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It does not derive its name from the river, but like the river itself, the stone has been named after a nation of warlike women, whom Father Acunha, and Oviedo, in his letter to cardinal Bembo, compare to the Amazons of the ancient world.
Time would fail me to tell of their defence of their country against the invasion of Eumolpus and the Amazons, or of their defence of the Argives against the Cadmeians, or of the Heracleids against the Argives; besides, the poets have already declared in song to all mankind their glory, and therefore any commemoration of their deeds in prose which we might attempt would hold a second place.
The populace of England rolls by to weary itself in the great bazaar of Kensington, little thinking that a day will come when those veiled vestals and prancing amazons, and goodly merchandise of precious stones and gold, will all be forgotten as though they had not been; but that the light which has faded from the walls of the Academy is one which a million Koh-i-noors could not rekindle; and that the year 1851 will, in the far future, be remembered less for what it has displayed, than for what it has withdrawn."
The plan was to have ascended the Amazons from Para and got into the Rio Negro, and from thence to have returned towards the source of the Essequibo, in order to examine the crystal mountains, and look once more for Lake Parima, or the White Sea; but on arriving at Cayenne, the current was running with such amazing rapidity to leeward, that a Portuguese sloop, which had been beating up towards Para for four weeks, was then only half-way.
The French call it “l’enfant perdu.” As you pass the islands, the stately hills on the main, ornamented with ever-verdant foliage, show you that this is by far the sublimest scenery on the sea-coast, from the Amazons to the Oroonoque.
But the reputation of his works was what brought envy upon Phidias, especially that where he represents the fight of the Amazons upon the goddesses' shield, he had introduced a likeness of himself as a bald old man holding up a great stone with both hands, and had put in a very fine representation of Pericles fighting with an Amazon.
Yet what is there in the nature of things to make a side-saddle more modest than any other? The Amazons were positive prudes, and would never have even spoken to man if they could have contrived to carry on society without him; yet they rode astraddle. And if fashion could make this practice feminine, why should it not some day do as much for husband-hunting?
Women, you are aware, far surpass men in the arts of beauty. Moreover, the inscriptions on hieroglyphic rocks in these abandoned cities evidently refer to Amazons. There you see them doing the work of men carrying on war, ruling conquered regions, founding cities. It is a picture of a golden age, Mrs. Stanley."
There is a dance of reapers in rye-straw hats, and of rustics in hairy coats like satyrs; a masque of Amazons, a masque of Russians, and a classical masque; several immortal scenes over a weaver in an ass's head, a riot over the colour of a coat which it takes the Lord Mayor of London to quell, and a scene between an infuriated husband and his wife's milliner about the slashing of a sleeve.
Even the story of the Amazons, though it may serve Hume as a point for his ungenerous and untruthful attempt to make Raleigh out either fool or villain, has come from Spaniards, who had with their own eyes seen the Indian women fighting by their husbands' sides, and from Indians, who asserted the existence of an Amazonian tribe. What right had Amyas, or any man, to disbelieve the story?
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