THE PUTUMAYO

THE PUTUMAYO

THE DEVIL’S PARADISE
TRAVELS IN THE PERUVIAN AMAZON
REGION AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE
ATROCITIES COMMITTED UPON THE
INDIANS THEREIN
BY
W. E. HARDENBURG
EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION
By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S.
Author of “The Andes and the Amazon,” &c.
TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF
SIR ROGER CASEMENT CONFIRMING THE OCCURRENCES
WITH 16 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP
T. FISHER UNWIN
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20

First Published, December, 1912
Second Impression, January, 1913
(All rights reserved.)

PREFACE

THE extracts from Sir Roger Casement’s Report, which form part of this work, are made by permission of H.M. Stationery Office. Acknowledgement is also made for assistance rendered, both to the Rev. J. H. Harris, Organising Secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, and to the Editor of Truth. Portions of Mr. Hardenburg’s accounts have been omitted, and some revisions necessarily made, but the statements of adventures and the occurrences remain as in the original and stand upon their own responsibility. The unpleasing task of editing this book—which stands as perhaps the most terrible page in the whole history of commercialism—has been undertaken in the hope that permanent betterment in the condition of the unfortunate aborigines of South America will be brought about.

THE EDITOR.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE PUTUMAYO

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

IT is something of a terrible irony of fate that in a land whose people for unknown centuries, and up to only four hundred years ago, lived under social laws “so beneficent as had never been known under any ancient kings of Asia, Africa, or Europe, or under any Christian monarch”—laws recorded by a reliable historian and partly capable of verification by the traveller and student to-day—should, in the twentieth century, have been the scene of the ruination and wholesale torture and murder of tribes of its defenceless and industrious inhabitants. Under the Incas of Peru, as recorded by the Inca-Spanish historian Garcilaso de la Vega[1] and other early writers, human blood was never shed purposely; every inhabitant was provided for and had a place in a well-ordered social economic plan; there was no such condition as beggary or destitution; the people were instructed by statute to help each other co-operatively; injustice and corruption were unknown; and there was a belief in a Supreme Director of the Universe. Under the Peruvian republic and the regimen of absentee capitalism to-day, tribes of useful people of this same land have been defrauded, driven into slavery, ravished, tortured, and destroyed. This has been done, not in single instances at the command of some savage potentate, but in tens of thousands under a republican Government, in a Christianised country, at the behest of the agents of a great joint-stock company with headquarters in London: the “crime” of these unfortunates being that they did not always bring in rubber sufficiently fast—work for which they practically received no payment—to satisfy their taskmasters. In order to obtain rubber so that the luxurious-tyred motor-cars of civilisation might multiply in the cities of Christendom, the dismal forests of the Amazon have echoed with the cries of despairing and tortured Indian aborigines. These are not things of the imagination, but a bare statement of actual occurrence, as set forth by the various witnesses in this volume.

The occurrences in the Amazon Valley which, under the name of the Putumayo[2] Rubber Atrocities of Peru, have startled the public mind and aroused widespread horror and indignation—atrocities worse than those of the Congo—cannot be regarded merely as an isolated phenomenon. Such incidents are the extreme manifestation of a condition which expresses itself in different forms all over the world—the condition of acute and selfish commercialism or industrialism whose exponents, in enriching themselves, deny a just proportion of the fruits of the earth and of their toil to the labourers who produce the wealth. The principle can be seen at work in almost any country, in almost every industry; and although its methods elsewhere are lacking in savage lust and barbarity, they still work untold suffering upon mankind. It is easy to condemn offhand the nation of Peru, under whose nominal control the foul spot of the Putumayo exists, and to whose negligence and cupidity the blame for the occurrences is largely to be laid, but the conscience of world-wide commercialism ought also to be pricked.

Leaving, however, that broader aspect of the subject, it is necessary to understand the local conditions which could have brought about such occurrences. The region of the Amazon Valley—a region nearly as large as the whole of Europe without Russia—was early divided between Spain and Portugal. Brazil to-day occupies the eastern and most extensive portion of the valley; and the various Andine republics, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela, cover the upper and western portion. The Amazon is the largest river in the world; the entire fluvial system, with perhaps an aggregate of a hundred thousand miles of navigable rivers and streams, gives access to an enormous territory of forests and plains, which neither road nor railway has yet penetrated.

It is to be recollected that the interior of South America is the least known of any of the continents at the present time. Large areas of territory are practically unexplored. The backward state of the Amazon Valley is largely due to the fact that during three hundred years of Portuguese dominion it was closed commercially to the outside world. Slave-raiding by the Portuguese and the Brazilians went on unchecked. The colonists even fought against and destroyed the Jesuit missions which the devout and humane of their priests had established. The whole valley has existed under a dark cloud ever since the time when, in 1540, the first white man, Orellana, Pizarro’s lieutenant, descended the Napo, Marañon, and Amazon from Quito to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1638 Pedro de Texiera performed his great feat of ascending the Amazon from the Atlantic to Quito, and descending it again in 1639, one of the most noteworthy explorations in history. Exaggerations of Indian savagery and dangers of climate have deterred settlers in later times. As for the Putumayo region, it was practically unknown until the last decade of the nineteenth century. The name “Amazon” was probably a result of the experiences of Orellana and his followers, who were attacked by a tribe of Indians, the Nahumedes, on the river of the same name, whose long hair and dress of chemises or shirts caused the explorers to think their attackers were women-warriors, or “amazons.” There is no proof of the existence of any empire of women in South America, although there is a legend bearing on the subject.

The Putumayo River rises near Pasto, in the Andes of Colombia, and traverses a vast region which forms one of the least-known areas of the earth’s surface. This river is nearly a thousand miles long, flowing through territory which is claimed both by Peru and Colombia, and enters the main stream of the Amazon in Brazil. The river crosses the equator in its upper portion. The notorious rubber-bearing region upon the Putumayo and its affluents, the Igaraparaná and the Caraparaná, lies within a square formed by the equator on the north, the 2nd parallel of latitude on the south, and the 72nd and 74th degrees of longitude west of Greenwich. Like most of the Amazon tributaries, the Putumayo and its two affluents are navigable throughout the greater part of their courses, giving access by water up to the base of the Andes; and the rubber traffic is carried out by means of steam-launches and canoes.

The Caraparaná and Igaraparaná rivers, both flowing from the north-west, run parallel for about four hundred miles through dense, continuous forests, discharging into the Putumayo, the first some six hundred miles and the second some four hundred miles above the confluence of that river with the Amazon. The accompanying map renders clear these conditions, and it will be seen that the region is a considerable distance from Iquitos, nearly a thousand miles by water, the small, intermittent river steamers of the rubber traders occupying two weeks in the journey; and a part of the course lies through Brazilian waterway. A much more direct route can be made by effecting a portage from the Putumayo to the Napo River, which enters the Amazon about fifty miles below Iquitos. The Putumayo region, therefore, must be regarded as an extremely outlying part of Peru, with corresponding difficulties of access and governance.

The native people inhabiting the region are mainly the Huitotos, with other tribes of more or less similar character, but with different names. These people, although known as infieles and salvages—that is, “un-faithed” and “savage”—cannot be described as savages in the ordinary sense of the term. They have nothing in common with the bloody savages of Africa and other parts of the world. Their weapons are not adapted for taking life so much as for hunting, and although the tribes of the Amazon Valley have always fought against each other and have reduced their numbers by inter-tribal strife, they are not generally a fortress-building people, and the noiseless blow-pipe takes the place of the blood-shedding weapons of the indigenes of other lands. The Agarunas of the Marañon, however, build war-towers for defence, as do some other tribes.[3] The tunday or manguare, the remarkable instrument for signalling or communicating by sound through the forest, is used by various tribes in the Amazon Valley. Most of the tribes live in great community-houses. The Indians of the Amazon Valley in general are docile and have good qualities; they are naturally free from immorality and disease; they have a strong affection for their women and children and a regard for the aged. They are well worthy of preservation, and might have been a valuable asset to the region. The particular people of the Putumayo region have decreased greatly since the advent of the rubber “industry,” as has been the case all over the Amazon Valley: on the Putumayo they have been reduced, it is calculated, from forty or fifty thousand to less than ten thousand, partly by abuse and massacre, partly by having fled to more remote districts away from their persecutors.

The local conditions which rendered possible the Putumayo atrocities are to be found, first, in the character of the Iberian and Iberian-descended peoples of South America, and, second, in the topographical formation of the country. To take the last-mentioned first. The condition must be borne in mind that the region of the Amazon forests is in every way separate from the region of the mountains and that of the coast. The coast region of Peru, bordering upon the Pacific Ocean, is a rainless, treeless zone, upon which vegetation is only possible under irrigation, but upon which the modern Peruvian civilisation flourishes; Lima, the capital of the country, being situated only a dozen miles from the sea. To the east of this Europeanised region arise the mountain ranges of the Andes, which cut off the forest lowlands so completely from the coast that the two may be regarded as separate countries. The mountain regions embody vast, treeless tablelands, broken by more or less fertile valleys, and overlooked by snow-clad peaks and ranges, and are subject in general to a cold, inclement climate, with heavy rainfall. The uplands lie at an elevation of 12,000 ft. and upwards above sea-level, and the dividing ranges are crossed at 14,000 to 17,000 ft., with only one or two passes between Western and Eastern Peru, at a lower elevation. The line of tree-life begins at an elevation of about 10,000 to 11,000 ft., this forest region being known as the Montaña of Peru, merging by degrees into the great selvas or forests of Brazil. These topographical details serve to show how greatly Western and Eastern Peru are cut off from each other. The conditions similarly, affect Colombia and Ecuador, and, to a certain extent, Bolivia, but the last-named country does not extend to the Pacific coast. It is in the isolation of the cis-Andine from the trans-Andine regions that Peru may claim some palliation for the offences on the Putumayo. The river port of Iquitos is from thirty to forty days’ journey from Lima under existing means of travel. The easiest method of reaching the one from the other is by way of Southampton, or New York, and Panama. A system of wireless telegraphy is now in operation across the six hundred miles of coast, mountain, and forest territory separating the two cities.

The topographical conditions described had influenced the human inhabitants of Peru before the time of the Spaniards. The aboriginal race inhabiting the highlands and the coast lived then, as they do to-day, in a manner distinct from each other. The highland and coast people were those who formed the population under the Inca government, and under whose control they had reached a high degree of aboriginal civilisation; whilst the indigenes of the forests were more or less roving bands of savages, dwelling on the river banks, without other forms of government than that of the curacas, or petty chiefs of families or tribe. The influence of the Incas did undoubtedly extend into the forest regions in a degree, as evidenced by remaining customs and nomenclature, but the Incas did not establish order and civilisation in the forests as upon the highlands. The Incas and their predecessors built a series of fortresses which commanded the heads of the precipitous valleys leading to the forests, whose ruins remain to-day, and are marvels of ingenuity in megalithic construction. After the conquest the Inca population of the highlands and coast became Christianised, and at the present time the whole of the vast territory of the Pacific coast and Andine uplands, extending throughout Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia for two thousand miles, is under the regimen of the Romish Church, and every village contains its iglesia and village priest. In very different condition are, on the other hand, the aborigines of the forests, who live neither under civil nor religious authority. But there was probably no fundamental or racial difference between the upland and forestal Indians, and they resemble each other in many respects, with differences due to climate and environment. Remains of ancient civilisations, in the form of stone ruins and appliances, are found east of the Andes, in the Amazon forest regions, and the Chaco plains, arguing the existence of prehistoric conditions of a superior character. Legends and customs among the forest tribes seem to refer in a dim, vague way to ancient conditions and happenings of other environments; and there can be little doubt that the archæology and origin of the South American people are far from being fully understood. Further exploration of this little-known region may produce much of interest, and unravel mysteries which the dense forest at present conceals.

One of the principal tributaries of the Amazon is the River Marañon, which flows from the south for a thousand miles between two parallel chains of the Andes, and breaking through a remarkable cañon, known as the Pongo de Manseriche, turns suddenly to the east and forms the main Amazon waterway. Above the Pongo, or rapids, the river is navigable only for very small craft, but below it forms the head of steam navigation. The upper Marañon flows down through a high, difficult territory, with many fertile valleys, and upon its headlands and the adjacent slopes of the mountains are freely scattered the ruins of the Inca and pre-Inca peoples, who inhabited the region in pre-Hispanic times and even contemporaneously with the Spaniards.[4] From this district, and from the valleys to the west of Cuzco and Titicaca, it was that the Inca influence mainly entered the forest regions of the Peruvian Montaña.

It is interesting to note that the “Mongolian” resemblance to the Huitotos Indians of the Putumayo is again observed in Sir Roger Casement’s Report.[5] The resemblance between the aboriginals of the Andine and Amazon regions of South America and Asiatic peoples is striking, as indeed it is with the natives in some parts of Mexico. The present writer has dealt fully with the matter, as bearing upon the possible peopling of America by Tartars in remote times, in a book recently published.[6] The subject is one of great interest. One school of thought denies any imported origin for early American culture, and considers the Aztec and Inca civilisations to have been autochthonous, a natural reaction of man to his environment; whilst the other points to the great probability, as adduced in archæological and other matters, of some prehistoric Asiatic influence.

The abuses connected with rubber-gathering in the Amazon Valley are not a new or sudden condition. The ill-treatment of the Indians in the rubber-bearing regions of Peru were brought to public notice in England and the United States in the book before mentioned, published in 1907, showing that the aborigines were being destroyed, sold into slavery, and murdered by the white rubber-gatherers or merchants several years before the matter culminated in the publication of the Putumayo atrocities. The present writer also wrote to various London periodicals in an endeavour to arouse interest in the subject, but none of the journals specially took the matter up.

