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He now decided to seek Guiana and its fairyland of gold. A small vessel was sent in advance, under command of Raleigh’s friend, Jacob Whiddon, to feel the way and explore the mouth of the Orinoco, which was deemed to be the gateway to the golden realm. Whiddon stopped at Trinidad, and found Berreo, then its governor, very kindly and cordial. Whiddon’s report made Raleigh more eager than ever.
How all these rivers cross and encounter, how the country lieth and is bordered, the passage of Ximenes and Berreo, mine own discovery, and the way that I entered, with all the rest of the nations and rivers, your lordship shall receive in a large chart or map, which I have not yet finished, and which I shall most humbly pray your lordship to secrete, and not to suffer it to pass your own hands; for by a draught thereof all may be prevented by other nations; for I know it is this very year sought by the French, although by the way that they now take, I fear it not much.
Well, sir, she had all of mine and more; and when all was gone in wine and dice, woodcocks' brains and ortolans' tongues, I met the witch walking with another man. No, it is not! I'll have that El Dorado yet! the Adelantado made Berreo, when he gave him his daughter, swear that he would hunt for it, through life and death.
And this is all that remains of the once beautiful, deft, and happy Indians of Trinidad, unless, indeed, some of them, warned by the fate of the Indians of San Josef and the Northern Mountains, fled from such tyrants as Juan Bono and Berreo across the Gulf of Paria, and, rejoining their kinsmen on the mainland, gladly forgot the sight of that Cross which was to them the emblem, not of salvation, but of destruction.
After I had displanted Don Antonio de Berreo, who was upon the same enterprise, leaving my ships at Trinidad, at the port called Curiapan, I wandered 400 miles into the said country by land and river; the particulars I will leave to the following discourse. The country hath more quantity of gold, by manifold, than the best parts of the Indies, or Peru.
He then attacked, not, by his own confession, without something too like treachery, the new town of San Jose, takes Berreo prisoner, and delivers from captivity five caciques, whom Berreo kept bound in one chain, 'basting their bodies with burning bacon' an old trick of the Conquistadores to make them discover their gold.
We then hasted away towards our purposed discovery, and first I called all the captains of the island together that were enemies to the Spaniards; for there were some which Berreo had brought out of other countries, and planted there to eat out and waste those that were natural of the place.
The island of Trinidad was at that time governed by Don Antonio de Berreo, who, it is said, had obtained accurate information concerning Guiana.
But as Raleigh and such as he went their way, Berreo and such as he seem to have gone their way also. The 'Conquistadores, the offscourings not only of Spain but of South Germany, and indeed of every Roman Catholic country in Europe, met the same fate as befell, if monk chroniclers are to be trusted, the great majority of the Normans who fought at Hastings.
"You spoke kindly of them in your History," said the other, "when you praised their patient virtue." "Did I? I have forgot. Nay, I remember. When I wrote that sentence I was thinking of Berreo. I loved him, though I took his city. He was a valiant and liberal gentleman, and of a great heart. I mind how I combated his melancholy, for he was most melancholic. But now I have grown like him.
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