The Discovery of Guiana is a book by Sir Walter Raleigh, who wrote this account one year after his 1595 journey to Guiana, the Venezuelan region of Guayana. He also visited Trinidad. The book includes some material of a factual nature, but postulates the existence of a gold-rich civilisation (El Dorado) on the basis of little evidence.
As was common practice in this time period, The Discovery of Guiana was not the actual name at the time of its publication. It was actually called The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado). [1] However, today it is generally simply referred to as The Discovery of Guiana. [2]
After enjoying several years of high esteem from Queen Elizabeth I, which stemmed in part from his previous exploits at sea, Raleigh suffered a short imprisonment for secretly marrying one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. [3] In an attempt to bring himself back into favour, Raleigh sailed to Guiana in 1595, hoping to find gold and other material to exchange or extort. One modern scholar remarks of this journey, "Although the expedition itself was hardly a success—Raleigh conquered no lands, found no stores of wealth, and discovered little not observed by earlier adventurers—he created a triumph for himself by publishing The Discovery." [4]
He returned to Guiana one more time, in 1617, this time after a twelve-year imprisonment at the hands of King James I. Unfortunately for Raleigh, this adventure did not yield more gold, nor did it yield a published account, likely since he was arrested soon after returning, and sentenced to death. [3]
There are gold deposits in Venezuela, but Raleigh appears to have exaggerated how easy it was for him to find gold there.
Raleigh having promised Queen Elizabeth a "gold-rich empire more lucrative than Peru." [5] King James was probably a little more willing to temporarily forgive Raleigh's charge of treason to see if he could find the place he had claimed to have found, and make it profitable. But the scholar argues that this came from Raleigh's prodigious literary skill, wherein he was able to make it sound like he had found much gold, but without ever saying or relating the precise finding of it, or bringing anything back. [5]
On the second voyage, Raleigh's men, under the command of Lawrence Keymis, attacked the Spanish on the river Orinoco on 1617–18. At Raleigh's subsequent trial, he was not only tried for treason against the crown for disobeying King James I's orders to avoid engaging in combat with the Spanish, [3] but, argues one scholar, also for essentially lying about the abundance of gold to be had in Guiana. [5] [6]
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Sir Walter Raleigh was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebellion in Ireland, helped defend England against the Spanish Armada and held political positions under Elizabeth I.
El Dorado, is commonly associated with the legend of a gold city, kingdom, or empire. Originally, El Hombre Dorado or El Rey Dorado, was the term used by the Spanish in the 16th century to describe a mythical tribal chief (zipa) or king of the Muisca people, an indigenous people of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense of Colombia, who as an initiation rite, covered himself with gold dust and submerged in Lake Guatavita.
Sir Ralph Lane was an English explorer of the Elizabethan era. He helped colonise the Kingdom of Ireland in 1583 and was sheriff of County Kerry, Ireland, from 1583 to 1585. He was part of the unsuccessful attempt in 1585 to colonise Roanoke Island, North Carolina. He was knighted by the Queen in 1593.
The Guianas, sometimes called by the Spanish loan-word Guayanas, is a region in north-eastern South America which includes the following three territories:
Oyapoc was a short-lived English settlement in French Guiana on the Oyapock river. Charles Leigh had visited the area in 1602, and considered it suitable for a colony. On returning, he assembled a crew of 46 people and embarked on the Olive Plant. The settlers planned to look for gold in the area. They set sail on 21 March 1604, and arrived in Oyapoc on 22 May 1604 taking possession of the country "in the eyes of the Indians." Leigh gave the name Caroleigh River to the Wiapoco. He dubbed the settlement Oliveleighe, and the principal site for settlement was called Principium or Mount Howard. The Olive Plant was sent back, and thirty-five men and boys remained at the settlement. Upon begging his brother, Sir Oleph, for reinforcements, The Olive Plant returned, renamed The Phoenix, to find the settlement in "a rather critical position." The settlers experienced mutiny, and a raid by Caribs from the Cayenne River. On 31 May 1606, the remaining settlers left on the Hope.
