Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Born in 1554, Raleigh was knighted in 1585 by Elizabeth I. In 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh led an expedition to what is now Venezuela in South America, sailing up the Orinoco River in the heart of Spain's colonial empire. The Discoverie of Guiana (1596) is the story of this expedition. The stories told by Indians and some Spanish documents convinced Raleigh of the existence of El Dorado, a mythical city of gold in the interior of South America. Raleigh did locate some gold mines, but no one supported his project for colonizing the area.

The English soldier of today goes into action with the cold courage of a man who is prepared to make the best of a bad job. The German soldier sacrifices himself, in a frenzy of religious exaltation, to the War-God. The filthiness that the Germans use, their deliberate befouling of all that is elegant and gracious and antique, their spitting into the food that is to be eaten by their prisoners, their defiling with ordure the sacred vessels in the churches--all these things, too numerous and too monotonous to describe, are not the instinctive coarsenesses of the brute beast; they are a solemn...

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 favor, Raleigh sailed to Guiana in 1595, hoping to find gold and other material to exchange or extort. One contemporary 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...