WARLIKE WOMEN 461 



account of this voyage from Gonzalo Fernandez de 

 Oviedo, who was in the Island of St. Domingo when 

 Orellano touched there on his way to Spain, in the 

 ship he had purchased in the Isle of Trinidad. 

 Oviedo relates what he was told by Orellana's 

 companions, and it corresponds in all essential 

 points with the navigator's own narrative ; with the 

 important addition that the women fought naked to 

 the waist, and that they had not one of the breasts 

 cut off, like the Asiatic Amazons a question Oviedo 

 had particularly asked of the Spaniards. 



The little I had read before leaving England 

 about the existence of a nation of women living 

 apart from men, somewhere in the interior of South 

 America, threw ridicule on the notion, and attributed 

 its origin to lying Spanish chroniclers, so that I 

 confess to have not thought it worth while to make 

 a single inquiry on the spot as to whether the 

 tradition were still extant ; but when I afterwards 

 came to read carefully the relations of those authors 

 who had bestowed most attention on the subject, 

 I was surprised to find them all agreed on the 

 tradition having been based on fact. 1 allude 

 especially to Acuna, Feijoo, Condamine, Velasco, 

 Southey, and Humboldt ; but it is nowhere more 

 fully discussed than in a small treatise by Van 

 Heuvel entitled El Dorado, to which, and to the 

 writings of the celebrated authors just mentioned, I 

 must refer the reader. 



The ways by which the country of those women 

 might be reached, as related by travellers and 

 missionaries, seem to converge not to one, but to 

 two points ; the one to northward of the Amazon, a 

 good distance below the Rio Negro ; the other to 



