America -- Early accounts to 1600; El Dorado; Guiana -- Discovery and exploration
But it shall be found a weak policy in me, either to betray myself or
my country with imaginations; neither am I so far in love with that
lodging, watching, care, peril, diseases, ill savours, bad fare, and
many other mischiefs that accompany these voyages, as to woo myself
again into any of them, were I not assured that the sun covereth not
so much riches in any part of the earth. Captain Whiddon, and our
chirurgeon, Nicholas Millechamp, brought me a kind of stones like
sapphires; what they may prove I know not. I shewed them to some of the
Orenoqueponi, and they promised to bring me to a mountain that had of
them very large pieces growing diamond-wise; whether it be crystal of
the mountain, Bristol diamond, or sapphire, I do not yet know, but
I hope the best; sure I am that the place is as likely as those from
whence all the rich stones are brought, and in the same height or very
near. On the left hand of this river Caroli are seated those nations
which I called Iwarawaqueri before remembered, which are enemies to the
Epuremei; and on the head of it, adjoining to the great lake Cassipa,
are situated those other nations which also resist Inga, and the
Epuremei, called Cassipagotos, Eparegotos, and Arawagotos. I farther
understood that this lake of Cassipa is so large, as it is above one
day's journey for one of their canoas, to cross, which may be some forty
miles; and that thereinto fall divers rivers, and that great store of
grains of gold are found in the summer time when the lake falleth by the
banks, in those branches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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