Briefly, Captain (afterwards Sir Amyas) Preston and Captain Sommers, after putting Cumaná to ransom, landed on the Carácas coast and captured a small fort, presumably near Naiguatá. Finding the Governor of the fort asleep in the forest, they learned that the inhabitants of Carácas had heard of the arrival of the corsairs, and were preparing to meet them on the main road over the mountains from La Guaira. The fugitive, whose name is given as Villalpando, was induced to act as guide along the “Indian Way” to the city, which Preston entered on May 29th, after a difficult journey through forests and over mountains. The only Spaniard found in the place was an old gentleman, Don Alonso Andrea de Ledesma, who gallantly tried to repel the invaders single-handed. The Englishmen had orders to spare him for his chivalry, but his refusal to accept defeat led to his death, and he was interred with honour by his foes. Meanwhile messengers were carrying the news to the troops in the pass on the La Guaira road, who returned to find such valuables as they had left in the city gone with the invaders by the supposedly unknown Indian way. Preston continued his way to Coro, found nothing there and burned the town, and finally returned to England on September 10, 1595. Here we must go back for a year or two to follow the course of events in the east and south. In 1591 Don Antonio de Berrio y Oruña was appointed Governor of Trinidad and the Orinoco, and very shortly after his arrival he gave evidence of his energetic spirit by crossing to the mainland and founding there the city of San Thomé de la Guayana, east of the mouth of the Caroni, where the castle of Guayana Vieja stands to this day.[5] In 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh first visited these regions of Guayana or Guiana, described so fully in his famous book. On his way he took Berrio prisoner in Trinidad, but afterwards released him. [Illustration: BARQUISIMETO.] Both men, clever and energetic as they were, rapidly became fascinated by the stories of Manoa, the city of El Dorado, which were being handed on from one narrator to another, and losing nothing, by repetition; the fabled wealth of the Golden Inca was eventually the cause of the death of both. In 1615 Berrio led an expedition southward from San Thomé, but he at length returned unsuccessful, with only thirty of his three hundred men, and himself died of fever shortly afterwards. His son, Don Fernando de Berrio, took charge temporarily, but was soon removed to Santa Fé de Bogotá, as Viceroy of the New Kingdom of Granada, into which Venezuela was now incorporated. Raleigh’s final expedition in 1618 captured the fortress of San Thomé, but this and other encounters with the Spanish colonists, who, owing to a misunderstanding, appear to have commenced the attacks, led to his execution by the poltroon James I. to appease the wrath of Spain. Thus the fable of Manoa remained alive for two centuries more till finally exposed by Humboldt.