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Updated: July 23, 2025
The tale he told them was the following: The brigantine had shot so swiftly down the Napo as to reach in three days the point it had taken them two months to attain. Here, instead of finding supplies with which to return, Orellana could obtain barely enough food for himself and his men. To attempt to ascend against the swift current of the river was impossible.
The part that women have played in the progress of the South American republics is as interesting as it is little known. The name of the world's largest river the Amazon, or more exactly speaking, the Amazons stands as a lasting tribute to the bravery of the early women whom the explorer Orellana encountered during his conquest of the mighty flood.
A small brigantine for sails and oars was hastily put together, and Orellana stepped on board with a crew of fifty men, and the boat was borne down the strong current. Dark and silent woods stood on both sides. No villages, no human beings were seen.
At length the extraordinary voyage was safely completed, and the brigantine, built on the Napo, several thousand miles in the interior, emerged on the Atlantic. Here Orellana proceeded to the island of Cubagna, from which he made his way, with his companions, to Spain.
Orellana had heard of the existence of a Republic of female warriors who had founded a vast empire, which caused the river Marañon to be called the River of the Amazons.
Orellana and the soldiers with him were carried by the current swiftly down the Napo, and in three days they came into the great river. It was indeed a great river, for the Amazon at the place where the Napo flows into it is a mile in width. Orellana expected to find here many people and plenty of food. He found, however, only a wilderness.
It can be imagined by those acquainted with the Amazons country how fruitless this errand would be in the wilderness of forest where Orellana and his followers found themselves when they reached the Napo, and how strong their disinclination would be to return against the currents and rapids which they had descended.
Orellana and his companions under cover of the night, having prepared their weapons and thrown off their trousers and the more cumbrous part of their dress, came altogether on the quarter-deck and drew towards the door of the great cabin. The boatswain immediately reprimanded them and ordered them to be gone.
I find that Orellana saw these animals at the river Amazon, above the confluence of the Rio Negro, consequently in a climate very different from that of the table-land of the Andes. The table of an army of Omaguas mounted on llamas served to embellish the account given by the fellow-travellers of Felipe de Urre of their adventurous expedition to the Upper Caqueta.
It was, as usual, at the distance of several days' journey; and Gonzalo Pizarro resolved to halt where he was and send Orellana down in his brigantine to the confluence of the waters to procure a stock of provisions, with which he might return and put them in condition to resume their march.
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