The Peruvian Government and the Press of the Republic have long been aware that the Indians of the forest regions were brutally exploited by the rubber merchants and gatherers. Reports and articles have been made and published both by officials and travellers. That Indians were sold at Iquitos and elsewhere as slaves and that there was a constant traffic in Indian women has been known to the authorities ever since rubber-gathering began. In 1906, in Lima, the Director of Public Works, one of the most important of the Government departments, handed the present writer an official publication[7] dealing with Eastern Peru, which contained among other matters an account by a Government official of that region of the barbarities committed upon the Indians, a translation of a portion of which is given here. The present writer had undertaken to make a preliminary survey or reconnaisance on behalf of the Government of a route for a railway from the Pacific coast to the Marañon, which would give access to the interior and be of considerable strategic importance.

The following translation of part of a Report in the official publication, dated February, 1905, by a Peruvian engineer in the service of the Government[8] shows that the abuse of the Indians was a matter of current knowledge:—

“Marked changes have been produced among the savage tribes of the Oriental regions of Peru by the industry of collecting the ‘black gold,’ as the rubber is termed. Some of them have accepted the ‘civilisation’ offered by the rubber-merchants, others have been annihilated by them. On the other hand, alcohol, rifle bullets, and smallpox have worked havoc among them in a few years. I take this opportunity of protesting before the civilised world against the abuses and unnecessary destruction of these primitive beings, whom the rapacity of so-called civilised man has placed as mere mercantile products in the Amazon markets; for it is a fact known to every one that the native slaves are quoted there like any other merchandise. Throughout the forest region under the control of the Governments of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and Brazil the natives are exposed to attack without protection of the law by the whites, who hunt and persecute them like animals of the jungle, recognising as their only value the sum represented by their sale. If protection is not afforded these unhappy beings, the just Judge of the doings of all will condemn the generation which annihilates without cause the indigenous races, the real owners of the soil.”

The principal newspaper of Lima, El Comercio, a journal of high standing, has repeatedly drawn attention to the ill-treatment and exploitation of the Indians, not only in the regions of the Putumayo and Iquitos but much farther to the south—as, for example, in the district round Port Maldonado. This river port is nearly two thousand miles from the Putumayo region, southward across Peru, reached by launch and canoe upon a different river system, that of the Beni River. The upper courses of this river are known as the Madre de Dios, upon which Port Maldonado is situated, and whose lower course is the enormous Madera River, which runs into the Amazon in Brazil in latitude 59°, more than one thousand miles below Iquitos. At Port Maldonado is the confluence of the Tambopata River with the Madre de Dios, and farther upstream is the Inambari River. The whole of this region is rich in rubber forests, and several companies are engaged in rubber-gathering, including British, American, Bolivian, and Peruvian. The following translation from El Comercio of Lima in an edition of February, 1906, shows that more or less similar methods were employed at points so far apart as Maldonado and the Putumayo:—

“In the basin of the Madre de Dios and its affluents, where it is easy to navigate with the help of the ‘terrible’ Chunchos,[9] who in reality are good and hospitable, exist immense quantities of rubber, rich and abundant rubber forests of easy exploitation. It would appear that the new Commissioner is resolved to put a stop to the barbarous custom of the correrrias[10] organised by the authorities themselves or by the rubber-merchants, who carry on the repugnant business of selling the poor Chunchos. As labour and women are both scarce, and as there is a strong demand for the one and the other, bands of armed men are constantly organised for sudden descents upon groups or communities of the savages, no matter whether they are friendly or hostile, making them prisoners in the midst of extermination and blood. Urged on by the profit resulting from the sale of boys, robust youths, and young women (frescas mujeres), they tear children from mothers and wives from husbands without pity, and pass them from hand to hand as slaves. It were well to take the savages from their forests to use their labour and to cultivate their intelligence, but not for business purposes to make them victims of the knife and the lash.”

Thus the Press of the country itself shows that these things are done, not only with the connivance of the authorities but are “organised by the authorities themselves.” The expected improvements mentioned above took place very slowly, and in some cases not at all. To replace one Commissioner by another is insufficient. All are equally venal or influenced, and King Log does but give place to King Stork. Barbarities committed by the rubber-merchants upon the Indians of the Ucayali and Marañon were brought to the knowledge of the Peruvian Government in 1903 and 1906 by Roman Catholic missionaries established there and published by the Minister of Justice.[11]

After extensive journeys in the interior of Peru, upon returning to the capital, the present writer wrote various articles, which were published in the Press of Lima and Arequipa, drawing attention to the miserable condition of life of the labouring Indian class. Among these evils is abuse by petty authorities and estate-owners, who employ the Indians and fail to pay them their agreed wages or pay them in goods of inadequately low value; the extortions of the village priests under the cloak of religious customs; and, most serious of all, the ravages resulting upon the consumption of aguardiente, or fiery sugar-cane rum, which is responsible for the ruination and decrease of the working population. This cane spirit is manufactured largely by the sugar-estate owners, and is often a more profitable product than the sugar, whose output is sacrificed thereto; but as the large estate-owners are often influential personages or politicians and members of the Legislature, the prohibition of the profitable sale of alcohol among the Indians is not likely to be brought about. The leading newspaper of Lima, El Comercio, in a leading article, of which the following is a partial translation, said:—

“It is not rare, unfortunately, in the Republic that the authorities of all kinds raise up abuses as a supreme law against the villages of the interior. For the Indians of the mountains and the uplands there often exists neither the Constitution nor positive rights. It would be useless to seek in the indigenous race beings really free and masters of their acts and persons. It looks as though independence had only been saved for the dwellers of the coast. From the moment that the traveller’s gaze ceases to observe the ocean and is directed over the interminable chain of the Andes it ceases also to observe free men, the citizens of an independent republic. To this condition, which is not abnormal because it has always existed, the ignorance of the Indian contributes, but also the abuses of the authorities, who, with rare exceptions, make of them objects of odious spoliation. Such depredations are aggravated when its victims are unfortunate and unhappy beings, towards whom there is every obligation to protect, and not to exploit.”

The most remarkable fact about the maltreatment of the South American Indians is that—admitted and specially alluded to in the Peruvian Press, as the foregoing extracts show—abuses are carried out often by the petty authorities themselves. It is painful for a foreigner, one, moreover, who has enjoyed hospitality both from the authorities and from the village priests in the interior of Peru, to record these matters, but it is manifestly a duty. Moreover, it is a service to the country itself to draw attention to the evil. The extinction of the indigenous labour of the Andine highlands and of the rubber forests will render impossible for a long period the internal development of the country. No foreign or imported race can perform the work of the Peruvian miner or rubber-gatherer. Due to the peculiar conditions of climate—the great altitude in the one case and the humidity in the other—no European or Asiatic people could take the place of these people, whose work can only be accomplished by those who have paid Nature the homage of being born upon the soil and inured to its conditions throughout many generations.[12] It might have been supposed that from economic reasons alone the exploiters of native labour would have endeavoured to foster and preserve it, even if it were simply on the principle of feeding and stabling a horse in order to use its powers to the utmost. But this is not the case. The economic principle of conserving the efficiency of human labour by its employer, remarkable as it may seem, has never been recognised even in the most enlightened communities, or only very recently and in a very few instances. It is not necessary to go to the tropics to seek instances; they are evident no farther afield than among the ill-paid mining, dock, manufacturing, and other labour in Great Britain and the United States. The very abundance of labour has been its own undoing; the supply has seemed exhaustless and the tendency has been to squander it. The question is one of degree rather than of principle in any community or industry and at any time in history. But in the persecuted districts of Latin America native labour is practically being hounded off the face of the earth.

The Putumayo atrocities were first brought to public notice by an American engineer and his companion, Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, and the interesting narrative by the former of their travels upon the Putumayo River forms a large part of the subject of this book. Mr. Hardenburg and his companion suffered great hardships and imprisonment at the hands of the Peruvian agents of the rubber company on the Putumayo, and barely escaped with their lives. For these outrages some time afterwards they were awarded the sum of £500 damages by the Peruvian Government, due to the action of the United States. Mr. Hardenburg came to London from Iquitos in financial straits, but only with considerable difficulty was able to draw public attention to the occurrences on the Putumayo. Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins’s account and indictment of the methods employed by the company’s agents on the Putumayo, under the name of “The Devil’s Paradise,” was a terrible one. It was averred that the peaceful Indians were put to work at rubber-gathering without payment, without food, in nakedness; that their women were stolen, ravished, and murdered; that the Indians were flogged until their bones were laid bare when they failed to bring in a sufficient quota of rubber or attempted to escape, were left to die with their wounds festering with maggots, and their bodies were used as food for the agents’ dogs; that flogging of men, women, and children was the least of the tortures employed; that the Indians were mutilated in the stocks, cut to pieces with machetes, crucified head downwards, their limbs lopped off, target-shooting for diversion was practised upon them, and that they were soused in petroleum and burned alive, both men and women. The details of these matters were almost too repugnant for production in print, and only their outline was published.

The first result of the publication of the Putumayo atrocities in the London Press was denial. The Peruvian Amazon Company denied the truth of the matter: the Peruvian Government denied the existence of such conditions; whilst the Peruvian Consul-General and Chargé d’Affaires in London denied them even more emphatically. In the minds of those acquainted with Latin-American methods denials would not carry much weight. To deny is the first resource of the Latin-American character and policy. It is an “Oriental” trait they possess, the curious obsession that efficient and sustained denial is the equal of truth, no matter what the real conditions. The Peruvian Consul in London wrote vehement letters of denial and re-denial to the London Press, among them the following, published by Truth in September, 1909:—

“This Legation categorically denies that the acts you describe, and which are severely punished by our laws, could have taken place without the knowledge of my Government on the Putumayo River, where Peru has authorities appointed direct by the supreme Government, and where a strong military garrison is likewise maintained.”[13]

Unfortunately, the statements of the representatives of certain of the South American republics in London cannot always be regarded as disinterested. Their Governments in some cases pay them no salary, and they are concerned in promoting and earning commissions from the flotation of rubber and mining companies in the particular regions they represent. Such a condition is often discreditable to the Latin-American republics. Officials who are shareholders in and recipients of commission from rubber company promoters with whom they are hand-in-glove are not likely to take an impartial view of the unfortunate native workers.

The Secretary of the Peruvian Amazon Company wrote in September, 1909, to the Anti-Slavery Society and Truth as follows:—

“The Directors have no reason to believe that the atrocities referred to have, in fact, taken place, and indeed have grounds for considering that they have been purposely mis-stated for indirect objects. Whatever the facts, however, may be, the Board of the company are under no responsibility for them, as they were not in office at the time of the alleged occurrences. It was not until your article appeared that the Board were aware of what is now suggested.”

The publication of the Putumayo occurrences has revealed once more that tinge of hypocrisy in the British character of which other nations have accused us. Or, rather than hypocrisy, it should perhaps be termed an intensive shopkeeping principle. Due to this spirit the exposure was greatly delayed. No one would publish the Hardenburg account, because as a book it might not have been a paying venture. Only when the way had been prepared for a successful book, by the public scandal which resulted after attention had been drawn to the matter, was it resolved to publish it. The London Press at first was equally negligent or timorous, with the exception of Truth. It showed little disposition to take the matter up, until that paper, whose business it is to expose scandals and abuses, exposed the horrors to public gaze. Then, when the matter had reached the stage of useful “copy,” it appeared in all the papers—in some cases with startling headlines. The daily papers feared that they would incur risk of libel proceedings in attacking what was regarded as a powerful London Company, with a capital of a million pounds and an influential Board of Directors, and at first hesitated to take the matter up. Had it not been for the work of the philanthropic society already mentioned, the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society,[14] in London, and the courage of the Editor of Truth, to both of whom Hardenburg went, followed by the prolonged publications in Truth, the sinister occurrences of the Putumayo might have remained unrevealed, and the unspeakable outrages on the Huitotos Indians have gone on unhindered. The Anti-Slavery Society showed that “nothing reported from the Congo has equalled in horror some of the acts alleged against the rubber syndicate,” and the reader of the present work will not dispute the truth of the statement. The Society brought the matter with such insistence before the Foreign Office that questions were asked in the House of Commons and inquiries set on foot by Sir Edward Grey, to whose everlasting credit it is that vigorous action was at length taken.

The Peruvian Amazon Company protested that the allegations were made by blackmailers. This was denied by Hardenburg, and by Truth on Hardenburg’s account. There were, however, accusations of blackmail against others.[15]

The first reply to the letters of the Anti-Slavery Society, from the Foreign Office, was in December, 1909, when it was stated that the Foreign Office had the subject under consideration. In July, 1910, a British Consul, Mr. Roger Casement, well known for his investigations into the Congo atrocities, was instructed to proceed to the Putumayo, his locus standi being secured on the grounds that a number of British subjects, coloured men of Barbadoes, had been employed by Arana and the Peruvian agents of the company as slave-drivers. The securing of Mr. Casement for the work was due to the endeavour of the Anti-Slavery Society. The directors of the company, aroused at length by public opinion, or the representations of the Foreign Office, sent out a commission of inquiry at the same time.[16] Both the consul and the company’s Commission faithfully carried out their task, and Mr. Casement handed in his report to Sir Edward Grey in January, 1911. The conclusions reached were terrible and damning. The worst accounts were confirmed in the words of Consul Casement: “The condition of things fully warrants the worst charges brought against the agents of the Peruvian Amazon Company and its methods on the Putumayo.”[17]

The great delay in publishing this report, which was only laid before Parliament in July, 1912, a year after being made, caused some protest by the Press. The Foreign Office had withheld it out of a desire to afford the Peruvian Government an opportunity of taking action to end the abuses, but, as this was not done, the report was made public as a means of arousing public opinion. The press of the whole civilised world then took the matter up.

