served them for to march; and where otherwise, he was driven to embark them in boats which he builded for the purpose, and so came with the current down the river of Meta, and so into Baraquan.  After he entered that great and mighty river, he began daily to lose of his companies both men and horse; for it is in many places violently swift, and hath forcible eddies, many sands, and divers islands sharp pointed with rocks.  But after one whole year, journeying for the most part by river, and the rest by land, he grew daily to fewer numbers; from both by sickness, and by encountering with the people of those regions through which he travelled, his companies were much wasted, especially by divers encounters with the Amapaians (Amapaia was Berrio’s name for the Orinoco valley above the Caura river).  And in all this time he never could learn of any passage into Guiana, nor any news or fame thereof, until he came to a further border of the said Amapaia, eight days’ journey from the river Caroli (the Caroni river, the first great affluent of the Orinoco on the south, about 180 miles from the sea), which was the furthest river that he entered.  Among those of Amapaia, Guiana was famous; but few of these people accosted Berreo, or would trade with him the first three months of the six which he sojourned there.  This Amapaia is also marvellous rich in gold, as both Berreo confessed and those of Guiana with whom I had most conference; and is situate upon Orenoque also.  In this country Berreo lost sixty of his best soldiers, and most of all his horse that remained in his former year’s travel.  But in the end, after divers encounters with those nations, they grew to peace, and they presented Berreo with ten images of fine gold among divers other plates and croissants, which, as he sware to me, and divers other gentlemen, were so curiously wrought, as he had not seen the like either in Italy, Spain, or the Low Countries; and he was resolved that when they came to the hands of the Spanish king, to whom he had sent them by his camp-master, they would appear very admirable, especially being wrought by such a nation as had no iron instruments at all, nor any of those helps which our goldsmiths have to work withal.  The particular name of the people in Amapaia which gave him these pieces, are called Anebas, and the river of Orenoque at that place is about twelve English miles broad, which may be from his outfall into the sea 700 or 800 miles.

This province of Amapaia is a very low and a marish ground near the river; and by reason of the red water which issueth out in small branches through the fenny and boggy ground, there breed divers poisonful worms and serpents.  And the Spaniards not suspecting, nor in any sort foreknowing the danger, were infected with a grievous kind of flux by drinking thereof, and even the very horses poisoned therewith; insomuch as at the end of the six months that they abode there, of all their troops there were not left above 120