Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 15.djvu/19

 seemeth to be all barred ouer with smal plates somewhat like to a Rinoceros, with a white horne growing in his hinder parts, as bigge as a great hunting horne, which they vse to winde in stead of a trumpet. Monardus writeth that a little of the powder of that horne put into the eare, cureth deafenesse.

After this olde King had rested a while in a little tent, that I caused to bee set vp, I beganne by my interpreter to discourse with him of the death of Morequito his predecessour, and afterward of the Spaniards, and ere I went any farther I made him knowe the cause of my comming thither, whose seruant I was, and that the Queenes pleasure was, I should vndertake the voyage for their defence, and to deliuer them from the tyrannie of the Spaniards, dilating at large, (as I had done before to those of Trinidad) her Maiesties greatnesse, her iustice, her charitie to all oppressed nations, with as many of the rest of her beauties and vertues, as either I could expresse, or they conceiue: all which being with great admiration attentiuely heard, and marueilously admired, I beganne to sound the olde man as touching Guiana, and the state thereof, what sort of common wealth it was, how gouerned, of what strength and policie, howe farre it extended, and what nations were friendes or enemies adioyning, and finally of the distance and way to enter the same: hee tolde mee that himselfe and his people with all those downe the Riuer towards the Sea, as farre as Emeria, the prouince of Carapana, were of Guiana, but that they called themselues Orenoqueponi, and that all the nations betweene the riuer and those mountaines in sight called Wacarima, were of the same cast and appellation: and that on the other side of those mountaines of Wacarima there was a large plaine (which after I discouered in my returne) called the valley of Amariocapana, in all that valley the people were also of the ancient Guianians.

I asked what nations those were which inhabited on the farther side of those mountaines, beyond the valley of Amariocapana: hee answered with a great sigh (as a man which had inward feeling of the losse of his Countrey and libertie, especially for that his eldest sonne was slaine in a battell on that side of the mountaines, whom hee most entirely loued) that he remembred in his fathers life time when hee was very olde, and himselfe a yong man, that there came downe into that large valley of Guiana, a nation from so farre off as the Sunne slept, (for such were his owne wordes) with so great a multitude as