It may well be asked how it was possible that such occurrences could take place in a country with a seat of government such as Lima, where dwell a highly civilised and sensitive people, whose public institutions, streets, shops, and churches are not inferior to those of many European cities. The reply is, first, in the remoteness of the region of the Putumayo, as explained, and secondly in political and international matters. Peru is constantly torn by political strife at home, and between the doings of rival factions, the outlying regions of the country are overlooked. But Peru was largely influenced by its own insecure possession of the Putumayo region; and it had greatly welcomed the establishing of the Peruvian Amazon Company, a powerful organisation, in the debatable territory. Under such circumstances few questions were likely to be asked about such matters as treatment of the natives. The existence of the company was a species of safeguard for Peruvian possession of the region. Furthermore, a central Government such as that at Lima might be well-intentioned, but if distances are vast and without means of communication, and distant officials hopelessly corrupt, the situation was extremely difficult for the Government. Another circumstance affecting the action of the Peruvian Government is that, in the republican form of government, the judicial authorities are independent of the Executive. The educated people of the Peruvian capital and coast region must, in general, be exonerated from knowledge of the occurrences of the Putumayo.

The difficulties of Peru in the government and development of their portion of the Amazon Valley, known as the Oriente, or Montaña, must not be lightly passed over. The physical difficulties against what has been termed the Conquest of the Montaña are such as it is impossible for the European to picture. Nature resists at every step. Hunger, thirst, fever, fatigue, and death await the explorer at times, in these profound, unconquerable forests. Peru has sent forth many expeditions thereto; brave Peruvians have given their lives in the conquest. The authorities at different points have frequently organised bands of explorers, and the Lima Geographical Society has done much valuable work in sending out persons to explore and map these difficult regions. Yet the possession of the Montaña is a heritage of incalculable value to Peru. It is a region any nation might covet. The Peruvians are alive to its value and possibilities, but they are poor. Days, weeks, months of arduous travel on mule-back, on foot, cutting trochas, or paths, through the impenetrable underbrush, by raft and by canoe, suffering all the hardships of the tropics, of torrential rain, burning sun, scarcity of food—all these are circumstances of venturing off the few trails into the vast and almost untravelled trans-Andine regions of Peru, divided by the lofty plateaux and snowy summits of the Andes from the temperate lowlands where the Europeanised civilisation of the Pacific flourishes.

It is not to be supposed that the Indians are all pacific or docile in the Peruvian Montaña. Whole villages which were established in earlier times by the Spaniards and afterwards enlarged by the Peruvians, with buildings, plantations, and industries, have been wiped out by attacks of the Indians, probably in reprisals. In some districts the danger from savages prevents settlement, and the blow-pipe and the spear greet the traveller who ventures there incautiously. Tales of savagery have been told in which the white man has been the sufferer; and there has always existed an animus against the Indian, although less acute than that which the white settler in North America displayed against the “redskin” in earlier times, and without the same cause.

In the Peruvian Montaña, in its upper regions, Nature has been lavish of her products and opportunities. The rancher who should take up his abode there, with a small amount of capital, can rapidly acquire estates and wealth. Abundant harvests of almost every known product can be raised in a minimum of time. It is sufficient to cut down and burn the brush and scratch the soil and sow with any seed, to recover returns of a hundred for one. Sugar-cane, vines, maize, cocoa, coffee, and a host of products can be raised. The sugar-cane, once planted, yields perpetually, some existing plantations being more than a hundred years old. The cane frequently measures thirty feet in height, and is cut seven to nine months after sprouting. The whole Amazon Valley, when it shall have been opened up, will prove to be one of the most valuable parts of the earth’s surface.

Apart from topographical considerations, the sinister occurrences on the Putumayo are, to some extent, the result of a sinister human element—the Spanish and Portuguese character. The remarkable trait of callousness to human suffering which the Iberian people of Portugal and Spain—themselves a mixture of Moor, Goth, Semite, Vandal, and other peoples—introduced into the Latin American race is here shown in its intensity, and is augmented by a further Spanish quality. The Spaniard often regards the Indians as animals. Other European people may have abused the Indians of America, but none have that peculiar Spanish attitude towards them of frankly considering them as non-human. To-day the Indians are commonly referred to among Spaniards and Mestizos as animales. The present writer, in his travels in Peru and Mexico, has constantly been met with the half-impatient exclamation, on having protested against maltreatment of the Indian, of “Son animales, Señor; no son gentes.” (“They are animals, Señor; they are not folk”). The torture or mutilation of the Indian is therefore regarded much as it would be in the case of an ox or a horse. This attitude of mind was well shown in the barbarous system of forced labour in the mines in the times of the viceroys of Peru and Mexico, where the Indians were driven into the mines by armed guards and branded on the face with hot irons. When their overtaxed strength gave way under the heavy labour, which rapidly occurred, their carcasses were pitched aside and they were replaced by other slaves. These operations of the time of the Spaniards have their counterpart in the Amazon Valley to-day. There is yet a further trait of the Latin American which to the Anglo-Saxon mind is almost inexplicable. This is the pleasure in the torture of the Indian as a diversion, not merely as a vengeance or “punishment.” As has been shown on the Putumayo, and as happened on other occasions elsewhere, the Indians have been abused, tortured, and killed por motivos frivolos—that is to say, for merely frivolous reasons, or for diversion. Thus Indians are shot at in sport to make them run or as exercise in tiro al blanco or target practice, and burnt by pouring petroleum over them and setting it on fire in order to watch their agonies. This love of inflicting agony for sport is a curious psychic attribute of the Spanish race. The present writer, when in remote regions in Peru and Mexico, has had occasion to intervene, sometimes at personal risk, in the ill-treatment of Indians and peones, who were being tortured or punished to extort confession for small misdemeanours, or even for purely frivolous reasons. The Indians of Latin America are in reality grown-up children, with the qualities of such, but the Spaniards and Portuguese have recognised in these traits nothing more than what they term “animal” qualities.

The indictment of Peruvian officials in the Hardenburg narrative is extremely severe, and they are contrasted unfavourably with the Colombians. In reality there is little to choose between the methods of the representatives of any of the South American republics as regards the administration of justice in remote regions. Power is always abused in such places by the Latin American people, be they Peruvians, Colombians, Bolivians, Brazilians, Argentinos, or others. Tyranny is but a question of opportunity, in the present stage of their development. Justice is bought and sold, as far as its secondary administrators are concerned. The otherwise good qualities and fine latent force of the Latin American character are overshadowed by its more primitive instincts, which time and the growth of real democracy will eliminate.[18]

Furthermore, there are other rubber-bearing regions in the Amazon Valley where hidden abuses are committed, in the territory of other South American republics; and Peru does not stand alone, and atrocities are not confined to the Putumayo.

It was shown that many of the murders and floggings at the rubber stations were committed by the Barbadian negroes at the order of the Peruvian chiefs of sections. These negroes were forced at their own peril to these acts. But probably the savage depth of the negro is easily stirred, as all know who have had dealings therewith. There can be little doubt that the Peruvian rubber-agents knew the negro character and secured them for that reason. On the other hand, it is shown that some of these Barbadian negroes rebelled against going to the Putumayo—protested to the British Consul at Manaos, but were ordered on board by that official under police supervision.[19] When they reached the rubber stations on the remote Putumayo it was difficult to rebel against the orders of the Peruvian agents or chiefs of sections. In some cases, when they did so, they themselves received ill-treatment and were subjected to torture, for which they do not appear to have received any compensation as British subjects. The lack of advice and investigation into the conditions of their contract and service which appears to have befallen them at the hands of the British Consul at Manaos is a matter for reflection. The investigation carried out by the Consular Commission showed that some of these Barbadian negroes committed terrible crimes at the instigation of their superiors. The first contingent of these men, imported by Arana Brothers, reached the Putumayo at the end of 1904. These Barbadoes men generally term themselves “Englishmen”[20] rather than “British subjects.” They are good workers generally, and to their labour it is that the work of the Panama Canal owes its speedy execution.

It is noteworthy that one of the worst criminal chiefs of sections was a Peruvian or Bolivian who had been educated in England, frequently referred to.

After the exposure of the scandals the Peruvian Government sent a commission of its own to the Putumayo, which confirmed all that had been published. The principal official of this commission was Judge Paredes, the proprietor of El Oriente, an Iquitos newspaper; and he made a full report “embodying an enormous volume of testimony, of 3,000 pages involving wellnigh incredible charges of cruelty and massacre” and “issued 237 warrants” against the criminals, as stated in Sir Roger Casement’s Report. But between issuing warrants and actually making arrests and convictions, in South America, there is a wide gulf. Furthermore, Judge Paredes endeavoured, in a recent statement, to show[21] that the “English Rubber Company” was solely responsible for the atrocities, and that the English Consul at Iquitos has been aiding the guilty parties in keeping from the Peruvian Government an exact knowledge of what was taking place, is the contention of Peru. Mr. David Cazes, English Consul in Iquitos since 1903, would have been in a good position to find out about the management of the rubber plantation. All the rubber gathered in the Putumayo is shipped from Iquitos. And yet he always swore that he knew nothing. No one can enter the territory of the rubber company without the permission of the Company’s representative in Iquitos. The twenty-one constables whom the Peruvian Government kept in the Putumayo in those days had all been bribed by the English traders and shut their eyes to what was happening in the jungle.

In this way the Peruvian Commissioner seeks to excuse his country, laying stress on the term “English company and traders,” when he knows that the only representatives of the English company were its Peruvian directors and managers. The judge adds: “You must not imagine that the Indians are any less protected than the white man in Peru. Barring, of course, the times of the early Spanish conquerors, the native Indians have been treated very humanely in Peru.” This latter statement, read in conjunction with the translations from official documents and El Comercio of Lima, previously given, about Peruvian treatment of the Indians, will enable this statement of the judge to be judged in its turn.

Señor Paredes, when asked by his American interviewer “to what he attributed the recent exposure of wrongs committed several years ago,” replied, “It may be that certain Englishmen are a little jealous of the cordial relations existing between Peru and the United States.” There is revealed here the somewhat singular situation of Peru’s international relations, with its atmosphere of jealousies. Peru strives to look towards what it considers the dominant power in that hemisphere, and years past has been engaged in what might be termed a one-sided political flirtation with the United States. Peru has hoped to enlist the sympathy of the great northern republic, which might strengthen her hands against her old enemy Chile, between whom and the United States there exists a veiled antagonism. The rankling question of Tacna and Arica has been at the base of the Peruvian attitude. The friendship of the United States would be more valuable, in Peruvian eyes, than that of Great Britain. Furthermore, questions between Peru and the Peruvian Corporation, the powerful company which controls all Peru’s railways and which, though international as regards its shareholders and its capitalisation of £22,000,000 sterling, is operated and controlled from London, have often been acute. Each claims that the other has failed to fulfil its contracts, and whilst there have been faults on both sides, the Peruvian Governments of past years were those who first created the difficult situation. The Corporation has been accused of a sustained, unfriendly attitude towards Peru and of an endeavour to block outside foreign enterprise in the country. It is, however, in Paris that feeling among financiers against Peru has been most acute, and Peru has been in the past practically shut out from the French financial market owing to the unsettled claims of French creditors. In general terms the United States is considered to be the more desirable friend, not Europe, and thus it is that North American friendship is cultivated. There is, however, no unfriendliness between Peru and Great Britain, and the best Peruvian statesmen have done their best to cultivate good relations. But, like all American people, the Peruvians are sensitive, and they deeply resent outside criticism.

The work of Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, to whom the exposure of the Putumayo atrocities is primarily due, has scarcely received sufficient acknowledgment. The risks they ran in obtaining evidence were considerable, and such as can only be understood by a traveller accustomed to Latin American ways. Human life is held cheap in such communities. Murder and treachery to secure personal or political ends are only repressed in the Latin American republics by the presence of collective opinion. Where that is absent or perturbed there is no restraining influence, such as the personal sense of fair play and hatred of treachery which the British character affords. It is not only a matter of education, but of soil, climate, race, and character. Those who arouse the antagonism of any person in power, where the law is weak, may expect anything, from charges of blackmail to the knife or bullet of the assassin. The terrible political murders constantly taking place in the Latin American republics indicate the ruthless spirit prevalent among certain classes in those communities. The trouble taken by Hardenburg to collect his evidence, and the repugnance displayed towards the authors of the crime, and the appeal to English justice are worthy of recognition.[22]

The British public might feel constrained to ask how it was possible that the British Consul at Iquitos—whence all the rubber is shipped—who has been stationed at that town since 1903, had never heard of nor investigated the abuses committed against the Indians; that it remained for a chance traveller to bring them to general notice. Furthermore, the British Vice-Consul at Manaos appears to have had no knowledge of the subject. When the Peruvian Amazon Company imported foremen from Barbadoes—British subjects—and these men learned of the terrible nature of the duties they were to perform, which was that of slave-driving and flagellating the Indians, and complained to the Consul, asking for an annulment of their contracts, they were unable to obtain release by the official. The rubber from the Amazon Valley is all exported in English vessels, moreover. Notwithstanding the extensive British interests in Peru, no inkling of the treatment and fate of the unfortunate Indians had reached the outside world before.

