"Having Berreo my prisoner, I gathered from him as much of Guiana as he knew. This Berreo is a gentleman well descended and had long served the Spanish King in Milan, Naples, the Low Countries, and elsewhere, 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 well knew the importance of such knowledge to Ralegh; for he had spread reports far and wide among the Indians that the English meant them the deadliest mischief, and he had announced that any native found to have had any intercourse with the English would be forthwith hanged. But Berreo, an old man, was constrained to give a full account of his journey; and Ralegh's narrative of his own expedition is punctuated by what Berreo saw and heard, and conjectured, and by repeated corroboration of Berreo's statements. Ralegh must have smiled to himself when the old man so far relented towards him as even to beg him not to venture his life and the lives of the company in attempting a task which had proved too much for his own capability. There must have been a singular mingling of affection and cunning in the petition. "Berreo," writes Ralegh, "Berreo was stricken into a great melancholy and sadness, and used all the arguments he could to dissuade me, and also assured the gentlemen of my company that it would be labour lost, and that they should suffer many miseries if they proceeded." And he went on to explain the nature of the difficulties, how the mouths of the rivers were sandy and full of flats, which could only be entered in the smallest boats; how the current ran swift and strong; how the natives were hostile, and how the kings of the natives had decreed that none should trade with the English for gold, "because the same would be their own overthrow, and that for the love of gold the Christians meant to conquer and dispossess them of all together." To which Ralegh adds drily, "Many and the most of these I found to be true." Naturally he did not let experience alone prove the truth of his valiant prisoner's statements. He called all the captains of the island together that were enemies to the Spaniards and conversed with them by means of an