Drie scheeps-togten na het goud-rijke koningrijk Guiana, in America geleegen, door den Engelssen ridder Wal...

OF WALTHER RALEGH.

1595

The journey undertaken with small vessels.

...the large ships through. Therefore, it was decided to risk the journey with various small vessels and boats, along with 100 men and a month’s worth of provisions. Pressing forward, we could learn no other way from Berreo than that we had to set against the running waters, against the wind, such that it was as if impossible to overcome it. For we had to set across the sea as far as Calais is from Dover, and with such headwinds that one was forced with the small vessels to keep before the wind, which were then driven toward the Bay of Guanipa to reach, from there, the mouth of a river previously discovered by Jan Douglas an English explorer/mariner. Having thus sailed to the fourth day, we arrived at a place where the water neither ebbed nor flowed. We could possibly have wandered in these straying currents for an entire year had we not been extricated in such a manner, as nowhere in the entire world do so many rivers and streams run into one another, so that one does not know where one has to turn.

Inconvenience of the rivers.

When we then wanted to take our course according to the movement of the sun or our compass, we came under a multitude of islands that were all covered with such high trees that one could not see out because of them.

See an Indian vessel, which is overtaken.

It was then on the 22nd of May that we saw an Indian vessel from afar, in which were 3 of these natives, which were overtaken by a vessel in which were 8 men, before they could enter the river. Meanwhile, the other Indians remained standing on the shore under the trees, watching how it would end for the 3 of their countrymen; when they saw, however, that one did them no harm nor took anything out of their vessel, they came running toward the shore and wanted to trade with us.