It is to be noted that the American Consul at Iquitos appears not to have been able to afford any assistance to Mr. Hardenburg and his companion, and that action was taken by the American Government consequent upon the ill-treatment of its citizens, only after a considerable lapse of time. The ill-treatment of the two travellers afforded an opportunity for intervention by the United States Government, even if it had not been aroused to action on grounds of humanity alone. It was only in July, 1911, a year after Consul Casement had been dispatched by the British Government to Peru, and after six months of telegraphic dispatches between the British Foreign Office and the British Minister in Lima—dispatches communicated to the Peruvian Government—that the United States Government, having been urged thereto by the British representative, consented to make “informal representations” at Lima. Again urged by the British Government to support their representations, as no progress was being made in bringing the criminals to justice, the United States Minister, six months afterwards, was instructed to support the British representative. Thus, had action not been taken by Great Britain none would have been forthcoming by the United States, a condition which, for a nation that has assumed and been granted the position of policeman in South America, must be regretted. The Monroe Doctrine carries with it a greater responsibility than has been exercised so far by the United States in Latin American affairs, and this is becoming plainer to the great body of well-meaning American people. The United States at the present time are actively engaged in increasing their commercial standing with their southern neighbours, but it is the case that these doubt the moral superiority of their neighbour, and naturally resent his right to interfere in their political and international affairs.

Under the most favourable conditions the collection of rubber is an arduous and generally unhealthy work. Years ago an estimate was made that every ton of rubber from the Amazon Valley cost two human lives, and although at that time the estimate seemed to be an exaggerated one, the methods of the Putumayo must have quadrupled it. If the native rubber-gatherer were treated as an ordinary labourer and paid a due wage, it is safe to say that it would not pay to gather wild rubber at all, or only by increasing its price in the world’s market very considerably. As a cheap commodity it represents a definite ratio of human lives lost. In Sir Roger Casement’s Report it is shown that for the twelve years 1900 to 1911 the Putumayo output of 4,000 tons of rubber cost 30,000 lives. Various rubber companies in Peru and Bolivia have been obliged already to suspend operations due to scarcity of labour. The remedy lies in planting, in conjunction with the wild rubber forests. The amount of rubber collected by the slave labour in the Putumayo district for the benefit of the company and its predecessors, for six years ending in December, 1910, was 2,947,800 kilogrammes, of the value on the London market of nearly £1,000,000. The output from Iquitos, however, has not decreased, which has been taken as a proof that native labour is still being hard-driven. The crop-year 1911-12 shows a considerable increase over that for 1910-11.[23]

Perhaps one of the most remarkable circumstances affecting the rubber company is the ease with which it was possible to float, in London, a property of which, to a large extent, possession was imaginary and without proper title. It is but another instance of the astute methods of company promoters and the gullibility of the British shareholder. It will be recollected that in 1909 shares in rubber companies to the amount of £150,000,000 sterling were taken up, a great part of which have proved useless or fraudulent. Laws seem inadequate against the combination of knave, fool, and victim which is so marked a feature of modern company-promoting finance.

The occurrences on the Putumayo accentuate a moral which is bound to be presented to the conscience of the investing British public. In South America, as in Latin America generally, and in many other parts of the world where aboriginal labour is cheap, great sums of British capital are invested, and a steady stream of gold turns its course therefrom towards the British Isles. But these numerous and complacent shareholders in their comfortable surroundings know nothing, and have not made it their business to care anything, about the conditions of life of the humble workers who produce the dividends. Do they know that their gains are often secured by the labour of ill-paid, half-starved, and often grossly abused brown and black folk? How long does the British shareholder of foreign enterprises expect to live upon the toil of distant “niggers,” who themselves reap little or nothing from the soil upon which they were born? There are approximately £600,000,000 sterling of British money invested in bonds, stock, and shares in South American enterprises, quoted on the London Stock Exchange, which return in the aggregate a steady average dividend of nearly 5 per cent. per annum. Some of these enterprises pay 12, 20, and 25 per cent. interest. Much of this is the result of poor native labour. In various instances what amounts to spoliation is practised upon the cheap labour by British-owned companies. Similar conditions hold good with American concerns—mining and rubber-gathering in Mexico and Central and South America. The Americans are often extremely oppressive to the Indian labourer. In the American-owned copper-mines of Peru serious outbreaks due to this cause have occurred of recent years. The white American foreman rapidly gets used to oppressing the Indian. The miserable conditions of native labour in Latin America ought to be brought home to the directors and shareholders of British and other foreign companies. There are hundreds of rubber, mining, oil, plantation, railway, and other companies with scores of noblemen—lords, dukes, baronets—as well as doctors of science, bankers, and business-men, and even ministers of religion, distributed among their boards of directors. What knowledge have these gentlemen of the conditions of the poor native labourers under their control? There is a grave responsibility, which has been very easily carried, about this system of absentee capitalism.

British investment in and trade with the Latin American countries is an important part of British commercial prosperity. But this trade is not increasing in nearly the same ratio as that of other countries, notably the United States and Germany. In some cases it is falling off. This is due partly to a lack of organisation, and is constantly pointed out in consular and trade reports.[24]

The occurrences on the Putumayo have at least tended to arouse the religious element, if not the commercial conscience, of the British people. A severe indictment of the directors of the Peruvian Amazon Company was made from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, in August, 1912, in a sermon by Canon Henson. The English directors were denounced by name, and the demand made that they should be arrested and brought to public trial, the preacher stating that he chose that famous pulpit for delivering the indictment in order that the widest possible publicity might be given to the subject. The directors, in the public Press, then made through their solicitors an emphatic and indignant denial of their responsibility, alleging that in the first place they were ignorant of the occurrences, and that when these were shown to have some foundation in fact they voluntarily dispatched a commission to inquire into the matter.

Aroused by the revelations made, several religious missions started to being in London, asking for support by public subscription to enable missionary work to be carried out and stations established in the Peruvian Amazon region. There is a strong religious moral to be drawn from the occurrences. In all probability such a terrible situation would never have grown to being if the fine work of the old Jesuit and Franciscan friars in Brazil and Peru had been allowed to flourish. One of the greatest names associated with the Amazon is that of the famous Padre Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian by birth, who passed the larger part of his life in the service of Spain in Peru as a Jesuit missionary, working from 1686 to 1723, among the Indians of the Amazon forests. Living with the native tribes of the Huallaga, the Napo—which parallels the Putumayo—the Ucayali, and others of the great affluents of the Amazon, this devoted priest carried on his Christianising work, winning the natives to Christianity in a way so remarkable as has never been equalled since. Venturing at length farther down the Amazon into Portuguese territory, Fritz fell ill, and was detained for two years at Para by the Portuguese, who were jealous and fearful of Spanish domination in the Amazon Valley. The Portuguese built forts at the confluence of the Rio Negro, where Manaos now stands, in order to assert their sovereignty over that part of the river, and dispatched armed bands upstream which destroyed the Christian missions and settlements Fritz had founded. The atrocious cruelties practised in these slave-raids, for such in effect they were, caused the tribes to flee to remoter regions, and a great diminution of the population followed in the first half of the eighteenth century. Thus the Portuguese conquistadores accomplished for the Amazon what the Spaniards had performed for the Andine highlands, and what the commercial conquest of rubber-gathering, nominally conducted from London, has accomplished in the twentieth century.

There can be no doubt of the value of religious missions in the Amazon Valley. A mission which should establish itself in these regions ought to be provided with well-appointed launches and motorboats, and to be prepared to exercise a more or less “muscular” kind of Christianity. Between the rival claims that have been advanced for Roman Catholic and Protestant Missions it is difficult to judge. The existing Romish Church in the Andean highlands is a valuable restraining force, but its methods often partake of spoliation of the Indian under the cloak of religion, and of what, as regards certain of its attributes, is practically petty idolatry; whilst the moral character of the village priests leaves much to be desired. There seems little reason why both sects should not exercise their sway. Protestant public worship or proselytising is against the Peruvian laws, but is tolerated. Nevertheless, bitter hostility is shown to it in the upland regions, which are absolutely under priestly control. In the Amazon lowlands and rivers this obstacle would possibly be less formidable.

The occurrences of the Putumayo have aroused public feeling in Lima, where a pro-indigena, or native protection society, has been established, based upon a former, feebler association of similar character; for there has always existed a party protesting against the abuses practised upon the Indians. The change of Government in the Republic has brought promises of betterment. Telegraphic communications to the London Press have announced, on the one hand, that the Peruvian Chambers of Congress have “moved a resolution protesting against the attitude of Great Britain and the United States,” and, on the other, “that inhumanity in the Putumayo has been absolutely abolished.” Apart from electioneering devices, it cannot be doubted that the Government has been aroused. But those acquainted with social conditions in South America will greatly doubt if, apart from mutilations and assassination, the social condition of the Indian will yet be bettered or the ruinous system of peonage replaced by civilised labour conditions. If peonage and forced labour still exist in the more civilised upland regions, as they do, the conditions are not likely to be banished in the Amazon forestal lowlands. The subject must not be allowed to sink into oblivion, and the pressure of public opinion must be sustained.

If the occurrences which have been exposed lead to an awakening of the commercial conscience as regards investments in countries where poor native labour is employed, and to the consequent betterment of the lot of the humble worker in Latin America, the cruel sacrifice of the poor Indians in the dismal forests of the Putumayo will not have been in vain.

C. Reginald Enock.

CHAPTER II
HARDENBURG’S NARRATIVE: SOURCE OF THE PUTUMAYO

NOT far from the city of Pasto, in Southern Colombia, a small, swift-flowing mountain stream has its origin in one of the high peaks of the Colombian Andes. Here, plunging furiously down the steep, precipitous descents of the Cordillera Oriental, between the high, heavily wooded mountains, which rise almost perpendicularly to the clouds, it dashes itself into spray against the immense boulders that form its bed, and throws itself over the numerous precipices in its path with a deep, resounding roar like distant thunder.

This mountain torrent is the River Putumayo, which, leaving the towering Andes, flows in a south-easterly direction more than a thousand miles through the great fertile, wooded plains of the Amazon basin, finally entering the great river in Western Brazil.

The region traversed by this magnificent river is one of the richest in the world. In the Andes and its upper course it flows through a rich mineral section. At its source, near Pasto, numerous goldmines are being discovered daily and are changing hands rapidly, and there are immense deposits of iron and coal.

Having resigned our positions on the Cauca Railway, my companion W. B. Perkins and myself had set out upon our long-talked-of trip across South America, leaving the town of Buenaventura, on the Pacific coast of Colombia, on October 1, 1907, traversed the successive ranges of the Andes, and had arrived at the little Indian village of Santiago, in the level valley of Sibundoy.

The valley of Sibundoy—once the bed of an ancient lake—is situated in the Cordillera Oriental at an elevation of about 2,300 metres above sea-level, and is some 25 kilometres long by 10 wide. The Putumayo, here but a small, crystal mountain stream, flows through it, rising in one of the numerous peaks that surround the valley on every side. A part of the valley is low and swampy, but the rest is good, rich soil, quite suitable for agricultural purposes, and covered with a thick, short grass. Although all the encircling mountains are clad with forests, the valley is, at present, cleared and ready for cultivation.

In this beautiful Andean valley four distinct villages have sprung up—San Antonio, Santiago, Sibundoy, and San Francisco. Of the first, San Antonio, I can say but little, as it was out of our line of march and we did not have time to visit it; but I understand that it is an Indian village of approximately the same size and characteristics as Santiago. It is connected with Lake Cocha by an Indian trail, which is to be followed more or less by the location of a new mule-road.

Santiago is composed of about fifty houses and a mud church, thatched with palm-leaves, erected by the Capuchins for the conversion and instruction of the Indians. Except for the five or six fathers who conduct the services and an old white hag who had been the compañera[25] of a certain ex-President in the eighties, when he was engaged in business here, the whole population is Indian, and amounts, all told, to probably five hundred. These Indians, although short and small, are tough and strong and are of an agreeable, reddish, coppery hue. The average height of the men seems to be about five feet; the women average from two to four inches less. They are nearly all bright and cheerful, and, as a rule, intelligent, although they sometimes feign stupidity when in contact with whites. Timidity and bashfulness, especially among the women and children, are very common.

Although all, thanks to the fathers, know a little Spanish, among themselves they use their own language exclusively, which seems to be derived from the ancient Quichua of the aborigines of Peru and Ecuador. This language is spoken in a sort of sing-song, soft and melodious, which is rather pleasing to the ear. These aborigines call themselves Incas or Ingas,[26] and their dialect is known as the Inca language, and is rather easily picked up by the whites, who are much in contact with the Incas.

These Indians live in large rectangular houses, the walls of which consist of upright sticks, tied together with bark, the roof being of thatch and the floor of hardened earth. The spaces between the upright sticks that form the walls obviate the necessity for windows. Sometimes, if the house is a large one, several families live in it together, each family having its own corner, fireside, and utensils. The furniture is very limited, and generally consists of benches of various sizes and, sometimes, a low table, all of which are carved out of solid wood, not a nail being used in their construction. Their domestic apparatus is composed chiefly of great earthen pots, which they are very skilful in making; gourds, which serve as plates, cups, &c.; and several large round stones with which they crush their maize.

