XXVI 
WARLIKE WOMEN 
469 
May not also both the names, Yacami'-women and 
Yacami'-people, allude to the women living alone ? 
Van Heuvel met with a Caribi chief at the head 
of the river Essequibo, who, when asked about the 
nation of women, said " he had not seen them, but 
had heard his father and others speak of them. 
That they live on the Wasa [the Ouassa of the 
French maps, a tributary of the Oyapock]. Their 
place of abode is surrounded with large rocks, 
and the entrance is through a rock " i^El Dorado, 
p. 124). 
Condamine was informed by a soldier in the 
garrison of Cayenne, that in 1726 he had accom- 
panied a detachment which was sent to explore the 
interior of the country ; in pursuance of which object 
they had penetrated to the country of the Ami- 
couanes, a long-eared people, who dwell beyond 
the sources of the Oyapock, near to where another 
river takes its rise that falls into the Amazon 
[the Oyapock falling into the Atlantic in lat. about 
4° N.]. The country lies high, and none of the 
rivers are navigable. There the soldier had seen 
on the necks of the women and girls certain green 
stones, which the Indians said they obtained from 
the women who had no husbands {^Voyage, p. 102). 
We have mention of the long-eared folk, and 
of the same kind of savage rocky country as all 
tradition assigns to the abiding-place of the Amazons, 
in Unton Fisher's relation of his voyage up the 
Mariwin (Marony). " The passage to the head of 
the Mariwin, from the men with long ears (which 
is the thirteenth town from the mouth), is very 
dangerous, by reason of the passage through hollow 
and concave rocks, wherein harbour bats of unreason- 
