Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/118

Rh mention by Pedro Simon of Aguirre's having met a cannibal tribe, the Arnaquinas. In fact, the Arekainas, thorough-going cannibals, now dwell on the Upper Rio Negro. On the other side are the facts that the Falls of the Orinoco are not mentioned in the few meagre accounts we have of the further course of the expedition, and that the torrent at Atures and Maypures, and even below, was hardly navigable for the brigantines although, according to Simon, they were "as strongly built as ships of three hundred tons." But whether through the Orinoco or the Amazon, it seems to be certain that Aguirre with his two vessels reached the ocean on the first day of July, 1561.

With the murder of Guzman, Aguirre obtained supreme authority; and the compressed narrative of the voyage down the river to its mouth and into the ocean, which lasted not quite three months, gives us but little else than accounts of the Biscayan's behavior in the exercise of unlimited power. His whole course was intended to establish this power, and since he was burdened with guilt and crime, and guilt and crime alone bound his men to him, doubt and suspicion of his own people were his predominant feelings. At least eight of the Marañones fell victims to these feelings in the course of three months; and every new crime attached the rest, by the sense of common guilt, more closely to their leader, who, like an evil spirit, led them, with an iron will, to further crimes. No one dared to speak or hardly to think of the dorado; the men were permitted to entertain but one thought—that of the conquest of Peru.