The dress of the Incas is very picturesque. That of the men consists of a long cotton shirt, either blue or white, which reaches almost to the knees, nearly covering a pair of knee-pants of the same colour and material. Over this is thrown a heavy woollen poncho, always of a greyish-yellow colour, with thin, black stripes, which reaches almost to the feet. Their long, black hair, thick and abundant, takes the place of a hat, and is prevented from dangling in the face by a gaily coloured ribbon or a piece of the inner bark of the tree known to them as huimba, which passes around the crown of the head just above the ears. The women invariably wear a red shirt, the lower extremity of which is covered by a short black skirt, reaching to the knees. A bright red blanket, thrown over their shoulders, completes their costume, for, as a rule, they do not wear the headband used by the men. Both sexes are very fond of beads, and generally have an immense necklace of them, while smaller strings are worn on the wrists and ankles.

The chief, or gobernador, is elected with great formality once a year. Then the retiring magistrate, in the presence of the whole tribe, hands over to his successor the silver-headed cane which has been since time immemorial the emblem of authority amongst the Incas. The chief’s house is always distinguished by a decoration of palm-leaves over the door, for all business with the whites is done through him, disputes between Indians are settled by him, and he possesses the power of punishment. The punishment is generally a whipping or confinement in stocks, which are always kept in the chief’s house.

The food of these aborigines consists chiefly of maize, collards, and game. From the maize they manufacture their peculiar mazata, which is their principal aliment, for they eat it morning, noon, and night, the collards and the game they shoot being merely auxiliaries. The maize is first scalded in one of the great earthen jars, after which, when cool, a certain proportion of it is thoroughly chewed until it is well mixed with the saliva. In this important operation the whole family, both young and old, takes part, seated in a circle around the huge pot of scalded maize, each one provided with a smaller gourd, into which they shoot the well-masticated mixture of maize and saliva. This operation concluded, the next step is to mix thoroughly the salivated maize with the other, and the whole mass is then deposited in the large earthen jars, where it is allowed to ferment for several days under the action of the organic principles of the saliva. The mixture is then preserved in this state, and when they wish to prepare their beverage they merely take out a handful of this preparation, reduce it to a paste, stir it in water, and their drink is ready. This mazata has a sour, bitter taste, very palatable to the Indian, but disgusting to most white men.

Their arms consist chiefly of blow-guns or bodoquedas, although at present shot-guns and machetes are beginning to be introduced among them. These blow-guns are not manufactured by the Incas, but are bought by them from the Indians of Mocoa, who obtain them from the Cioni Indians of the Upper Putumayo. The Cionis, in turn, are supplied with them by the Indians of the River Napo, who are the original manufacturers. This celebrated weapon is a hollow, tapering pole, from two to four metres long, pierced longitudinally by a hole some three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. The outside surface of the pole is wound around with thin strips of tough bark, over which is applied a smooth, black coating of gum-resin from the arbol del lacre, or sealing-wax tree, while the thicker end terminates in a mouthpiece, into which a small arrow, some twenty centimetres long and tipped with a little cotton instead of a feather, is introduced. The mouth is then applied to the mouthpiece, and with the breath the little arrow is shot out with great force to a distance of from thirty to forty metres.

These arrows, apparently so insignificant, are in reality awful in their effects, for their points are tipped with the celebrated curaré, made from the Strychnos castelmœana, called by them ramu, and from the Cocculus toxicoferus, known to these aborigines as pani. The points are often cut, so as to break off after penetrating the skin and stay in the wound. A puncture of the skin by one of these arrows causes death within a minute, for I have seen a large dog struck by one of these little missiles drop dead before he could run five metres. Like the bodoqueda itself, these little arrows reach the Incas only after passing through the hands of several tribes, and are generally carried in a small bamboo quiver, to which is tied a little gourd filled with cotton. It is interesting to note that although the curaré with which the arrows are tipped is a deadly poison, it has absolutely no injurious effect upon the game killed by it. In many respects this weapon is superior to the shot-gun, but its great advantage is its noiselessness. Thus, a hunter can kill bird after bird without fear of their becoming alarmed and flying away. The Indians can shoot very accurately with the bodoqueda up to about thirty metres.

On the 16th the gobernador, with whom my companion Perkins and myself stayed, told us that the Indians had finished preparing their habío[27] and were ready to depart; so, after seeing them load up, we bade adios to the gobernador and at 11 a.m. started for Sibundoy. The road was tolerably good, consisting in many places of logs, laid transversely across the way, and skirted the edge of the surrounding mountains a little above the level of the valley, of which we would have had an excellent view but for the dense underbrush which interposed itself between the valley and us. On our march we crossed several beautiful little quebradas, whose clear, crystal waters glistened brilliantly in the sun; but our appreciation of their beauty was somewhat diminished by the fact that as nobody in the whole valley wears shoes there were no bridges over them, and we were obliged to wade through their cold, icy waters, wetting ourselves up to the knees in doing so.

After a march of some three hours we entered Sibundoy, a village of about the same size and appearance as Santiago, where we made our way to the Capuchin convent, determining to wait here for our Indians. We were kindly received by the four priests here, as well as by the Padre Prefecto, the head of all the Capuchin establishments in the territories of the Caquetá and the Putumayo, who makes this place his headquarters. One of the fathers, Padre Estanislao de Los Corts, a Spaniard from Cataluña, was especially kind, and, after showing us around the new convent they were building, supplied us with the following data about the Indians of Sibundoy:—

The Indians of Sibundoy call themselves Cochas and speak a language of the same name, which is quite distinct from the Inca and much more complex and difficult. The Cochas are said to be lazier, more dishonest, and of a surlier disposition than the Incas, although resembling them very much in appearance, customs, dress, and mode of living. It is believed that these Indians were brought here long ago by the Spaniards from the River Vaupes as slaves for the goldmines of Pasto and that, escaping from their captors in this vicinity, they finally settled in the valley. They now number about 1,500, the greater part, however, living in lone huts in the mountains.

We remained at the convent waiting for the Indians all the afternoon, but as they did not appear we were glad to accept the Padre Prefecto’s pressing invitation to stop here for the night. The priests told us that the cargadores[28] had probably gone to their homes to enjoy a last farewell feast before beginning the trip to Mocoa, which we afterwards found to be the case. The convent was scrupulously clean and fitted up roughly and simply, for nearly everything had been made by the fathers themselves. The food was plain and coarse, but substantial and well cooked, one of the priests skilfully performing this important operation.

The next morning at eight o’clock the two Indians who were to carry our food, blankets, &c., put in their appearance, looking somewhat seedy and informing us that the others were coming later. They were accompanied by a pretty little Indian girl, carrying their habío, who they said was their sister. The padre, however, suspected immorality and, as a precautionary measure, bade them go to church. This over, we sent them on ahead in charge of Pedro, with orders to wait for us at the next village—San Francisco—while we stopped a little longer to take lunch with the padres.

Lunch concluded, we duly thanked the hospitable Capuchins for their kindness to us and once more set out. After a pleasant walk of about two hours we reached San Francisco, where we were cordially received by the head priest, whom we had met at Sibundoy, and installed in the convent, where we found Pedro and the Indians. San Francisco is a little, triste place of some two hundred inhabitants, who claim to be whites, but, except for the fact that they wore hats and trousers, I could see but little difference between them and the infieles. There are two or three small shops and about twenty other houses, most of which were of adobe.

Bright and early the next morning we set out along the level valley, which we followed for some time until we struck the Putumayo, here a small, swift-flowing mountain torrent, about six feet wide. Crossing it, we continued along its heavily wooded banks until we came to a small affluent on the left, which we followed up to its source. Climbing to the top of the hill, we found ourselves upon a sort of divide, which we slowly descended by an almost perpendicular trail over huge, slippery rocks and rolling cobble-stones to the bottom of a deep, narrow cañon, formed by another small, torrential quebrada. All the rest of the day we followed the course of this stream, which we crossed no less than thirty-four times. Occasionally the cañon, always steep and narrow, became merely vertical walls of rock, rising from the edge of the stream upwards to a height of from fifty to a hundred metres. In these places we were compelled to wade down the bed of the stream, while on other occasions the trail, about six inches wide, passed along the perpendicular face of some wet, slippery rock, forty or fifty feet above the river. How the Indians passed such places, carrying the heavy bultos[29] that weighed from eighty to a hundred pounds, is beyond my comprehension, nor have I any desire to make that day’s journey again to find out.

At about six o’clock we reached the junction of this stream with another of about the same size, where they combine to form the River Patoyacu. Here we stopped at a tolerable rancho, Perkins and I utterly exhausted, but the two Indians and the girl apparently as fresh as ever. Neither Perkins nor myself suffered from sleeplessness that night, although a large, flat rock was our only couch.

The next morning, as soon as our rather frugal meal of dry meat, coffee, and fried plantains was over, we crossed the Patoyacu and began the ascent of a monstrous mountain, the top of which we reached at about two o’clock in the afternoon. The rest of the day was spent in a constant succession of long, steep, painful ascents to the tops of the mountains, and immediately afterwards long, steep, painful descents to the bottoms, where, crossing some insignificant quebrada[30] we would sit and rest a few minutes before starting on the next climb. While taking lunch at one of these streams, Perkins noticed some peculiar-looking rocks, which, upon examination, seemed to indicate the existence of a good quality of marble. We took along several specimens for further examination.

The scenery is magnificent, of a wild, savage splendour, rarely seen elsewhere than in the Andes. The high, heavily wooded mountains, rising almost perpendicularly to the clouds, are separated from each other by foaming, plunging quebradas, which, dashing themselves into spray against the immense boulders that form their beds, leap over the numerous precipices in their courses with a deep, resounding roar like distant thunder.

We endeavoured to reach a rancho[31] called Papagallos, but, when darkness overtook us, we were still far from it, according to our Indians, so we hastily made a rough rancho and, after about an hour and a half, succeeded in igniting a fire, for it had rained during the afternoon and everything was completely soaked. The fire, at last successfully started, was just beginning to flicker up and give out a little heat, when suddenly another heavy rain set in and, within fifteen minutes, our hard-won fire was out and we and all our belongings were wet through. As the rain continued steadily until morning and the cold all this time was intense, we did not pass a very enjoyable night.

The next day was only a tiresome repetition of the one already described—up and down all day. How many miles we made I do not know, but I can state that, whatever their number, they were mostly on end. At 9 a.m. we passed Papagallos and at about 2 p.m. we commenced a long, steep descent of nearly 2,000 metres, the bottom of which we reached at about half-past four. Here we found the two small ranchos, known as Cascabel, and stopped for the night. These two ranchos were situated upon the left bank of the River Campucana, a good-sized stream formed by the various quebradas we had crossed. We had now passed the last of the mountains, for from this place to Puerto Guineo, the port of embarkation, it is practically level. We had at last crossed the Andes, and were now upon the great Atlantic Slope.

In the morning we followed the left bank of the Campucana for some time, scaling successfully on the way the famous “Carniceria,”[32] a very dangerous rock, high, slippery, and almost perpendicular, so-called because of the numerous people dashed to death down it. At ten o’clock, while crossing the river, we met Don Elias Jurado, Leonardo’s brother, en route to Pasto—the first traveller we had met since leaving that city. Continuing our journey through the dense forest, at one o’clock we reached Piedra Lisa,[33] another dangerous rock, along whose smooth, unbroken front, which stood at an angle of about fifty-five or sixty degrees, the trail passed. The passage of this rock, which is about fifty metres long, is very perilous and would be impassable were it not for some overhanging branches which one can grasp and hold on by.

Piedra Lisa safely passed, the road continued fairly level, although very muddy on account of the thick undergrowth, and at three o’clock we entered Pueblo Viejo, a long string of scattered bamboo houses, intermingled with fields of maize, plantains and yuca, and large tracts of practically virgin forest. At one of these huts we stopped to take a few minutes’ rest; the people received us very affably and immediately brought out a large jug of chicha,[34] which we soon emptied for them. After a little conversation about the probability of our getting lost in the “city” (of Mocoa), we again pushed on, and at four o’clock in the afternoon of November 21st reached Mocoa in a state of complete exhaustion.

Here, after a great deal of inquiry, we secured a very dirty room in a still dirtier bamboo hut. Leaving our effects here, Perkins and I went to the little crystal stream, known as the Quebrada Mulata, which dashes past the back of the town, and indulged in a good bath. By the time we had finished this operation, the indefatigable Pedro had ascertained the whereabouts of the “restaurant,” to which we immediately wended our way, for we were starving. After we had finished our dinner, which did not take very long, for it was composed only of a quantity of unripe plantains, a still larger quantity of overdone yucas, and a little thin, tasteless coffee, we invested in a couple of bottles of wine and, retiring to our hut, Perkins, Pedro, and I duly congratulated one another on the successful termination of the first stage of our journey—the trip over the Andes. This duty performed, we retired to dream of our approaching descent of the Putumayo.

The next morning we called upon the Intendente, General Urdaneta, and presented to him the letter from Dr. Miranda. He received us very cordially and promised us that he would see that we had cargadores by Monday to take us to Puerto Guineo. After a pleasant conversation of almost an hour and a half, during which he supplied us with considerable information about Mocoa and the Putumayo, we left him and went out to take a look at the city. At noon we met him again at the restaurant, where he introduced us to Dr. Ricardo Escobar, the medical officer of the garrison here.

