Then they determined to hang the very old man, their pilot. But the river began to narrow. It became so narrow that the trees with which either bank was thickly covered touched branches across the water, and they were obliged to draw their swords and cut a passage through. "We were very desirous to find this town, hoping of a feast, because we made but a short breakfast aboard the galley in the morning, and it was now eight o'clock at night and our stomachs began to gnaw apace." At last they saw a light, heard the dogs of the village bark, and one hour after midnight they arrived. The old pilot had not deceived them in any way. They found good store of hens, bread, fish, and Indian drink. Meanwhile the company which was left behind in the galley, fearing that some mishap must have come to the wherries, sent out a party after them in the ship's boat of the _Lion's Whelp_, under Captain Whiddon. But Ralegh was so pleased with the prospect which the morning light disclosed to his view, that he had rowed some forty miles farther on. For no longer was the country beshrubbed with thorns and thickets and closely growing trees. Great plains, twenty miles in length, covered with fair green grass spread out before him, "and in divers parts groves of trees by themselves (he writes with his keen eye for effects of landscape), as if they had been by all the art and labour in the world so made of purpose, and still as we rowed the deer came down, feeding by the water's side, as if they had been used to a keeper's call." But all was not beautiful and quiet. In the river swam fishes of a monstrous size, and thousands of ugly serpents, called lagartos. A negro, a very proper young fellow, leapt from Ralegh's barge to swim to the shore, and in the sight of all the men, one of these lagartos ate him. Those monstrous serpents are now called alligators.