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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 "
(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 Amicouanes,
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
" The passage to the head of
Mariwin (Marony).
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-