Mocoa is the capital of the territory of the Putumayo, an immense tract of land comprising the whole region between the Rivers Napo and Putumayo from Mocoa to the Atlantic. This rich section is also claimed by Peru and Ecuador. The dispute between these two countries has been submitted to the King of Spain for arbitration; and the country that gains his decision will then have to arrange the matter with Colombia. There are no Ecuadorians established as yet in any part of this vast territory, the upper half of which, as far down as Remolino, is occupied by the Colombians, while the Peruvians are in possession from there to the Brazilian boundary at the mouth of the Cotuhué, for Brazil, with her usual astuteness, has seized a large triangular area at the confluence with the Amazon. The part of the territory at present occupied by Colombia is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Nariño, and all officers and officials are appointed from Pasto.

The capital of this huge territory is a small town of bamboo huts having a population of about five hundred. Until recently it was the place of confinement of political prisoners, but about a month before our arrival President Reyes had pardoned all but nine, who had been sent out of the country by way of the Putumayo, the Government’s agent, Don Rogerio Becerra, conducting them as far as Remolino, where they had been released.

As the maintenance of these prisoners and the garrison had been the chief industry, the exile of the former and the withdrawal of the latter, which was taking place when we arrived, was causing a general exodus to Pasto. A small traffic with the rubber-collectors of the Upper Putumayo and the neighbouring Indians is, however, still carried on. Agriculture, stock-raising, &c., are developed only sufficiently to supply the small local demands, for the inaccessibility of the place prohibits any large trade with outside markets.

The climate of Mocoa is agreeable and healthy, and the land, level and covered with thick forest, is fertile and well adapted to agriculture. The temperature is about 20° C. and the elevation above sea-level is approximately five hundred metres. One very attractive feature of this vicinity is the complete absence of mosquitos and gnats. From Mocoa one can see, blue in the distance, the mighty, towering peaks of the Cordillera Oriental, which, rising high above the unbroken wall of forest that surrounds the town, seem to pierce the very sky.

A good mule-road or highway connection with Pasto and La Sofía, the head of steam navigation on the Putumayo, would do much to awaken Mocoa from the torpor into which it is now plunged; for, in that way, this virgin region would have an outlet not only for the important forest products such as rubber, ivory, &c., but also for the valuable agricultural staples, as coffee, cotton, yuca, sugar-cane, and the thousand other products of the tierra caliente,[35] which can be grown here. Besides, the opening of these means of communication would greatly facilitate immigration to this vast region, which is the most essential aid to its development.

An interesting plant, very much in evidence here, is the achiote[36] or urucú. This is a small tree, yielding a fruit, which is encased in a red berry, resembling in shape that of a chestnut. This fruit, when crushed, gives out a bright red juice, which is used by the whites to dye clothes with and to colour soups, meat, &c. The Indians, in addition to using it in this way, also employ it to paint themselves with.

The Indians of Mocoa are also Incas, the same as those of Santiago. They speak the same tongue, have the same customs, houses, arms, and utensils, differing only in the dress, which, on account of the heat, consists only of a long, black or white cotton shirt, almost concealing a pair of knee-pants of the same colour and material, and in their food, which is more diversified and comprises not only maize, &c., but also yuca, plantains, and many forest products. Like the Incas of Santiago, they also profess Christianity and have a limited knowledge of Spanish. These Indians are very ugly and do not possess the good features, clear skin, and physical endurance which so characterise their brothers of the mountains. Many of them suffer from the carate,[37] so prevalent in the Cauca Valley, and, consequently, present a most repugnant appearance.

The following incident illustrates the superstition of these aborigines. One day Pedro and I went to an Indian house to buy some souvenirs. Here, the aged owner of the hut had an old, worthless bodoqueda[38] that he wished to sell me, and insisted so strongly upon my buying it that I lost patience and spoke to him rather harshly. Instantly one of our Santiago Indians, who seemed to have taken rather a liking to me, called me aside and implored me not to offend the old Indian, who was a noted brujo or wizard, for, if I did, he would surely visit some fearful punishment upon me, such as making me blind or insane, or even worse. Although I laughed and explained to him that the wizard was nothing but an old fraud and could do me no harm, the good fellow could not be convinced, but still clung to his belief. Such superstitions are very common among all these aborigines.

During the next two days only three of our Santiago Indians showed up, thus delaying us in the same manner as they had done at Pasto and at Sibundoy. In this interval we made the acquaintance of Don Octavio Materón, a junior partner in a company, formed in Pasto, for the purpose of cultivating rubber on the Upper Putumayo. The manager, Don Gabriel Martínez, to whom Jurado had given us a letter of introduction, had, we learned, gone down in his capacity as corregidor to the Caraparaná, leaving Materón and the other partner, Gonzalez, in charge. Materón had come to Mocoa to bring down some bultos of merchandise that had been delayed here, and, finding that we were going his way, kindly decided to wait for us.

On Monday morning, November 25th, the Indians sent by the Intendente arrived, ready to take our effects to Guineo. As there were still two bultos lacking, we decided that Perkins and Pedro should go on with the five bultos that were ready and await my arrival in Guineo, while I remained in Mocoa to take down the other two bultos as soon as the cargadores should arrive with them. So, bidding goodbye to Perkins and Pedro and arranging with the remaining Indians to return in three or four days, I resumed my weary task of waiting.

As we had been informed that it would be necessary to purchase a canoe here, I made several inquiries and at last was directed to one Bernardo Ochoa, a lean, bilious-looking aguardiente[39]-merchant, a victim of the carate, who had a canoe in Guineo that he would sell. I did not fancy buying a canoe without seeing it, but, as both Materón and the Intendente assured me that it was large, well-preserved, and quite worth sixty dollars “hard,” I began negotiations with the man, who at first asked one hundred dollars, but, after a great deal of haggling, finally sold it to me for eighty dollars “hard.” At the same time I bought a small barrel of aguardiente, as I was told that it would greatly facilitate intercourse, not only with the Indians, but also with the “whites” who inhabit the region.

On Wednesday morning, at about 9 a.m., Dr. Escobar came in and informed me that a messenger had just arrived from Pasto with an order to arrest Pedro and send him back to Cali. Completely amazed by this intelligence, I went to the Intendente, who showed me the order and informed me that he had already sent two soldiers to Guineo to arrest the boy and bring him back. As we had taken Pedro from the railway and had stayed several days in Cali and Popayán and several weeks in Pasto, without any attempt having been made to arrest him, I could only think that it was some mistake, so I made a few guarded suggestions to the General, but without the slightest effect.

In the afternoon I set about hiring another boy to take Pedro’s place, and after some time succeeded in engaging a stupid, torpid-looking youth, to whom I offered a couple of pounds to clinch the bargain. What was my surprise then to see him come back in a couple of hours and, with tears in his eyes and in a voice trembling with fear, beg me to let him off. Upon investigation, I found that some wretch had filled his weak head full of bloodcurdling yarns about the cannibal Indians and the decimating fevers met with there. The poor fool was in such a miserable state of fear and dismay that, upon his paying back the money I had advanced him, I was glad to let him go.

On the following afternoon I was agreeably surprised to see the two cargadores from Santiago arrive with the two remaining bultos. Finding that they were intact—for the Indians often steal part of the contents of the bultos—I paid the two rascals and sent word to the Mocoa cargadores that four of them should come in the morning to take us to Puerto Guineo.

Shortly after I had arranged this matter the soldiers arrived with Pedro, who seemed to be quite knocked up with the long march and the gloomy prospects of the tedious journey before him. Shaking hands with the poor boy to encourage him a little, I asked what it was that he had done. He protested his innocence of any wrongdoing so stoutly that, convinced that there must be an error somewhere, I again went to the Intendente, but he was determined to carry out his orders, and I could do nothing with him. Returning to Pedro, I endeavoured to cheer him up a little, but without much success. After writing him a good reference, I paid him off, and, with a last adios left the poor boy alone in his dismal cell. I never saw nor heard from him since.

In the morning, as soon as the cargadores put in their appearance, I loaded them up with the two bultos, the barrel of aguardiente, and our food and hammocks, &c., while Materón did the same with his, after which we took our leave of the Intendente and the simpático Dr. Escobar, and began the last stage of our overland journey.

The morning was fine and invigorating, and we pushed on rapidly, crossing many fine, sparkling quebradas, which wound their way softly through the dense, tropical forest that covers the Amazon Basin from the Andes to the Atlantic. As we made our way along the level path, we frequently stopped to examine some strange plant, to pursue some rare butterfly, or to shoot some new bird, whose brilliant plumage or sweet notes attracted our attention. Just before noon we passed a “cave,” a great, long, overhanging rock, in some places of such a height as to permit us to stand erect under it, and reached a large, sparkling stream, where, seated on a great rock, overspread by the protecting shade of the forest, we had our lunch.

The traveller, entering for the first time these gloomy forests, as yet untouched by the hand of man, is bewildered by the splendour and magnificence of a superabundant vegetation. Indeed, it is impossible to give any exact idea of the immense variety of the thick-growing plants and of the incessant activity of Nature in their development. The dense vegetation accumulates and piles up, forming, especially on the banks of the streams and rivers, opaque masses, perfectly impenetrable, through which the sun’s rays never pierce. The high giants of the forest tower above everything, the smaller trees and the shrubs crowd under their branches, while the numerous vines and bejucos knit the whole into one solid mass.

In the afternoon we reached a cross which marked the divergence of our road into two trails, one going to Puerto Limon on the Caquetá, and the other to Puerto Guineo on the River Guineo, an affluent of the Putumayo. This cross is about six leagues from Mocoa and the same distance from Limon and Guineo. Some distance beyond, we stopped for the night in a couple of small ranchos built about a month before by the soldiers who escorted the exiles to the port. Here we passed a fairly comfortable night, well protected from the torrential downpour which took place shortly after our arrival here and continued all night.

In the morning we found the trail wet and muddy and the vegetation, through which we were obliged to wade, soaked us completely, so we removed our shoes and clothes and put on alpargatas and pyjamas. These we found lighter and much more comfortable, and in this garb we continued the rest of our journey. Soon the trail became worse and the small, shallow quebradas became rushing, brawling torrents, through which we were, in some cases, almost obliged to swim. The Indians, in these places, grasped hands and waded through together, carrying the bultos on their heads. At first I trembled for my poor possessions when they did this, but I soon perceived that they knew their business, and did not interfere with them.

Towards the end of the journey the trail passed along the banks of the Guineo River, normally a quiet, meandering stream not over two feet deep, but now a swollen, dangerous torrent. We experienced some difficulty in crossing several of its numerous tributaries, but, after what seemed an eternity, we reached Guineo at one o’clock in a state of complete exhaustion.

Here we found Perkins comfortably installed in an old bamboo hut known as the “convent,” where the priests from Mocoa generally stop when they come down to Guineo to preach to the Indians. We soon discovered our old railway enemies, the moscas or gnats, which made me feel quite at home. But a still worse misfortune was revealed to us when Perkins, who was preparing some food for Materón and me, informed us that all the bread was spoiled, having probably got wet on the Páramo of Bordoncillo. We braced up considerably, however, when he dished us out a hearty meal of fried yuca, plantains, sausage, and panela, and after a couple of hours’ rest felt quite restored.

We then went out, and, through an Indian to whom I delivered a letter Ochoa had supplied me with, ordering the transfer of the canoe to me, had a look at our vessel. We found it to be a good river-going craft, about nine metres long and something over one metre wide, and in a tolerable state of preservation, being made of cedar, which is the best wood for the purpose.

These canoes or pituches, which, as a rule, measure from six to ten metres in length, are made from a single log of wood, hollowed out by the adze, or, as with some Indians, by fire. Cedar[40] is the favourite wood, for it is light, easily worked, and very durable. When this cannot be obtained, however, various other kinds of trees are employed, such as caoba or aguano,[41] palo-rosa or lauro-rosa,[42] palo-maria,[43] catagua or assacú,[44] and itauba.[45] But none of these woods are equal to cedar, for either they do not resist the action of the water so well, or else are so heavy that they make the canoe cumbersome and dangerous to navigation.

We next bought a couple of paddles from the Indians, and our naval equipment was then complete. The paddles in use in this region by both whites and Indians are generally only about a metre and a half in length, with wide, rounded blades, which facilitate rowing in shallow water. Oars such as are used in oar-locks would be quite useless here on account of the numerous stumps and logs in the rivers and along their banks and chiefly the cargo, which often takes up nearly all the inside of the canoe. Many of these paddles are constructed of fine wood, well finished and painted and varnished to a degree.

The only other building at Puerto Guineo, in addition to the convent, is an old, dilapidated church, both of which stand on the bank of the river in a small clearing sowed with plantain-trees. As already stated, the priests of Mocoa often come down to Guineo for a few days at a time to preach to the aborigines, and the convent and church were built by the Indians, partly for the convenience of the padres and partly as a sort of monument to their own importance. Like the convent, the church is of bamboo with an earthen floor and a thatched roof, upon which some vegetation was beginning to present itself. Inside were a few crude pictures of saints, and behind the altar stood a cross with a ghastly figure of the Crucifixion upon it. A few cheap altar-cloths and the remains of several used-up candles completed the outfit, the whole of which was entirely covered and wound up with numerous cobwebs.

In the midst of the dense forest, surrounding these neglected relics of civilisation, live a tribe of Indians who call themselves Cionis and speak a language of the same name. They are quite distinct from the Incas, and occupy the whole region of the Upper Putumayo, living in small villages of from ten to fifty families along its banks. In all, they do not number over a thousand. But they all speak more or less Spanish, with the peculiarity that the only form of the verb they use is the gerund.

