Lawrence Kemys

[1] Raleigh's 1595 voyage to Trinidad and Guiana consisted of four vessels, with Kemys serving as second-in-command and captain of a small Spanish prize named Gallego.

The aim of the expedition was to find Manõa, the mythic Gold city of El Dorado and to strike up friendly relations with native tribes.

Kemys brought back glowing accounts of the wealth of the country he had visited, and urged on Raleigh that it would greatly advantage the queen Elizabeth I to take possession of it.

[3] During his exploration of the coast between the Amazon and the Orinoco, Kemys mapped the location of Amerindian tribes and prepared geographical, geological and botanical reports of the country.

When, in 1603, Raleigh was accused of devising the so-called Main Plot against the King James I, Kemys, as his follower and servant, was also implicated, and was imprisoned with him in the Tower of London, and afterwards in the Fleet, September–December 1603.

A condition of Raleigh's release from the Tower of London in 1616 to undertake his mission to Guiana in search of gold deposits and the legendary city of El Dorado had been that he not attack or harass Spanish colonies or shipping.

Over time as more explorers came to the region Lake Parime's existence was definitively disproved in the early 19th century and there was a theory that the seasonal flooding of the Rupununi savannah may have been misidentified as such.