The Loss of El Dorado, by the Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul, is a history book about Venezuela and Trinidad. It was published in 1969. The title refers to the El Dorado legend.
A treasure map is a map that marks the location of buried treasure, a lost mine, a valuable secret or a hidden locale. More common in fiction than in reality, "pirate treasure maps" are often depicted in works of fiction as hand drawn and containing arcane clues for the characters to follow. Regardless of the term's literary use, anything that meets the broad definition of a "map" that describes the location of a "treasure" could appropriately be called a "treasure map."
The historical record in North America begins in the second half of the 16th century, with ongoing European exploration.
Events from the 1610s in England.
Lake Parime or Lake Parima is a legendary lake located in South America. It was reputedly the location of the fabled city of El Dorado, also known as Manoa, much sought-after by European explorers. Repeated attempts to find the lake failed to confirm its existence, and it was dismissed as a myth along with the city. The search for Lake Parime led explorers to map the rivers and other features of southern Venezuela, northern Brazil, and southwestern Guyana before the lake's existence was definitively disproved in the early 19th century. Some explorers proposed that the seasonal flooding of the Rupununi savannah may have been misidentified as a lake. Recent geological investigations suggest that a lake may have existed in northern Brazil, but that it dried up some time in the 18th century. Both "Manoa" and "Parime" are believed to mean "big lake".
The Islands Voyage, also known as the Essex-Raleigh Expedition, was an ambitious, but unsuccessful naval campaign sent by Queen Elizabeth I of England, and supported by the United Provinces, against the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire of Philip II from the House of Habsburg during the Anglo–Spanish War (1585–1604) and the Eighty Years' War.
The year 1595 in science and technology involved some significant events, some of which are listed here.
Lawrence Kemys or Keymis was an English seaman and companion of Sir Walter Raleigh in his expeditions to Guiana in 1595 and 1617–18.
Arthur Barlowe was one of two British captains who, under the direction of Sir Walter Raleigh, left England in 1584 to find land in North America to claim for Queen Elizabeth I of England. His account survives in a letter written to Raleigh as a report on their journey. It is one of the earliest detailed English commercial reports written from direct observation about any place in North America and has been called "one of the clearest contemporary pictures of the contact of Europeans with North American Indians."
Sir Lewis Stucley (1574–1620) lord of the manor of Affeton in Devon, was Vice-Admiral of Devonshire. He was guardian of Thomas Rolfe, and a main opponent of Sir Walter Raleigh in his last days. Stucley's reputation is equivocal; popular opinion at the time idealised Raleigh, and to the public he was Sir "Judas" Stucley.
Roger North was an English colonial projector.
Philip Amadas (1550–1618) was a naval commander and explorer in Elizabethan England. Little is known from his early life, but he grew up within a wealthy merchant family in southwestern England. Amadas was instrumental in the early years of the English colonisation of North America. He served alongside Arthur Barlowe in the 1584 exploratory voyage to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Leaving on 27 April 1584, he captained the Bark Ralegh with Simon Fernandes as his master and pilot on the voyage. Fernandes is best known for his controversial decision to maroon the colonists of the infamous "Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island in 1587. The voyage of 1584 determined Roanoke Island as the location for the future colonies under the leadership of Sir Walter Raleigh. For his role in the Roanoke voyages of 1584 and 1585, Amadas was nominated Admiral of Virginia by Raleigh in 1585. When he returned to England to report their findings, the Queen named the country after herself, Virginia.
The Preston–Somers expedition, or the Capture of Caracas, was a series of military actions that took place from late May until the end of July 1595 during the Anglo-Spanish War. The English expedition headed by George Somers and Amyas Preston sailed to the Spanish Main initially intending to support Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition which set out at the same time.
Raleigh's El Dorado expedition, also known as Raleigh's first voyage to Guiana, was an English military and exploratory expedition led by Sir Walter Raleigh that took place during the Anglo-Spanish War in 1595. The expedition set out in February 1595 to explore the Orinoco River on the northeast tip of South America in an attempt to find the fabled city of El Dorado.
Antonio de Berrío, was a Spanish soldier, governor and explorer in Colonial America.
