual course, and would arrive farther south in the Azores. A council of war was held in the 'Repulse,' and it was resolved to divide the archipelago among the commanders. Fayal was to be taken by Essex and Raleigh, Graciosa by Howard and Vere, San Miguel by Mountjoy and Blount, while Pico, with its famous wines, was left for the Dutchmen. Essex sailed first, and left Raleigh taking in provisions at Flores, where he dined in a small inland town with his old acquaintance Lord Grey, and others, including Sir Arthur Gorges, the minute historian of the expedition. About midnight, when they were safe in their ships again, Captain Arthur Champernowne, Raleigh's kinsman, arrived with a letter from Essex desiring Raleigh to come over to Fayal at once, and complete his supplies there. With his usual promptitude, he started instantly, and soon outstripped Essex.

When Raleigh arrived in the great harbour of Fayal, the peaceful look of everything assured him in a moment that Essex had not yet been heard of. But no sooner did the inhabitants perceive the 'War Sprite' and the 'Dreadnought,' than they began to throw up defences and remove their valuables into the interior. It was in the highest degree irksome to Raleigh to wait thus inactive, while this handsome Spanish colony was slipping from his clutch, but he had been forbidden to move without orders. After three days' waiting for Essex, a council of war was held on board the 'War Sprite.' On the fourth Raleigh leaped into his barge at the head of a landing company, refusing the help of the Flemings who were with him, and stormed the cliffs. It was comparatively easy to get his troops on shore, but the Spaniards contested the road to the town inch by inch. At last Raleigh and his four hundred and fifty men routed their opponents and entered Fayal, a town 'full of fine gardens, orchards, and wells of delicate waters, with fair streets, and one very fair church;' and allowed his men to plunder it. The English soldiers slept that night in Fayal, and when they woke next morning they saw the tardy squadron of Essex come warping into the harbour at last. Sir Gilly Meyrick, the bitterest of the parasites of Essex, slipped into a boat and was on board the 'Repulse' as soon as she anchored, reporting Raleigh's conduct to the Earl.

Raleigh must have known that Essex was not the man to be pleased at a feat which took all the credit of the Islands Voyage out of his hands; but he feigned unconsciousness. In his barge he came out from Fayal to greet the Earl, and entered the General's cabin. After a faint welcome, Essex began to reproach him with 'a breach of Orders and Articles,' and to point out to him that in capturing Fayal without authority he had made himself liable to the punishment of death. Raleigh replied that he was exempt from such orders, being, in succession to Essex and Lord Howard, himself commander of the whole fleet by the Queen's letters patent. After a dispute of half an hour, Essex seemed satisfied, and accepted an invitation to sup with Raleigh on shore. But another malcontent, Sir Christopher Blount, obtained his ear, and set his resentment blazing once more. Essex told Raleigh he should not sup at all that night. Raleigh left the 'Repulse,' and prepared to separate his squadron from the fleet, lest an attempt should be made to force him to undergo the indignity of a court-martial. Howard finally made peace between the two commanders, and Raleigh was induced to give some sort of apology for his action.

The fleet proceeded to St. Miguel, when Raleigh was left to watch the roadstead, while Essex pushed inland. While Raleigh lay here, a great Indian carrack of sixteen hundred tons, laden with spices, knowing nothing of the English invasion, blundered into the middle of what she took to be a friendly Spanish fleet. She perceived her mistake just in time to run herself ashore, and disembark her crew. Raleigh at the head of a party of boats attempted to seize her, but her commander set her on fire, and when the Englishmen came close to her she was one dangerous splendour of flaming perfumes and roaring cannon. Raleigh was more fortunate in securing another carrack laden with cochineal from Cuba. The rest of the Islands Voyage was uneventful and ill-managed. For some time nothing was heard of the fleet in England, and Lady Raleigh 'skrebbled,' as she spelt it, hasty notes to Cecil begging for news of her husband. Early in October he came back to England, seriously enfeebled in health. The only one of the commanders who gained any advantage from the Islands Voyage was the one who had undertaken least, Lord Howard of Effingham, who was raised to the earldom of Nottingham.



