XXVI 
WARLIKE WOMEN 
461 
account of this voyage from Gonzalo Fernandez de 
Oviedo, who was in the Island of St. Domingo when 
Orellano touched there on his way to Spain, in the 
ship he had purchased in the Isle of Trinidad. 
Oviedo relates what he was told by Orellana's 
companions, and it corresponds in all essential 
points with, the navigator's own narrative ; with the 
important addition that the women fought naked to 
the waist, and that they had not one of the breasts 
cut off, like the Asiatic Amazons — a question Oviedo 
had particularly asked of the Spaniards. 
The little I had read before leaving England 
about the existence of a nation of women living 
apart from men, somewhere in the interior of South 
America, threw ridicule on the notion, and attributed 
its origin to lying Spanish chroniclers, so that I 
confess to have not thought it worth while to make 
a single inquiry on the spot as to whether the 
tradition were still extant ; but when I afterwards 
came to read carefully the relations of those authors 
who had bestowed most attention on the subject, 
I was surprised to find them all agreed on the 
tradition having been based on fact. I allude 
especially to Acufia, Feijoo, Condamine, Velasco, 
Southey, and Humboldt ; but it is nowhere more 
fully discussed than in a small treatise by Van 
Heuvel entitled B/ Dorado, to which, and to the 
writings of the celebrated authors just mentioned, I 
must refer the reader. 
The ways by which the country of those women 
might be reached, as related by travellers and 
missionaries, seem to converge not to one, but to 
two points ; the one to northward of the Amazon, a 
good distance below the Rio Negro ; the other to 
