388 



of an audience somewhat eager for novelties 

 This is the place for me to express myself with 

 frankness on a tradition, which has so romantic 

 an appearance ; and I am further led to do this 

 by M. de la Condamine's assertion, that the 

 Amazons of the Rio Cayame* crossed the Ma- 



* Fray Pedro Simon, p. 480. La Condamine, Voyage d, 

 V Amazone, p. 101, 113, and 140. Cay ley's Life of Sir Walter 

 Raleigh, vol. i, p. 169. Gili, vol. i, p. 145 — 154. Orellana 

 arriving at the Maragnon by the Rio Coca and the Napo, 

 fought with the Amazons, as it appears, between the mouth 

 of the Rio Negro and that of the Xingu. M. de la Conda- 

 mine asserts, that in the seventeenth century they passed the 

 Maragnon between Tefe and the mouth of the Rio Puruz, 

 near the Canno Cuchivara, which is a western branch of the 

 Puruz. These women therefore came from the banks of the 

 Rio Cayame, or Cayambe, consequently from the unknown 

 country, which extends south of the Maragnon, between the 

 Ucayale and the Madeira. Raleigh also places them on the 

 south of the Maragnon, but in the province of Topayos, and 

 on the river of the same name. He says they were " rich in 

 golden vessels, which they had acquired in exchange for the 

 famous green stones, or piedr as hijadas." (Raleigh means, no 

 doubt, piedras del higado, stones that cure diseases of the liver.) 

 It is remarkable enough, that one hundred and forty-eight 

 years after M. de la Condamine still found " a greater num- 

 ber of those green stones {divine stones), which differ neither 

 in colour nor in hardness from oriental jade, among the 

 Indians who inhabit near the mouth of the Rio Topayos, than 

 any where else. The Indians said, that they inherited 

 these stones, which cure the nephritic colic and epilepsy, 

 from their fathers, who received them from the women without 

 husbands" What has been related regards the Amazons 