CHAPTER VI.

LAST DAYS OF ELIZABETH.

A slight anecdote, which is connected with the month of January 1598, must not be omitted here. It gives us an impression of the personal habits of Raleigh at this stage of his career. It was the custom of the Queen to go to bed early, and one winter's evening the Earl of Southampton, Raleigh, and a man named Parker were playing the game of primero in the Presence Chamber, after her Majesty had retired. They laughed and talked rather loudly, upon which Ambrose Willoughby, the Esquire of the Body, came out and desired them not to make so much noise. Raleigh pocketed his money, and went off, but Southampton resented the interference, and in the scuffle that ensued Willoughby pulled out a handful of those marjoram-coloured curls that Shakespeare praised.

It is not easy to see why it was, that in the obscure year 1598, while the star of Essex was setting, that of his natural rival did not burn more brightly. But although now, and for the brief remainder of Elizabeth's life, Raleigh was nominally in favour, the saturnine old woman had no longer any tenderness for her Captain of the Guard. Her old love, her old friendship, had quite passed away. There was no longer any excuse for excluding from her presence so valuable a soldier and so wise a courtier, but her pulses had ceased to thrill at his coming. If Essex had been half so courteous, half so assiduous as Raleigh, she would have opened her arms to him, but she had offended Essex past forgiveness, and his tongue held no parley with her. It must have been in Raleigh's presence—for he it is who has recorded it in the grave pages of his Prerogative of Parliament—that Essex told the Queen 'that her conditions were as crooked as her carcass,' a terrible speech which, as Raleigh says, 'cost him his head.' This was perhaps a little later, in 1600. In 1598 these cruel squabbles were already making life at Court a misery. The Queen kept Raleigh by her, but would give him nothing. In January he applied for the post of Vice-chamberlain, but without success. The new earl, Lord Nottingham, could theatrically wipe the dust from Raleigh's shoes with his cloak, but when Raleigh himself desired to be made a peer, in the spring of 1598, he was met with a direct refusal. He would fain have been Lord Deputy in Ireland, but the Queen declined to spare him. On the last day of August he was in the very act of being sworn on the Privy Council, but at the final moment Cecil frustrated this by saying that if he were made a councillor, he must resign his Captainship of the Guard to Sir George Carew. This was, as Cecil was aware, too great a sacrifice to be thought of, and the hero of Cadiz and Fayal, foiled on every hand, had to submit to remain plain Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight.

As the breach grew between Essex and the Queen, the temper of the former grew more surly. He dropped the semblance of civility to Raleigh. In his Apothegms, Lord Bacon has preserved an amusing anecdote of November 17, 1598. On this day, which was the Queen's sixty-fifth birthday, the leading courtiers, as usual, tilted in the ring in honour of their Liege; the custom of this piece of mock chivalry demanded that each knight should be disguised. It was, however, known that Sir Walter Raleigh would ride in his own uniform of orange tawny medley, trimmed with black budge of lamb's wool. Essex, to vex him, came to the lists with a body-guard of two thousand retainers all dressed in orange tawny, so that Raleigh and his men should seem a fragment of the great Essex following. The story goes on to show that Essex digged a pit and fell into it himself; but enough has been said to prove his malignant intention. We have little else but anecdotes with which to fill up the gap in Raleigh's career between December 1597 and March 1600. This was an exceedingly quiet period in his life, during which we have to fancy him growing more and more at enmity with Essex, and more and more intimate with Cobham.

