Doctor Middendorf says that the Amazon was named for the Coniapuyara, a race of big women leaders, whom the Spaniards found. Condamine assures us that light-skinned Amazons lived there. Raleigh, while searching for Manoa, is said to have first reported them, though he found them by going up the Orinoco. The distinguished scientist Ulloa, who went to South America in 1758, says it is “an undoubted truth that there had been formerly several communities of women who formed a kind of republic, without admitting any men into the government.” Well, at least there is nothing either to prove or disprove it. A recent report of the Geographical Society of Lima gives a far less picturesque explanation of the naming of the Amazon, to the effect that “the tribe of the Nahumedes were thought to be Amazons on account of their long hair and the _cushma_, a long, sleeveless garment which they wore.” Close upon the adventurers came the Jesuit missionaries, who burned to save from hell-fire the strange human beings they might find lurking in the forest depths. One Jesuit father, Fritz, spent fifty years (1680-1730) on the Amazon, trying to connect the aborigines by the introduction of a common language. These missionaries left no ruins like those in Paraguay, the Jesuit State, but their teachings are visible in savage traditions. They transformed Bible stories to fit jungle needs. “A Murato was fishing in a lake of Pastasa, when a little lizard swallowed his hook. The fisherman killed it, the mother of the lizards was much angered and with her tail slashed the water in such a way that it overflowed the entire vicinity. All were drowned except one, who climbed into a small _pivai_ palm, and hung there several days under a perpetual darkness. From time to time a fruit of the _pivai_ palm fell, but always upon the water, until one day he heard the plump of the fruit upon dry ground. He got down from the tree, made a house and farm, and with a little piece of his flesh, which he planted in the earth, made for himself a wife, by whom he had many children.” The commercial age is now having its fling. It is attempting to subdue the jungle. The rubber hunters are not seeking paradise. They are not looking for legendary kingdoms, nor are they wishing to save the souls of beings of whose existence they are not even persuaded. Rubber is a valuable product. So are other things concealed in jungle depths. Dark crimes can also be hidden in the half-light, covered close under the thick veil which shrouds the land of mystery.