Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 15.djvu/23

 that the rebound of water made it seeme, as if it had bene all couered ouer with a great shower of raine: and in some places wee tooke it at the first for a smoke that had risen ouer some great towne. For mine owne part I was well perswaded from thence to haue returned, being a very ill footeman, but the rest were all so desirous to goe neere the saide strange thunder of waters, as they drew me on by little and little, till wee came into the next valley where we might better discerne the same.

I neuer saw a more beautifull countrey, nor more liuely prospects, hils so raised here and there ouer the valleys, the riuer winding into diuers branches, the plaines adioyning without bush or stubble, all faire greene grasse, the ground of hard sand easie to march on, either for horse or foote, the deere crossing in euery path, the birdes towards the euening singing on euery tree with a thousand seuerall tunes, cranes and herons of white crimson, and carnation pearching in the riuers side, the aire fresh with a gentle Easterly winde, euery stone that we stouped to take vp, promised either golde or siluer by his complexion.

Your Lordship shall see of many sorts, and I hope some of them cannot bee bettered vnder the Sunne, and yet we had no means but our daggers and fingers to teare them out here and there, the rockes being most hard of that minerall Sparre aforesaid, which is like a flint, and is altogether as hard or harder, and besides the veines lye a fathome or two deepe in the rockes. But we wanted all things requisite saue onely our desires and good will to haue performed more if it had pleased God. To be short, when both our companies returned, each of them brought also seuerall sorts of stones that appeared very faire, but were such as they found loose on the ground, and were for the most part but coloured, and had not any golde fixed in them, yet such as had no iudgement or experience kept al that glistered, and would not be perswaded but it was rich because of the lustre, and brought of those, and of Marquesite with all, from Trinidad, and haue deliuered of those stones to be tried in many places, and haue thereby bred an opinion that all the rest is of the same: yet some of these stones I shewed afterward to a Spaniard of the Caracas, who tolde mee that it was El Madre del oro, that is the mother of golde, and that the Mine was further in the ground.

But it shall be found a weake policie in me, either to betray my selfe, or my countrey with imaginations, neither am I so farr