America -- Early accounts to 1600; El Dorado; Guiana -- Discovery and exploration
After Hernandez de Serpa, it was undertaken by the Adelantado, Don
Gonzalez Ximenes de Quesada, who was one of the chiefest in the conquest
of Nuevo Reyno, whose daughter and heir Don Antonio de Berreo married.
Gonzalez sought the passage also by the river called Papamene, which
riseth by Quito, in Peru, and runneth south-east 100 leagues, and then
falleth into Amazons. But he also, failing the entrance, returned with
the loss of much labour and cost. I took one Captain George, a Spaniard,
that followed Gonzalez in this enterprise. Gonzalez gave his daughter to
Berreo, taking his oath and honour to follow the enterprise to the last
of his substance and life. Who since, as he hath sworn to me, hath spent
300,000 ducats in the same, and yet never could enter so far into the
land as myself with that poor troop, or rather a handful of men, being
in all about 100 gentlemen, soldiers, rowers, boat-keepers, boys, and of
all sorts; neither could any of the forepassed undertakers, nor Berreo
himself, discover the country, till now lately by conference with an
ancient king, called Carapana (Caribana, Carib land, was an old European
name for the Atlantic coast near the mouth of the Orinoco, and hence was
applied to one of its chiefs. Berrio called this district "Emeria"),
he got the true light thereof. For Berreo came about 1,500 miles ere he
understood aught, or could find any passage or entrance into any part
thereof; yet he had experience of all these fore-named, and divers
others, and was persuaded of their errors and mistakings. Berreo sought
it by the river Cassanar, which falleth into a great river called Pato:
Pato falleth into Meta, and Meta into Baraquan, which is also called
Orenoque. He took his journey from Nuevo Reyno de Granada, where he
dwelt, having the inheritance of Gonzalez Ximenes in those parts; he was
followed with 700 horse, he drove with him 1,000 head of cattle, he had
also many women, Indians, and slaves. How all these rivers cross and
encounter, how the country lieth and is bordered, the passage of Ximenes
and Berreo, mine own discovery, and the way that I entered, with all the
rest of the nations and rivers, your lordship shall receive in a large
chart or map, which I have not yet finished, and which I shall most
humbly pray your lordship to secrete, and not to suffer it to pass
your own hands; for by a draught thereof all may be prevented by other
nations; for I know it is this very year sought by the French, although
by the way that they now take, I fear it not much. It was also told me
ere I departed England, that Villiers, the Admiral, was in preparation
for the planting of Amazons, to which river the French have made divers
voyages, and returned much gold and other rarities. I spake with a
captain of a French ship that came from thence, his ship riding in
Falmouth the same year that my ships came first from Virginia; there was
another this year in Helford, that also came from thence, and had been
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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