"Drink this," they said, "because it will cure your sickness which comes from the head. If your heart was strong with love for your brothers you would find blessings in this land. As it is you seek to plunder and rob the Great Ladies, but the Sun is their father, and he will make the mountains, trees and rocks hide them and their treasures."
"It is no use to look for these women any longer. We shall all die before we can reach them," said the leader, wearily.
And no one to this day knows just where the Amazon Queens lived.
The Seven Cities of Cibola
THE Nahuas in Mexico were really a sect of wise men descended from those that came with the Golden Hearted. They believed that they originated in Seven Caves, which were not locations at all, but was only a way of saying that human beings have seven wonderful qualities. They might have thought so because we can see, feel, taste, hear and smell, and have instinct and are able to reason, or it may have been something else. At any rate, it did not mean actual caves, but was a symbol. In later times when people were not so wise, they said it was seven tribes instead of caves, and when the Spaniards heard about it they managed to twist it into seven cities, and immediately conceived the idea that great riches and gold could be found in them. When questioned on the subject the Indians said:
"To the far north there are seven wonderful cities where the people make arrow-heads of emeralds and take the sweat off their bodies with scrapers of pure gold, and have jeweled gates, and turquoise ornaments over their doors."
"Do these men know how to work precious stones and metals?" asked the Spaniards eagerly.