But the voice of
tradition has often reinstated his claims to our belief, where it had
been suspended either by ignorance or pretensions to superior knowledge.
A modern traveller found, in one of the isles of the Grecian
Archipelago, undoubted vestiges of a state of society similar to that of
the Amazons. The order of the sexes was wholly inverted. The wife ruled
the husband, and his and her kindred, with uncontrolled and unsparing
rigour, sanctioned and even commanded by the laws. Yet the very
existence of any such people as the Amazons of ancient history has not
only been questioned, but denied. Learning has proved it to be
impossible.
The Marquess of Hastings told the Rev. Mr Swan, chaplain of the
Cambrian, that he had found the germ of fact from which many of the most
incredible tales in ancient history had grown during his stay in India.
One instance only we would relate. A Grecian author mentions a people
who had only one leg. An embassy from the interior was conducted into
the presence of the viceroy, and he could by no persuasion prevail upon
the obsequious minister to use more than one of his legs, though he
stood during the whole of a protracted audience.
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