ABSTRACT
“Faire” sands indeed, for along the shores of the islands Varadero and Chivera there were many stretches of exactly such beaches as the Discoverie mentioned. The sights verified Raleigh continually as they passed by. Wherever he said the bottom was mud in the southern delta, there was mud; where sand, there was sand. Here, somewhere along this huge, broad stretch of the Lower Orinoco, were the environs where his mine should be located according to Le Blon’s “Directions" (Plate 8). For the next 20 or so miles upriver, the priority was no longer whether the Admiral was truthful with respect to his navigating the river, of which by now I had little doubt, but whether Le Blon’s Robert Louis Stevenson-sounding scrap of text had any validity.
