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came out on the water to meet us, in no
friendly mood, and, when they had come
close to the Captain [Orellana], he would
have liked to induce them to accept peace...
but they laughed, and mocked us and told us
to keep going and that down belowthey were
waiting for us, and that they were to seize us
all and take us to the Amazons.Orellana’s men were soon battling a large
force of Indians, whose ranks according to
Carvajal contained a dozen women:
These women are very white and tall, and
have hair very long and braided and wound
about the head, and they are very robust
and go about naked, with their privy parts
covered, with their bows and arrows in their
hands, doing as much fighting as ten Indian
men, and indeed there was one Indianwoman among these who shot an arrow a
span deep into one of our brigantines, and
others less deep, so that our brigantines
looked like porcupines.Afew days after fighting the “Amazons,”
Orellana’s party noticed that the waters below
them were rising and falling. They correctly
decided that they were near an ocean whose
tides were reaching upriver. Now at the point
of starvation, Orellana’s men landed on an
island just past the Trombetus River and did
their best to make their crude boats seawor-
thy. On August 26, 1542, after having drifted
for 2,000 miles, they sailed into the Atlantic.
They still had 1,200 miles to travel before
they reached Spanish settlements. The two
small boats sailed north along the Brazilian
coast, always in danger of being destroyed by
ocean seas. After a storm separated them, each(^78) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
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