Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

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. 1 allude
especially to Acuna, Feijoo, Condamine, Velasco,
Southey, and Humboldt ; but it is nowhere more
fully discussed than in a small treatise by Van
Heuvel entitled El 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