The Discovery of Guiana

ll with the good, and belike the said alderman was not presented with the best, it hath pleased him therefore to scandal all the rest, and to deface the enterprise as much as in him lieth. It hath also been concluded by divers that if there had been any such ore in Guiana, and the same discovered, that I would have brought home a greater quantity thereof. First, I was not bound to satisfy any man of the quantity, but only such as adventured, if any store had been returned thereof; but it is very true that had all their mountains been of massy gold it was impossible for us to have made any longer stay to have wrought the same; and whosoever hath seen with what strength of stone the best gold ore is environed, he will not think it easy to be had out in heaps, and especially by us, who had neither men, instruments, nor time, as it is said before, to perform the same.

There were on this discovery no less than an hundred persons, who can all witness that when we passed any branch of the river to view the la