his men soon felt the effects of the unhealthy climate of the country, with its rivers everywhere out of their banks, so much that he was obliged to give up the march to the south and proceed southwesterly, along the mountains on his right. Thus he followed Federmann's former route. The health of his men became so critical when among the Cuyones Indians, eight days' journey from the Cuybas, that he could go on with only one hundred foot soldiers and thirty horsemen. He left the rest of his men behind, as being in no condition to march, under Francisco de Velasco. The country east and south being flooded, he could do nothing else than follow the southwestern slope of the sierra. Occasional raids into the mountains procured maize and salt. In a short time he was joined by most of the men he had left behind, who had recovered; but soon afterward he had to leave one hundred and thirty sick under the command of Sancho de Murga. The place where this occurred was, according to Oviedo, about one hundred and seventy leagues from Coro.
With a hundred and fifty foot and forty-nine cavalry, Von Speyer reached and crossed the Rio Apure, the great northern tributary of the Orinoco, on the 2d of February, 1536. To that point we hear of no clue leading him, of no new accounts brought to him, which might have excited the hope of a liberal reward. Like Quesada, he pursued with iron tenacity a vague purpose, that of searching the south. His experiences were all discouraging. The country, though rich in its profusion of tropical vegetation, gave him no gold. The western sierra was dreary and rugged, the eastern plains were unhealthy wastes
