work it; and that they used a great earthen pot with holes round about it, and when they had mingled the gold and copper together they fastened canes to the holes, and so with the breath of men they increased the fire till the metal ran, and then they cast it into moulds of stone and clay, and so make those plates and images.  I have sent your honours of two sorts such as I could by chance recover, more to shew the manner of them than for the value.  For I did not in any sort make my desire of gold known, because I had neither time nor power to have a great quantity.  I gave among them many more pieces of gold than I received, of the new money of twenty shillings with her Majesty’s picture, to wear, with promise that they would become her servants thenceforth.

I have also sent your honours of the ore, whereof I know some is as rich as the earth yieldeth any, of which I know there is sufficient, if nothing else were to be hoped for.  But besides that we were not able to tarry and search the hills, so we had neither pioneers, bars, sledges, nor wedges of iron to break the ground, without which there is no working in mines.  But we saw all the hills with stones of the colour of gold and silver, and we tried them to be no marcasite, and therefore such as the Spaniards call El madre del oro or “the mother of gold,” which is an undoubted assurance of the general abundance; and myself saw the outside of many mines of the spar, which I know to be the same that all covet in this world, and of those more than I will speak of.

Having learned what I could in Canuri and Aromaia, and received a faithful promise of the principallest of those provinces to become servants to her Majesty, and to resist the Spaniards if they made any attempt in our absence, and that they would draw in the nations about the lake of Cassipa and those of Iwarawaqueri, I then parted from old Topiawari, and received his son for a pledge between us, and left with him two of ours as aforesaid.  To Francis Sparrow I gave instructions to travel to Macureguarai with such merchandises as I left with them, thereby to learn the place, and if it were possible, to go on to the great city of Manoa.  Which being done, we weighed anchor and coasted the river on Guiana side, because we came upon the north side, by the lawns of the Saima and Wikiri.

There came with us from Aromaia a cacique called Putijma, that commanded the province of Warapana, which Putijma slew the nine Spaniards upon Caroli before spoken of; who desired us to rest in the port of his country, promising to bring us unto a mountain adjoining to his town that had stones of the colour of gold, which he performed.  And after we had rested there one night I went myself in the morning with most of the gentlemen of my company over-land towards the said mountain, marching by a river’s side called Mana, leaving on the right hand a town called Tuteritona, standing in the province of Tarracoa, of which Wariaaremagoto