CURIOUS CREATURES. 25 



besides, had committed depredations in the country, so 

 that they thought it but prudent to leave, and suggested 

 that they should cross the Tanais, or Don, and found 

 a colony on the other side. This their husbands acceded 

 to, and when they were settled, their wives returned 

 to their old way of living hunting, going to war with 

 their husbands, and wearing the same clothes in fact 

 they enjoyed an actual existence, of which many women 

 nowadays, fondly, but vainly dream. There was a 

 little drawback however the qualification for a young 

 lady's presentation at court, consisted of killing a man, 

 and, until that was effected, she could not marry. 



Sir John Mandeville of course knew all about them, 

 although he does not pretend to have seen them, and 

 this is what he tells us. " After the land of Caldee, 

 is the land of Amazony, that is a land where there is 

 no man but all women, as men say, for they wil suffer 

 no man to lyve among them, nor to have lordeshippe 

 over them. For sometyme was a kinge in that lande, 

 and men were dwelling there as did in other countreys, 

 and had wives, & it befell that the kynge had great 

 warre with them of Sychy, he was called Colopius, 

 and he was slaine in bataill and all the good bloude 

 of his lande. And this Queene, when she herd that, 

 & other ladies of that land, that the king and the 

 lordes were slaine, they gathered them togither and 

 killed all the men that were lefte in their lande among 

 them, and sithen that time dwelled no man among 

 them. 



"And when they will have any man, they sende for 

 them in a countrey that is nere theyr lande, and the 

 men come, and are ther viii dayes, or as the woman 

 lyketh, & then they go againe, and if they have men 



