464 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
priest F. Sancho Aranjo, who was Condamine's 
host when he passed that way, and who afterwards 
repeated them to F. Velasco. 
1. That respecting the first combat the Spaniards 
had had with the warHke women, there was no one 
in all the missions who did not know of it by 
tradition from father to son. 
2. That he had heard his forefathers say those 
women had retired far into the interior, across the 
Rio Negro. 
3. That, according to common report, they still 
existed, and that some Indians visited them every 
year, but not in their proper country; for the women 
always met the men at some place previously agreed 
on a long way from their homes (whose site the men 
were not permitted to know), and, after conversing 
with them as long as they listed, dismissed them 
with presents of gold and green stones, and of the 
male children that had been born and had reached 
the age of two or three years. 
4. That these women were always governed by 
one, chosen on account of her valour, and who 
always marched to battle at their head (Velasco, 
loc. cit. p. 173). 
The green stones spoken of here and elsewhere 
— called also Amazon stones — were formerly met 
with among nearly all the Indians of Tropical 
America, but seem now^ to have totally disappeared 
from the Amazon. I, at least, never either saw or 
heard of one there in the hands of the Indians ; nor 
is that to be wondered at when we recollect how 
eagerly they were at one time bought up by 
Europeans on account of their supposed medicinal 
virtues. At the beginning of the present century 