In September 1598, an unexpected ally, the Duke of Finland, urged Raleigh to undertake once more his attempt to colonise Guiana, and offered twelve ships as his own contingent. Two months later we find that the hint has been taken, and that Sir John Gilbert is 'preparing with all speed to make a voyage to Guiana.' It is said, moreover, that 'he intendeth to inhabit it with English people.' He never started, however, and Raleigh, referring long afterwards to the events of these years, said that though Cecil seemed to encourage him in his West Indian projects, yet that when it came to the point he always, as Raleigh quaintly put it, retired into his back-shop. Meanwhile, the interest felt in Raleigh's narrative was increasing, and in 1599 the well-known geographer Levinus Hulsius brought out in Nuremburg a Latin translation of the Discovery, with five curious plates, including one of the city of Manoa, and another of the Ewaipanoma, or men without heads. The German version of the book and its English reprint in Hakluyt's Navigations belong to the same year. Also in 1599, the Discovery was reproduced in Latin, German, and French by De Bry in the eighth part of his celebrated Collectiones Peregrinationum. This year, then, in which we hardly hear otherwise of Raleigh, marked the height of his success as a geographical writer. So absolutely is the veil drawn over his personal history at this time that the only facts we possess are, that on November 4 Raleigh was lying sick of an ague, and that on December 13 he was still ill.

In the middle of March 1600 Sir Walter and Lady Raleigh left Durham House for Sherborne, taking with them, as a playmate for their son Walter, Sir Robert Cecil's eldest son, William, afterwards the second Earl of Salisbury. On the way down to Dorsetshire, they stopped at Sion House as the guests of the 'Wizard' Earl of Northumberland, a life-long friend of Raleigh's, and presently to be his most intelligent fellow-prisoner in the Tower. From Sherborne, Raleigh wrote on the 6th of April saying frankly that if her Majesty persisted in excluding him from every sort of preferment, 'I must begin to keep sheep betime.' He hinted in the same letter that he would accept the Governorship of Jersey, which was expected to fall vacant. The friendship with Lord Cobham has now become quite ardent, and Lady Raleigh vies with her husband in urging him to pay Sherborne a visit. Later on in April the Raleighs went to Bath apparently for no other reason than to meet Cobham there. Here is a curious note from Raleigh to the most dangerous of his associates, written from Bath on April 29, 1600:

Here we attend you and have done this sevennight, and we still mourn your absence, the rather because we fear that your mind is changed. I pray let us hear from you at least, for if you come not we will go hereby home, and make but short tarrying here. My wife will despair ever to see you in these parts, if your Lordship come not now. We can but long for you and wish you as our own lives whatsoever.

Your Lordship's everest faithful, to honour you most,

W. RALEGH.

Raleigh's absence from Court was so lengthy, that it was whispered in the early summer that he was in disgrace, that the Queen had called him 'something worse than cat or dog,' namely, 'fox.' The absurdity of this was proved early in July by his being hurriedly called to town to accompany Cobham and Northumberland on their brief and fruitless visit to Ostend. The friends started from Sandwich on July 11, and were received in the Low Countries by Lord Grey; they were entertained at Ostend with extraordinary respect, but they gained nothing of political or diplomatic value. Affairs in Ireland, connected with the Spanish invasion, occupied Raleigh's mind and pen during this autumn, but he paid no visit to his Munster estates. There were plots and counterplots developing in various parts of these islands in the autumn of 1600, but with none of these subterranean activities is Raleigh for the present to be identified.

When Sir Anthony Paulet died, on August 26, 1600, Raleigh had the satisfaction of succeeding him in the Governorship of Jersey. He had asked for the reversion of this post, and none could be found more appropriate to his powers or circumstances. It gave him once more the opportunity to cultivate his restless energy, to fly hither and thither by sea and land, and to harry the English Channel for Spaniards as a terrier watches a haystack for rats. Weymouth, which was the English postal port for Jersey, was also the natural harbour of Sherborne, and Raleigh had been accustomed, as it was, to keep more than one vessel there. The appointment in Jersey was combined with a gift of the manor of St. Germain in that island, but the Queen thought it right, in consideration of this present, to strike off three hundred pounds from the Governor's salary. Cecil was Raleigh's guest at Sherborne when the appointment was made, and Raleigh waited until he left before starting for his new charge; all this time young William Cecil continued at Sherborne for his health. At last, late in September, Sir Walter and Lady Raleigh went down to Weymouth, and took with them their little son Walter, now about six years old. The day was very fine, and the mother and son saw the new Governor on board his ship. He was kept at sea forty-eight hours by contrary winds, but reached Jersey at last on an October morning.