Cloth binding. Black lettering with gilt title on front cover.

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 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). However, today it is generally simply referred to as The Discovery of Guiana.

 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. 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—Ralegh 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.”

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.

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.” 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.

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, but, argues one scholar, also for essentially lying about the abundance of gold to be had in Guiana.

Sir Walter Raleigh, (c. 1552 – 29 October 1618) also spelled Ralegh, was an English statesman, soldier, spy, writer, poet, explorer and landed gentleman. 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 during the Spanish Armada and held political positions under Elizabeth I.

Raleigh was born to a Protestant family in Devon, the son of Walter Raleigh and Catherine Champernowne, and a cousin of Sir Richard Grenville and younger half-brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Little is known of his early life, though in his late teens he spent some time in France taking part in the religious civil wars. In his 20s he took part in the suppression of rebellion in the colonisation of Ireland; he also participated in the siege of Smerwick. Later, he became a landlord of property in Ireland and mayor of Youghal in East Munster, where his house still stands in Myrtle Grove. He rose rapidly in the favour of Queen Elizabeth I and was knighted in 1585. He was granted a royal patent to explore Virginia, paving the way for future English settlements. In 1591, he secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, without the Queen’s permission, for which he and his wife were sent to the Tower of London. After his release, they retired to his estate at Sherborne, Dorset.

In 1594, Raleigh heard of a “City of Gold” in South America and sailed to find it, publishing an exaggerated account of his experiences in a book that contributed to the legend of “El Dorado”. After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was again imprisoned in the Tower, this time for being involved in the Main Plot against King James I, who was not favourably disposed towards him. In 1616, he was released to lead a second expedition in search of El Dorado. During the expedition, men led by his top commander ransacked a Spanish outpost, in violation of both the terms of his pardon and the 1604 peace treaty with Spain. Raleigh returned to England and, to appease the Spanish, he was arrested and executed in 1618