Just then a party of prospectors returned from the mountains where they had been looking for gold. Among the things they brought was a number of thin, flat green stones with holes pierced in each end, showing that they had been used for ornaments. The Indian guides said at once they were the same kind of emerald as that worn by the Amazon Queens for an amulet against disease.
"How did you succeed in getting them?" they asked.
"From some Indian pedlars we met with packs on their backs. They said the stones would cure the spleen, and we have been wearing them ever since."
"Did you have any difficulty in persuading the pedlars to part with them?"
"No; they said they got them from a tribe of women warriors many leagues to the south, but we did not believe them."
"It is all true," said the guides, "and these Great Ladies have been in that land a very long time."
"If we can find enough of these spleen stones to make our trip profitable we do not care whether we meet the Great Ladies or not," said the prospectors, when told of the proposed trip in search of the Amazon Queens.
As the party pushed forward into the tangled thickets, they found cocoanuts, and plantains, ripe and ready to eat, and they also found some very juicy little canteloupes growing on a vine, but none of the Indians living on, or near the Amazon river, could tell them where to find the Queens. They searched up and down the banks for a hidden passageway which was said to guard the entrance to their mountain home, but to all questions the river made no answer. To the disappointed Spaniards it looked angry, sullen and relentless in the untamed might of its turbid waters.
"It seems to be always summer here," said the weary soldiers, "but one would die of malarial poisoning if compelled to stay long."
Some of the guides felt sorry for the sick men, and went into the woods and brought them sarsaparilla bark, and made them a tea of it.