really with no one. For nothing, if we will examine the documents,
is told of the riches of El Dorado which had not been found to be
true, and seen by the eyes of men still living, in Peru and Mexico.
Not one-fifth of America had been explored, and already two El
Dorados had been found and conquered. What more rational than to
suppose that there was a third, a fourth, a fifth, in the remaining
four-fifths? The reports of El Dorado among the savages were just of
the same kind as those by which Cortez and Pizarro hunted out Mexico
and Peru, saving that they were far more widely spread, and confirmed
by a succession of adventurers. I entreat readers to examine this
matter in Raleigh, Schomburgk, Humboldt, and Condamine, and judge for
themselves. As for Hume's accusations, I pass them by as equally
silly and shameless, only saying, for the benefit of readers, that
they have been refuted completely by every one who has written since
Hume's days; and to those who are inclined to laugh at Raleigh for
believing in Amazons and 'men whose heads do grow beneath their
shoulders' I can only answer thus -

About the Amazons, Raleigh told what he was told; what the Spaniards
who went before him, and Condamine who came after him, were told.
Humboldt thinks the story possibly founded on fact; and I must say
that, after reviewing all that has been said thereon, it does seem to
me the simplest solution of the matter just to believe it true; to
believe that there was, about his time, or a little before, somewhere
about the Upper Orinoco, a warlike community of women. Humboldt
shows how likely such would be to spring up where women flee from
their male tyrants into the forests. As for the fable which
connected them with the Lake Manoa and the city of El Dorado, we can
only answer, 'If not true there and then, it is true elsewhere now';
for the Amazonian guards of the King of Dahomey at this moment, as