Amazon Stonii;s. 
ou tlie Oiiiioco where lie noticed every eacique with one whdch was 
usually worn by his women: they treasured them more than gold.* 
Lawrence Keymis says of the Caribs and other tribes who dwell on the 
Arawari, below the Oyapok: "Their money is Avhite and green stones'': 
Jie found the same thing on the Corentyn. 
60S. In connection Avith the ]ilace of origin of these Amazon stones 
accounts vary just as much as do those concerning the home of the 
Amazons themselves. Barrcre was assured that the stones were found 
in the country of the Tapouyes, on the upper Anuizon stream, who also 
shaped them. Chevalier Marchais likewise relates m his journey in 
Cayenne that the greatest riches of the Caribs consist of green-stone 
necklaces Avhich they obtain from the upper Amazon stream, where they 
are made out of a tough mud into any shape required and hardened in 
the air. Charlevoix speaks of certain green stones Avith which the 
ITaitinns hollov out their canoes aud remarks that they Avere never found 
on the island or its neighbourhood, but that according to common report 
they came from the ujiyx'r Amazon stream, where they were made 
out of the river-mud. What CharlcA^oix probably referred to were those 
that A\-e also fi-equeutly nu't amongst the Caribs and Macusis as stone- 
knives, axes, and in the warK-lubs, A\'hich seem to belong to a serpentine 
kind of rock, but in no sense Avhatever were real Amazon stones. At 
St. Carlos, as in general on the Rio Negro, the sources of the Orinoco 
were pointed out to Alexander von Humboldt as the place of origin of 
these stones, tliougli at the mission on the Caroni aud at Angostura it 
Avas stated to be at the sources of the Caroni. A. von Humboldt further 
remarks that Spanish soldiers wanted to make out that they had found 
these stones in the rocky dam that crosses the Orinoco and forms the 
Avhirlpool of the Guaharibos, but as neither he, nor Surgeon Hortsmann 
who in 1739 Avent up the Esscquilio to the Eio Branco,t nor Don Antonio 
Santos on his journey from Angostura to Grand Para in 1775, came 
across them, he considers the alleged place of deriA^ation to be also a 
myth. My brother learnt just as little about them in these localities 
which he visited in the course of his expedition in 1837. According to 
Clavigero. the 2,reen stones found among the Guiana Indians exactly 
correspond with those which the monk Berahärd de Sahagun discovered 
among the Aunhuacs at the conquest of Mexico. The Mexicans called 
the stones Quetznlitzli : according to von Martüus, Xouxounue tecpatl. 
They cut all kinds of artistic figures out of the stone, because they 
understood not only stone-cutting and stone-setting, but even the cutting 
of diamonds. Judging from the numei-ous Mexican nephrites that one 
finds in different collections, they are absolutely identical with the 
Amazon stones, still procurable here and there in Guiana. Although up 
to the present no ti-aveller or ethnolooist has succeeded in showing a 
connection between the Mexicans and the Guiauese like that which, 
according to Garcillaso, exists between the former and the people of Peru 
*See Oayley's ].lfe of Raleigh Vol. II p. m. 
+ A refei'etice to this jonriiev is to be found in "A Succinct abvidffment of a Voyage made 
within the Inland Parts of South America : from the coasts of the South Sea to the Coasts 
of Brazil aud Guiana, down the River of Amazons" : by Möns, de la Condamme, LondoB, 
1747-J.R. 