These Indians are short, broad, and strong, but generally lazy and shiftless. Like the Mocoa branch of the Incas, nearly all of them suffer from carate. The ugly and unusual custom of pulling out the eyebrows, eye-lashes, &c., and cutting the hair short is observed by both sexes. The women are, if possible, uglier than the men, which is saying a good deal, but the latter endeavour to compensate for this by painting their faces blue and pink. The ordinary designs used for this purpose are geometrical figures and branches of trees, &c.

Another very common custom is that of piercing the ears and the dividing wall of the nose with small bamboo tubes coloured a bright shining black, and frequently from ten to fifteen centimetres in length and nearly one centimetre in thickness. They also generally wear upon each arm, just between the shoulder and the elbow, a sort of bracelet, made of fibres from the leaf of the chambira[46] palm, the loose ends of which reach almost to the wrist—this is supposed to ward off attacks of rheumatism and other similar complaints.

Their dress is very simple, and consists merely of a long shirt called cushma, of black or white cotton—although generally the latter—which is worn by both men and women. The only difference between the men’s cushma and the women’s is that in the former the opening that admits the head is vertical and runs down along the bosom, while in the latter it is horizontal and reaches from shoulder to shoulder. This garment resembles nothing so much as a night-shirt without sleeves.

The Cionis are also excessively fond of beads, and the amount of them they wear is astounding; in fact, they are so numerous as to totally conceal their necks, the lower parts of their ears, and most of their shoulders. These beads, which often weigh from ten to fifteen pounds, are only removed when the Indians go to bed, bathe, &c. Besides these they generally wear several necklaces of monkey or danta teeth and a string or so of the bright, red-spotted-with-black seeds of the huairuro or quairor,[47] which they wear as a sort of talisman.

The houses of these Indians are, like those of the Incas, large, rectangular structures, the walls of which are formed either of upright poles tied together with the bark of the sacha-huasca or the tamshi, or else of slabs of split bamboo or palms, such as the chonta,[48] the camona or huacrapona[49] and the tarapoto,[50] whose thick, almost hollow trunks, when split, form large durable planks, quite suitable for different purposes. The roofs are of thatch, for which the leaves of the yarina[51] or vegetable-ivory tree are generally used. Several families, as a rule, live in the same house, each, however, having its own corner, fireside, and utensils.

Their furniture is limited to hammocks of their own manufacture and little low stools either carved out of solid wood or else made from slabs of bamboo or the above-mentioned palm-trees. Overhead several light cross-timbers are stretched, upon which they hang their clothes, their arms, and many domestic utensils. As they generally eat with their fingers, knives and forks are unknown, while for spoons they employ certain shells or small gourds. As dishes they use the easily prepared fruits of the totuma or cuyera,[52] which, by the simple operation of cutting open and cleaning out, form convenient receptacles for their food. For cooking they employ the earthen pots similar to those of the Incas; in the manufacture of these pots and the subsequent painting and varnishing of them the Cionis exhibit great skill.

Other utensils are—fans, various-sized baskets, rude drums, chambira-palm-fibre bags, little clay ovens to bake fariña in, fishing-nets, whistles made of the leg-bones of different birds, fifes made of bamboo, and torches of the heart of the maguey or of chonta, impregnated with resin, &c. For washing their clothes, hair, &c., they use the inner bark of a tree called the quillay and a soapy substance known as suyuyu.

Each of their villages seems to be absolutely independent of the others, and, like the Incas, elects annually, with great solemnity, its chief or gobernador, who has about the same powers as among those aborigines. In addition to the gobernador, there is a sort of lieutenant-governor, called the capitán, who acts as a sort of auxiliary to the chief and takes his place when the latter is absent.

These Indians are now lazy and peaceful, and the inter-village wars, formerly frequent and sanguinary in the extreme, are now, thanks to the teachings of the priests and the Colombian settlers, a thing of the past. Their arms, which are now used only for hunting, consist merely of machetes and shot-guns, obtained from the Colombians, and the bodoquedas or cerbatanas, already described, which they get, in exchange for their hammocks, from the Indians of the Napo.

Their food is much more diversified than that of the Santiago Indians, for, in addition to the numerous forest products, such as the papaya,[53] the lime,[54] the caimito,[55] marañon,[56] the pishuayo,[57] bread-fruit,[58] the tender tops of the chonta, the camona, &c., hunting is excellent here, and many are the animals that fall victims to their skill. Among these we may mention, as the most important, the danta or sacha-vaca[59] which lives in shady swamps; the chancho del monte or huangana,[60] which is a kind of peccary that lives in herds in the depths of the forest; the ronsoco or capivara,[61] a large amphibious rodent; the venado or deer,[62] of which there are several species; several kinds of monkeys, such as the guaribas, the cotomonos, and the maquisapas; the sloth[63]; the armadillo[64]; and various others. They also hunt wild birds of many different species and sizes, such as the paujiles, wild-ducks, partridges, wild-turkeys, various kinds of doves, &c. To all these we must add the numerous different kinds of fine fish, which they catch at all seasons of the year, especially in the dry season. Among the most important of these are palometas, corbinas, bagres, boquichicos, gamitanas, cunchis, dorados, &c.

For fishing they use nets made of chambira-palm fibre, spears and hooks manufactured from hard wood or thorns, which they bait with larvæ or with the fruit of the setico[65] tree. Besides these, they frequently employ the celebrated barbasco.[66] Selecting some pool or quiet corner of the river, they drop a quantity of the crushed leaves and root of this plant into the water, which shortly assumes a milky hue and soon poisons the fish, both large and small. Directly the whole surface of the pool becomes covered with the dead bodies of the fish, of which the largest only are selected, the rest, including the millions of tiny fish, thus being killed and left to rot without being utilised at all. On other occasions they often take advantage of the pools left when the river goes down in the dry season, the fish imprisoned in them being either speared or caught in nets.

Besides these sources of food, the women cultivate a few plantain-trees,[67] a little maize,[68] and the invaluable yuca or manioc, from which they manufacture their two most popular alimentary products, mazata and fariña. There are two kinds of yuca—the wild-yuca or yuca brava[69] and the cultivated variety,[70] both of which are very much used in the whole Amazon Valley. The former contains, however, besides its nutritive elements, a milky sap, which is one of the most virulent vegetable poisons known, its active principle being hydrocyanic acid, but, as the sap is volatile, it is easily removed from the farine by means of pressure and evaporation.

In the preparation of the mazata, the favourite beverage of these Indians, the yuca is peeled and boiled in but little water in one of their large pots, after which it is smashed to paste by means of a club. This process concluded, the next step is to take out a proper proportion of this mass and mix it with saliva, in the same manner as the Incas do with their scalded maize. The yuca thus prepared is then well mixed with the other, the pot is carefully covered, and the preparation is left to ferment several days, when it is ready for consumption. This mazata does not differ much in taste from the maize-mazata of the Incas.

The civilised inhabitants of this region prepare this beverage in a less repugnant and more hygienic way—that is, they add to the paste sugar-cane juice or the juice of a ripe plantain, in place of the saliva.

In preparing the fariña, the yuca is thrown into a trough filled with water and left there until it is in a state of semi-putrefaction, when it is taken out, peeled, and pulverised. If it is the cultivated variety, it is then dried and put through a roasting process upon hot plates, but if it is the yuca brava, the poisonous sap must first be removed. To do this, the yuca, already pulverised, is wrapped up in a good-sized piece of llanchama—the tough, inner bark of a tree of the same name—which is then twisted up and tightened with a stick, after the fashion of a tourniquet, until the sap is all pressed out and evaporated. It is then dried and roasted in the same way as the other yuca.

This fariña can be preserved for a long time if kept dry, and it forms one of the chief articles of food of many of the inhabitants of the Amazon, especially when they are travelling. It is eaten either dry with water or, best of all, with milk and sugar, when it becomes an agreeable, as well as a wholesome, article of food.

The Cionis are very skilful in the manufacture of the light, durable, and beautiful hammocks, which they use in place of beds, from the strong fibres of the leaves of the cambira-palm. They often spend months upon the fabrication of a single hammock, first collecting the leaves, next extracting the fibres, then twisting them into long strings, and finally weaving the strings into a hammock. One of these hammocks can be rolled up until it occupies only the space of a fair-sized book, and it is so durable that it will last for years.

They also exhibit marvellous patience and skill in making the insect, feather, and shell ornaments that they wear on their feast-days. One especially interesting ornament is the yacta, a beautiful crown, composed of a great variety of fine large red and yellow plumes, inlaid with so many small feathers of so many different kinds and colours that it is a veritable work of art.

Another common ornament is a long string of brilliantly coloured feathers, which is worn around the neck. They also collect the bright green wings of a large insect, very common in these parts, of which, after a sufficient supply has been obtained, they make a similar string, which also encircles the neck. In addition to all these, which are worn only on special occasions, they generally have several bracelets, anklets, &c., of gaily coloured woollen yarns or locks of hair.

At their dances, the music of which is furnished by drums, whistles, and fifes of their own manufacture, they always wear a quantity of cascabeles, which are nothing more than strings of the dried fruits of the schacapa[71]. These cascabeles they attach to their legs and waist in such a manner as to produce a rattling, tinkling noise at every step they take.

Other very interesting products of the industry of these aborigines are the fine combs, made of carefully arranged and polished thorns, tied together with eccentrically coloured threads. Some of these combs are really splendid pieces of workmanship.

A thorough and extensive knowledge of the uses and properties of the countless products of the forest is also possessed by the Cionis. Thus, for example, the root of a certain bejuco[72], which they call yoco, is their substitute for coffee; from another bejuco they extract a narcotic known to them as ayahuasca or yajén, the effects of which are similar to those of hasheesh and opium; the leaves of the huitoc or jagua[73] are used to cure itching and all erysipelatic diseases, as well as to protect them from the gnats and mosquitoes; and thousands of other trees, shrubs, and bejucos supply them with almost everything they need or desire.

CHAPTER III
THE UPPER PUTUMAYO

EARLY the next morning, Sunday, December 1st, we engaged two Cioni boatmen for our canoe, as did Materón for his; and, after constructing a platform of split bamboo to put in the bottom of the boat in order to prevent our effects from becoming damp, we began loading our little craft with its miscellaneous cargo.

In accordance with Materón’s advice, we determined to stow away our trunks, books, and engineering instruments in the most inaccessible part of the canoe, while our food and the Indian trading stuff, as well as our arms, should occupy such parts as to render them quickly getatable. After a good deal of shifting about and changing, we succeeded in getting everything more or less as we desired it, and were by ten o’clock ready to start.

Thinking that this was an occasion worthy of a little celebration, Materón, Perkins, and myself then proceeded to lessen the contents of our barrel of aguardiente by a good drink each, after which we called up the Indian boatmen and, one by one, gave them a good bracer also, which they swallowed with great solemnity. Then we got in the little space that had been reserved for us in the middle of the canoe—for the cargo was stowed fore and aft as much as possible—and gave the signal to begin the journey.

Materón had already informed us that the first couple of days’ journey was somewhat dangerous, on account of the swift, roaring current, the powerful whirlpools, and the numerous stumps and logs that stud the whole course of the river; but we did not fully realise it until the canoe, shooting out into the middle of the stream, was caught by the current, almost before it could be turned bow foremost, and dashed with sickening speed among the stumps and logs that loomed up on every side.

We soon perceived, however, that our Cionis were used to their job, for they guided the flying canoe with the greatest skill as it continued its wild progress down the swift-running river. One of them, the popero, or pilot, always sits on the high, narrow seat in the stern, and, paddle in hand, steers the canoe and from time to time directs the manœuvres of the other, known as the puntero, who generally stands in the bow and calls out the obstacles, such as logs, stumps, &c., to the popero, in case the latter cannot see them from where he is seated.

In descending a river one puntero is sufficient, for the canoe is generally carried along rapidly enough by the current, and all the bogas[74] have to do is to keep the craft from striking against obstacles and from being thrust by the strong currents sometimes encountered into the unpleasant and often dangerous remolinos or whirlpools.

But when the river is to be ascended, known as subida or surcada, several bogas are necessary. The route must then be close to the bank, where the current is not so strong, but where such obstacles as logs, stumps, salient rocks, overhanging branches, troublesome insects, and other similar inconveniences are numerous. Here the paddles are useless, except when crossing the river[75] in search of an easier route on the opposite bank, and the bogas must push the canoe along by main force, employing for this purpose long poles called botadores or tanganas.

In canoeing in the smaller rivers, especially in the dry season, bad places, caused by the shallowness of the water or the immobility of the huge logs that frequently form an impenetrable network on or near the surface of the water, are often met with; in such cases the bogas either wade ashore and pull the canoe out of the bad place by means of a rope or else enter the water and shove and lift until it is free. If, however, the canoe is very heavy and these methods fail, they strip the bark from the setico-tree, which is always to be found on the banks of these rivers, and stretch it out on top of the obstacle. As this bark is very slippery and soapy, the canoe readily slides over it when they push.

Materón informed us that, as a general rule, one day’s descent is equivalent to three days’ surcada; this, however, is subject to numerous circumstances and mishaps, such as the conduct of the boatmen, the condition of the river, the weight of the cargo, the cut of the canoe, the character of the travellers, the necessity of hunting and fishing for food, &c.

What a pleasant sensation it was to sit calmly in the canoe, while the swift current bore us steadily onwards, and to watch the thick, tropical vegetation, which lined the banks of the stream, swiftly recede until hidden from view by a bend of the river! How different it was from the monotonous climbing and descending of the Andes that had caused us so much toil!

