Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/78

64 September, 1541. The accounts of the details of his remarkable voyage do not agree, and it is not germane to our purpose to discuss them. The chief result of it was that the proportions of the gigantic stream which divides South America into a northern and southern half were at last appreciated, and that exaggerated notions were spread over Europe concerning the rich countries that lay north of the Amazon. The fable of the Amazons survived from classical antiquity as one of the cycle of myths that were credited or held possible. Orellana's dironicler, the Dominican Carvajal, transplanted it to the banks of the great South American river. This has been charged against him as an offence.

If we examine his account carefully, we shall find two distinct matters in it. One, relating what he witnessed himself, is simply a statement that below the mouth of the Rio Negro women took part in the fighting against the Spaniards; and that seems very plausible. The other matter comprises the account by a captive Indian of a tribe of Amazons rich in gold living north of the river. Tales of that kind were often imposed by the natives upon the Spaniards. The story bears immediately on the object of this work only to the extent that the Amazon River henceforward formed the southern boundary of the mythical region within which the dorado could still find a place.