With unquenchable hopefulness Raleigh continued his quest for the Lost Colony to the close of Elizabeth’s reign, and abandoned it only when forced to do so by the attainder of James stripping him of his rights and liberty. By Elizabeth’s last year he had fitted out at his own charges five several expeditions solely for this purpose. While during this period, 1589–1603, his marvellous energies had been directed in many channels, he had remitted no efforts for the succour of his colonists. While performing many parts,—courtier, captain of the queen’s guard, statesman, member of parliament, mariner, sea-fighter, explorer, gold seeker,—and with varying fortunes, now falling under the queen’s displeasure, imprisoned in the Tower of London, again restored to her favour, engaged in dazzling adventure, American colonization was ever paramount in his thoughts. [Illustration: A SPANISH GALLEON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.] And how crowded with extraordinary activities by this most versatile of the Elizabethan men these years were, the record of his greater achievements, mostly chronicled in the _Principal Navigations_, shows. What he had done up to the time of White’s abandonment of the search for the Lost Colony in 1590 we have seen. In 1591 he was the organizer of a fleet for service against Spain’s American possessions, and was appointed second in command under Lord Thomas Howard. But the queen refusing to let him go out, his cousin Sir Richard Grenville was appointed in his place; and with this expedition Sir Richard’s career closed, he being wounded to death when off the Azores, the last of August, in one of the most stubborn and desperate sea-fights of naval history. The next year, 1592, Raleigh promoted the privateering expedition under Frobisher and Burroughs which captured, among other prizes in the West Indies, the “Madre de Dios,” greatest of the Spanish treasure-ships then afloat. It was in this year, in July, that he was disgraced and sent to the Tower, but in October, when the privateers had returned with their rich prize, the queen, who had the largest share in this privateering venture, released him, since he alone could superintend the division of the plunder. In 1593 he matured a plan for a voyage to the “Empire of Guiana” and the fabled “El Dorado,” the “citie of gold,” in the unexplored northwestern part of South America, of which the natives had told Spanish travellers, with mines far excelling those of Peru. In 1594, in accordance with this plan, he sent out a preliminary expedition, under an experienced navigator, Captain Jacob Whiddon, to explore the coast contiguous to the great River Orinoco, and also the river with its tributaries, above which “El Dorado,” or “Manoa” as called by the Indians, was supposed to lie. In 1595 he sailed himself for Guiana at the head of a fleet of five ships and a company of one hundred officers, soldiers, and gentlemen adventurers. By a perilous