all know, surpass in strangeness and in ferocity all that has been
reported of the Orinocquan viragos, and thus prove once more that
truth is stranger than fiction. {3}

Beside--and here I stand stubborn, regardless of gibes and sneers--it
is not yet proven that there was not, in the sixteenth century, some
rich and civilised kingdom like Peru or Mexico in the interior of
South America. Sir Robert Schomburgk has disproved the existence of
Lake Parima; but it will take a long time, and more explorers than
one, to prove that there are no ruins of ancient cities, such as
Stephens stumbled on in Yucatan, still buried in the depths of the
forest. Fifty years of ruin would suffice to wrap them in a leafy
veil which would hide them from every one who did not literally run
against them. Tribes would die out, or change place, as the Atures
and other great nations have done in those parts, and every
traditional record of them perish gradually; for it is only gradually
and lately that it has perished: while if it be asked, What has
become of the people themselves? the answer is, that when any race
(like most of the American races in the sixteenth century) is in a
dying state, it hardly needs war to thin it down, and reduce the
remnant to savagery. Greater nations than El Dorado was even
supposed to be have vanished ere now, and left not a trace behind:
and so may they. But enough of this. I leave the quarrel to that
honest and patient warder of tourneys, Old Time, who will surely do
right at last, and go on to the dogheaded worthies, without necks,
and long hair hanging down behind, who, as a cacique told Raleigh,
that 'they had of late years slain many hundreds of his father's
people,' and in whom even Humboldt was not always allowed, he says,
to disbelieve (so much for Hume's scoff at Raleigh as a liar), one
old cacique boasting to him that he had seen them with his own eyes.