344 



ON THE ABORIGINES 



get a glimpse of these warlike ladies. The Indians must no 

 doubt have been overwhelmed with questions and suggestions 

 about them, and they, thinking that the white men must know 

 best, would transmit to their descendants and families the idea 

 that such a nation did exist in some distant part of the country. 

 Succeeding travellers, finding traces of this idea among the 

 Indians, would take it as a proof of the existence of the 

 Amazons ; instead of rjeing merely the effect of a mistake at 

 the first, which had been unknowingly spread among them 

 by preceding travellers, seeking to obtain some evidence on 

 the subject. 



In my communications and inquiries among the Indians 

 on various matters, I have always found the greatest caution 

 necessary, to prevent one's arriving at wrong conclusions. 

 They are always apt to affirm that which they see you wish 

 to believe, and, when they do not at all comprehend your 

 question, will unhesitatingly answer, " Yes." I have often in 

 this manner obtained, as I thought, information, which persons 

 better acquainted with the facts have assured me was quite 

 erroneous. These observations, however, must only be taken 

 to apply to those almost uncivilised nations who do not under- 

 stand, at all clearly, any language in which you can communi- 

 cate with them. I have always been able to rely on what 

 is obtained from Indians speaking Portuguese readily, and I 

 believe that much trustworthy information can be obtained 

 from them. Such, however, is not the case with the wild 

 tribes, who are totally incapable of understanding any con- 

 nected sentence of the language in which they are addressed ; 

 and I fear the story of the Amazons must be placed with those 

 of the wild man-monkeys, which Humboldt mentions and 

 which tradition I also met with, and of the "curupira," or 

 demon of the woods, and " carbunculo," of the Upper Amazon 

 and Peru ; but of which superstitions we have no such satis- 

 factory elucidation as I think has been now given of the 

 warlike Amazons. 



To return to our Uaupes Indians and their toilet. We find 

 their daily costume enlivened with a few other ornaments; 

 a circlet of parrots' tail-feathers is generally worn round the 

 head, and the cylindrical white quartz-stone, already described 

 in my Narrative (p. 191), is invariably carried on the breast, 

 suspended from a necklace of black seeds. 



