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but nothing could be better adapted to strike 

 the imagination of queen Elizabeth, than the 

 warlike republic of women without husbands, 

 who resisted the Castilian heroes. I point out 

 the motives, which led those writers, who have 

 given most reputation to the Amazons of Ame- 

 rica to exaggerate : but these motives do not, I 

 think, suffice for rejecting a tradition entirely, 

 which is spread among various nations, who have 

 no communications with each other. 



The testimonies collected by M. de la Conda- 

 mine are very remarkable ; he has published 

 them in detail, and I have a pleasure in adding, 

 that, if this traveller has passed in France and 

 England for a man whose curiosity was the 

 most constantly awake, he is considered in 

 Quito, in the country he described, as the tra- 

 veller who has adhered the most stedfastly to 

 truth. Thirty years after M. de la Condamine, 

 a Portugueze astronomer, Mr. Ribeiro, who has 

 traversed the Amazon, and the tributary streams 

 which run into that river on the northern side, 

 has confirmed on the spot all that the learned 

 Frenchman had advanced. He found the same 

 traditions among the Indians ; and he collected 

 them with so much the greater impartiality, as 

 he did not himself believe, that the Amazons 

 formed a separate horde. Not knowing any of 

 the tongues spoken on the Oroonoko and the 

 Rio Negro, I could learn nothing certain on 



