Indian interpreter whom he had brought out of England. "I made them understand that I was the servant of a queen who was the great Cassiqui of the north, and a virgin, and had more Cassiqui under her than there were trees in their island; that she was an enemy to the Castellans in respect of their tyranny and oppression, and that she delivered all such nations about her as were by them oppressed; and having freed all the coast of the northern world from their servitude had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest. I showed them Her Majesty's picture, which they so admired and honoured as it had been easy to have brought them idolatrous thereof.... They now call her Ezrabeta Cassipuna Aquerewana." That was his policy always with the natives. The Spaniards desired immediate wealth, which they wrung from the Indians by all means in their power; Ralegh desired a new English kingdom, and knew that for his purpose the aid of the Indians was invaluable. And accordingly wherever he went he was always at the utmost pains to conciliate them with presents and carefully sought expressions of regard and good will. The Indian chieftains fell under the spell of his personality in the same way as the Irish rebel and his Spanish prisoner, or, indeed, any one over whom he sought from the first moment of acquaintance to exercise influence. To estimate at its proper value the gigantic proportions of the task which Ralegh had sailed some thousand miles to achieve, it is necessary to remember something of the geography of the country which is now called Venezuela, and the innumerable rivers which there flow into the sea, forming a complicated network. Having at length discovered from Berreo and the natives as much as he could about the lie of the land--that is to say, about a quarter of that which an intelligent Council School teacher could have told him in ten minutes at the present day--Ralegh started up the river to Guiana, "resolving," as he puts it, "to make trial of all, whatsoever happened." He sent ships to reconnoitre and take soundings. Captain Calfield in his bark and the vice-admiral George Gifford in the _Lion's Whelp_ eastward to the mouth of the river called Capuri; King, master of the _Lion's Whelp_ in his ship's boat to try another branch of the river in the bottom of the bay of Guanipa, and to see if there was water enough to admit the passage of a small ship. This branch was called the Amana; but it, like the other, presented the same difficulties. The rush of water was dangerous for a small boat, and the shallowness prevented the use of a ship. King could only make hurried investigations, because his Indian guide assured him that the natives of Guanipa, who were cannibals, might any moment attack them, and that the attack would be terrible, for they paddled swiftly in canoes and shot poisoned arrows with deadly effect.