His restoration to favor precluded any further prosecution of his designs on Guiana during the reign of Elizabeth. He was imprisoned for thirteen years during the reign of James, her successor, for the crime of high-treason and supposed participation in the plot to place Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne. In 1617, he equipped a fleet of thirteen vessels in which to proceed to Guiana for the purpose of again seeking El Dorado. The fleet arrived in safety, but Raleigh was too unwell to ascend the Orinoco in person. Captain Keymis led the exploring party, and, upon being compelled to return to the ship without success, and with the news of the death in battle of Sir Walter's eldest son, committed suicide. Raleigh sailed to Newfoundland to victual and refit; but a mutiny of the crews forced him to return to England, where he was beheaded for the crime already punished by thirteen years' confinement. Modern historians and travellers, and men of judgment and intelligence who have inhabited the regions at the mouth of the Orinoco, have not hesitated to avow their opinion that the story of El Dorado is not without some sort of foundation in fact. Humboldt accounts for it geologically, and holds the ardent imagination of the Indians to be answerable for the fable. He conjectures that there may be islands and rocks of micaslate and talc in and around Lake Parima, which, reflecting from their surfaces and angles the glowing rays of the sun, may have been transformed by the extravagant fancy of the natives into the gorgeous temples and palaces of a gilded metropolis. He attempted to penetrate to the spot, but was prevented by a tribe of Indian dwarfs. No European has ever yet visited this celebrated locality: its great distance from the sea, the trackless forests, the wild beasts and barbarian inhabitants, have repelled both the conqueror and the explorer, so that it is not known to this day what degree or what kind of authority exists for the extraordinary story in question. But, inasmuch as Cortez passed within ten miles of the wonderful city of Copan without hearing of it, the supposition that there may be aboriginal cities in the unexplored regions of South America, affording, perhaps, basis sufficient for the tale of El Dorado without its exaggerations, is neither impossible nor improbable. The magnificent ruins lately discovered in Yucatan, where they were not expected, seem to argue the existence of others in regions where positive and persistent tradition has located them. [Illustration: NATIVE OF THE SOLOMON ISLANDS.] CHAPTER XXX. DISCOVERY OF THE SOLOMON ISLANDS BY MENDANA--HE SEEKS FOR THEM AGAIN THIRTY YEARS LATER--QUIROS--THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS--THE WOMEN COMPARED WITH THOSE OF LIMA--STRANGE FRUITS--CONVERSIONS TO CHRISTIANITY--ARDUOUS VOYAGE--SANTA CRUZ--MENDANA EXCHANGES NAMES WITH MALOPÉ--HOSTILITIES--WAR, AND ITS RESULTS--DEATH OF MENDANA--QUIROS CONDUCTS THE SHIPS TO MANILLA.