be healed.
Instead of going to war with each other, and thus sacrificing the lives
of many of their respective followers in battle, who had no part in
their quarrel, an agreement was come to whereby the king withdrew
himself to the western island, leaving the queen in undisputed
possession in the east. The king took to him all the men in both
islands, giving up to the queen the women, to become her subjects. Since
then the Male and Female Islands had been managed as separate
communities. There was no king or queen now, the people of both islands
being ruled by the wise-ones, who lived on the mountain tops in the
Female Island. But the inhabitants of the two islands still continued to
live apart, the males on one island and the females on the other. On the
Male Island the males dwelt alone, without their wives, or any other
women. Every year, in the month of March, the men came to the Female
Island, and tarried there three months, to wit, March, April, and May,
dwelling with their wives for that space. At the end of those three
months they returned to their own island, and pursued their avocation
there, selling ambergris to the traders from Sumatra. As for the
children whom their wives bore them, if they were girls they stayed with
their mothers; but if they were boys their mothers brought them up until
they were fourteen years old, and then sent them to their fathers. Those
women who were married did nothing but nurse and rear their children.
Their husbands provided them with all necessaries. Those who were
unmarried, and until marriage, became Amazons, doing all the work on the
island that would, in the ordinary course, be done by men. They were
very strictly reared, and were as hardy as boys. If necessary they could
fight in defence of their country with a courage equal to that displayed
by the bravest warriors. Such were the strange customs of the people on
these two islands as related to me by Sylvia Cervantes.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A TASK IS SET ME

On the day after I was made captive to the people on the Female Island
in the Engano group, I was given an opportunity to observe the customs
which prevail among these Amazons. They appeared to be a happy, healthy
people, nor could I fail to notice the absence of ill-temper and
discord, which may be observed in all communities in which men and
women live together, and where jealousy between the sexes is too often
the cause of lifelong feuds. Here the matrons seemed