46o NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
call to mind that he had lately left in Peru a reality 
in some respects more wondrous than this report. 
Herrera remarks very judiciously on it: ''The 
tales of Indians are always doubtful, and Orellana 
confessed he did not understand those Indians, so 
that it seems he could hardly have made, in so few 
days, a vocabulary correct and copious enough to 
enable him to comprehend the minute details given 
by this Indian." I may add, too, that the Spaniards 
would probably ask as they went along for gold 
under its Peruvian name of ciiri, and as curi (with 
merely a difference in the accent) is the Tupi term 
for coloured earth, it is not surprising that they 
should have received constant assurances of its 
abundance throughout the Amazon. 
It is worthy to be noted that F. Carbajal, although 
he has left on record his dissatisfaction with the 
conduct of Orellana, confirms instead of contradict- 
ing the account of the combat with the Amazons, 
having, in fact, been himself one of the wounded 
in it. Besides, as is well remarked by Velasco 
{HzstojHa de Quito, i. 167), "he (Orellana) did not 
go alone to the court, but with fifty companions, 
many of them so disgusted with his conduct that 
they refused to accompany him on his return. He 
was giving information to his sovereign, who might 
utterly ruin him if he detected him in a falsehood, 
and it ought to have been easy to detect him, with 
so many witnesses unfavourably disposed towards 
him. Besides, it is incredible that fifty persons, and 
amongst them a religious priest, should agree in 
guaranteeing the truth of a lie, especially when 
nothing was to be gained by it." 
We have also a very good and independent 
