464 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



priest F. Sancho Aranjo, who was Condamine's 

 host when he passed that way, and who afterwards 

 repeated them to F. Velasco. 



1. That respecting the first combat the Spaniards 

 had had with the warlike women, there was no one 

 in all the missions who did not know of it by 

 tradition from father to son. 



2. That he had heard his forefathers say those 

 women had retired far into the interior, across the 

 Rio Negro. 



3. That, according to common report, they still 

 existed, and that some Indians visited them every 

 year, but not in their proper country; for the women 

 always met the men at some place previously agreed 

 on a long way from their homes (whose site the men 

 were not permitted to know), and, after conversing 

 with them as long as they listed, dismissed them 

 with presents of gold and green stones, and of the 

 male children that had been born and had reached 

 the age of two or three years. 



4. That these women were always governed by 

 one, chosen on account of her valour, and who 

 always marched to battle at their head (Velasco, 

 he. cit. p. 173). 



The green stones spoken of here and elsewhere 

 called also Amazon stones were formerly met 

 with among nearly all the Indians of Tropical 

 America, but seem now to have totally disappeared 

 from the Amazon. I, at least, never either saw or 

 heard of one there in the hands of the Indians ; nor 

 is that to be wondered at when we recollect how 

 eagerly they were at one time bought up by 

 Europeans on account of their supposed medicinal 

 virtues. At the beginning of the present century 