Several times we passed through places that seemed to me perilous in the extreme, for the whirling current would dash us with frightful rapidity directly towards some huge stump or half-submerged log, while other obstacles of a similar nature appeared on every hand. We seemed to be almost upon it, when a deft turn of the popero’s paddle would bring us to one side by a margin of three or four inches. Again, we would shoot some small rapid; the canoe would give a jump, and the next instant we would dash the water out of our half-blinded eyes, and, looking around, would see the rapid far behind us.

We saw plenty of wild turkeys, wild ducks, and monkeys on the trees near the bank, while occasionally a river seal, or nutria, would be seen curled up on a log or disporting itself near the shore. All these animals seemed quite tame, and would allow us to approach within a few metres, and then, just as we were taking aim, off they would go. Finally, after wasting a good many shots—for it is no easy matter to shoot from a rapidly moving canoe—I managed to kill a nice fat pava, or wild turkey, and one of Materón’s men shot a duck.

At noon we stopped on a gravel playa for lunch, which consisted chiefly of panela and aco, and took us only some fifteen minutes. Then we continued about two hours, when we entered the much-discussed Putumayo, much larger than when we saw it in the Andes, but still not a large river. It was low, and the high banks and the exposed islet were completely covered with the debris it had brought down in the wet season, such as huge logs, branches of trees, bamboo poles, &c.

During the afternoon we continued to observe large numbers of birds and monkeys, which made the whole forest resound with their ear-numbing howls. Great flocks of parrots and other gaily plumaged birds flew overhead, their rather harsh voices being heard continually. We shot at several, but whether they were too high for our guns, or, as was probably the case, our aim was inaccurate, we did not get a single specimen. We did, however, kill two or three more ducks.

These ducks are generally to be seen perched up in the trees along the banks or else on some stump in mid-stream, although occasionally one perceives them floating with the current or swimming on the surface of the water. They dive with lightning-like rapidity, and very often succeed in getting away, even when hit severely. Their vitality is amazing, and they are not slow to bite one if they are not quite dead on being picked up.

At about 4 p.m. we reached the tiny Cioni village of San Diego, a small group of about ten little bamboo shacks on the right bank of the river. The whole village came out to welcome us as we rather stiffly climbed out of our canoes, for it seemed that Materón was very popular with them. They brought out a few fruits and a small jar of the yuca-nazata, already described, which we respectfully refused. They are in all respects similar to those of Puerto Guineo, and each of the little huts contained two or three families. Materón informed us that they had but recently established themselves here, abandoning their old village on the other bank of the river on account of a severe epidemic that had broken out among them and killed nearly half their number.

We spent the rest of the afternoon trading with them, giving them some of our beads, harmonicas, mirrors, hats, handkerchiefs, &c., for a few of their manufactures, such as hammocks, yactas, strings of monkey and danta teeth, combs, and the like. They are no fools at bargaining, and have a pretty good idea of the value of the articles they are acquainted with; they are also rather clever at demonstrating what labour it has cost them and how much time they have spent in making any article that one fancies; so, on the whole, we did not get much the better of them.

At bedtime, which was about nine o’clock, the capitán and gobernador showed us the corner that we were to occupy in conjunction with a couple of Cioni families, and helped us fix up our hammocks. Following the example of our hosts, we did not trouble to undress very much, but soon fell asleep, and did not awake until time for desayuno.

Early next morning, after taking leave in a most affectionate manner of our hosts, who supplied us with several bunches of plantains and a quantity of yucas and an agreeable fruit known as the papaya, we set out on our easy and interesting journey. At about noon we passed the mouth of the Guamués, the outlet of Lake Cocha, which seemed almost as large as the Putumayo itself. During the morning we succeeded in shooting a couple of wild turkeys and several ducks; one of the former was almost lost on account of having fallen in a lot of thick bushes some distance from the shore.

The vegetation is very dense all along the banks. The most common types are large bamboos; numerous palms, such as the palma de la cera or wax-palm, the chonta, the fragrant sia-sia, the royal, and others; setico-trees, already mentioned; the palo de la balsa, or raftwood-tree; the yarina, or vegetable ivory-tree; and a variety of others, intermingled with shrubs and bushes of innumerable kinds, and bound together into one tangled, impenetrable mass by the countless bejucos and climbers everywhere in evidence.

Nearly every tree of any size is covered with innumerable parasites, among which are to be found several varieties of orchids, whose brilliant flowers serve to diversify the universal green of the forest. The most common of these are different species of Epidendrum, Oneidium, Peristeria, Catasectum, Sobralia, Cypripedium, Maxillaria, Stanopœa, &c.

At about two o’clock we reached Materón’s establishment La Sofía, where we were cordially received by the other partner, Gonzalez, and his wife. La Sofía is a good-sized, two-storied bamboo bungalow, with a fine wide veranda extending along its front, while around the building in every direction extend fields of maize, yuca, sugar-cane, &c., with the dark, silent forest in the background. As the place is built on a rather high bank, one can obtain from the veranda an excellent view of the placid, smiling river as it slowly rolls past to join the mighty Amazon on its course to the Atlantic.

La Sofía was formerly the headquarters of General Reyes, ex-President of the Republic, when he was engaged in the collection of quinine in this region years ago. It is at the head of steam navigation on the Putumayo, and it was here that Reyes’ steamer Tundama was lost. When Materón had arrived here, some eleven months before, he had found everything overgrown by the rank, tropical vegetation and all the old buildings almost completely destroyed. Reyes had named the place La Sofía in honour of his fiancée, and Materón and his partner had retained the name.

The company already had about ten peons engaged in clearing the land and cultivating the crops, and had advanced merchandise to all the Cionis, who had agreed to work out their indebtedness by planting rubber-trees, building houses, clearing land, &c. I was pleased to observe that strict morality was the rule, and that Gonzalez permitted no abuses against the aborigines either by taking away their women, by cheating them, or in any way at all. As to the peons, they seemed cheerful and contented.

There are two distinct kinds of rubber—that produced by a tree that must be cut down to extract the milk, which is called caucho negro, or black rubber, and is produced by the Castilloa elastica, and that which is the product of a tree that can be tapped indefinitely, which is known as jebe or siringa, and is collected from the Hevea brasiliensis. These two varieties of rubber are each subdivided into several classifications, according to the quality of the latex or milk and the care and skill employed in their extraction and preparation. As a general rule, siringa is much more valuable than caucho, and is the best kind adapted for cultivation, although Materón was planting both sorts. After showing us some samples of each, he informed us that the whole region of the Upper Putumayo had once abounded in caucho negro, but that at the present date very little remained, owing to the fierce onslaughts of the caucheros many years ago.

The next day Materón had some of his men build a little rancho of palm-leaves over our canoe amidships to protect us from the sun and rain. This sort of awning is called a pamacari, and is in general use in the Amazon Valley; it gave the canoe a very picturesque appearance, and, as we afterwards found, was very convenient.

We spent the rest of the day in inspecting the estate and taking down a Cioni vocabulary, in which language Gonzalez was very proficient and kind enough to give us the benefit of his knowledge. This vocabulary, which I had hoped to take back to civilisation with me, was, however, lost under particularly aggravating circumstances, which will be duly recorded in a succeeding chapter.

Although Materón and Gonzalez implored us to stay a week or so with them, we decided to resume our journey on the following day; but in the morning, just as we were about to start, Perkins was attacked with a heavy fever, and so our departure was postponed. We dosed him up with quinine and put him to bed, where he soon began to perspire freely, which is to be desired in these malarial attacks.

Finding our patient better in the afternoon, Gonzalez, Materón, and myself took a little trip down to San José, a small Cioni town about a kilometre below La Sofía. This village and its inhabitants are very similar to Guineo and San Diego, only a trifle larger than the latter. Here we stopped some time, and I was able to obtain several souvenirs from the Indians, besides a shallow earthen pot, which I determined to fix in the canoe to cook in, thus avoiding the loss of time consequent to performing this operation on shore.

On our return, while pushing the canoe upstream between the numerous stumps along the shore, in the manner already described for surcadas, Gonzalez, although an excellent boatman, suddenly lost his balance and fell with a thud into the deep water. Fortunately, we succeeded in pulling him out, none the worse for his wetting, and in a half-hour reached La Sofía without further adventure.

Here we found Perkins somewhat better, so we fixed the pot in the fore part of the canoe in the manner I had planned and made arrangements to depart on the following day, for Gonzalez had decided to accompany us as far as Yocuropuí, the next Cioni village, to see the Indians there.

Perkins better, we accordingly bade goodbye to our kind friend Materón the next morning, Thursday, December 5th; and, lashing our canoe to Gonzalez’, in order to keep together and to facilitate conversation, we once more resumed our journey. Materón had thoughtfully filled the canoe with papayas, bananas, &c., so what with them, the conversation, and the shooting, we were kept pretty busy.

The river soon became much broader, owing to the numerous tributaries, and the current much gentler, while great sand and gravel playas began to appear with some frequency. Numerous beautiful birds, flying from stump to stump, lent an air of life to the otherwise silent river, while occasionally a group of monkeys could be seen making their way from tree to tree, almost hidden by the thick leaves and tangled creepers so characteristic of Amazonian vegetation. Soon the heat grew uncomfortable, so we all withdrew under the commodious pamacari, where it was quite agreeable.

At 11.30 we stopped for almuerzo on an immense playa, upon which were two or three dilapidated-looking ranchos, probably erected by the exiles about a month before. Having partaken of a fair lunch of fried yuca, sausage, rice, and coffee, we were about to get into the canoes when Perkins’ eye fell upon a huge ostrich-like bird several hundred metres away. As he was such a fine specimen, Perkins endeavoured to get within range, but in vain; for the beauty, apparently as fond of his fine feathers as we were, soon disappeared into the forest and we saw him no more. This fine bird was probably a nandu or ema,[76] sometimes called the ostrich of America.

Resuming the journey, at about two o’clock we passed a large playa on the left bank, known as the Playa de Oro[77] on account of the supposed richness of its placer deposits. We did not examine it, however, owing to lack of time. A little later Perkins had the good fortune to kill a large duck, and Gonzalez almost got another, but it dived and went up the river, and when next he appeared he had nearly reached the shore, so we did not pursue him farther.

At about 5.30 p.m. we reached an extensive sand island in the middle of the river, where we decided to stop for the night. After securing the canoes we started cooking, while the Indians crossed over to the thickly wooded river bank and soon returned with a load of palm-leaves and several short poles of cana brava,[78] or wild cane, from which, within ten minutes, they constructed two ranchos, where we were to sleep during the night. After the meal was over we sat around smoking, while the Indians washed the dishes, soon after which we all retired.

During the night I felt something pricking one of my fingers, as it seemed to me. Striking a match, I was amazed to see the blood pour from a smooth, round hole, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, on the first joint of my index finger. Thinking it might have been done by some poisonous reptile, I awakened Gonzalez, who, after a glance at the wound, informed me that it was the work of a vampire bat.

As I afterwards ascertained, these bats are very common in this region, in some parts becoming a veritable pest, attacking not only mankind but also cattle, pigs, &c., and often almost killing them by the constant loss of blood, while I have seen men who told me they had been obliged to flee from certain localities in order to avoid the pertinacious attacks of these midnight marauders. They always commit their depredations at night, and it is very rare that they awaken their victims, for while their sharp teeth quickly burrow their way through the skin to the blood, their continually moving wings fan the wound in such a manner as to cause almost complete absence of pain, and the victim generally knows nothing of the midnight attack until he observes the wound.

The next morning, at about seven o’clock, we again set out, and in a few minutes we saw a fine pava, which promptly fell a victim to Gonzalez’ aim. After a short stop for lunch, we saw some young peccaries at the bottom of the steep bank on our left. Approaching hastily, we succeeded, after a short struggle, in capturing them alive, as they were very young, and then disembarked to try for the mother, whom we heard grunting in the distance. We spent a good half-hour struggling through the thick, thorny underbrush, but all in vain; we could not find her. The young ones we put in the boat, for Gonzalez wished to take them back to La Sofía to see if he could domesticate them.

In about two hours more we reached Yocuropuí, a small village of about ten houses, situated on a high knoll on the right bank. Here we passed the afternoon in trading with the inhabitants, exchanging the various articles that we had bought in Pasto for Indian souvenirs, such as bodoquedas, quivers of poisoned arrows, pots of paint and poison, &c. Here we got a couple of splendid hammocks.

These Indians are Cionis, and in every way resemble those already described, except that they are, I think, a little crookeder. In accordance with our custom, we had given them a gourdful of aguardiente on our arrival, but, not satisfied with that, several of them had sneaked down to the canoe while we were trading with the rest and had almost half-emptied the barrel before we discovered them. Gonzalez, who was corregidor—a sort of magistrate—during Martínez’ absence, then made a long speech to them, emphasising their “base breach of hospitality to the two illustrious travellers,” and wound up by threatening to put several of them in stocks. Completely abashed by this, they silently slunk out of the hut, and for the rest of our stay at Yocuropuí our barrel of aguardiente was left severely alone.

On the following day we bade adios to Gonzalez and set out alone, as the bogas of Guineo would go no farther, and those of Yocuropuí wished to delay several days in order to celebrate one of their fiesta, which was to occur in about ten days. We had already lost much valuable time in Pasto and Mocoa, and as Gonzalez had assured us that there were no falls nor rapids before us, we were rather glad to try our own skill as bogas.

Perkins, seated upon the high poop astern with his short Indian paddle in his hand, acted as popero, while I did the cooking up in the bow, at the same time keeping my eyes “peeled” for stumps and game with the gun in easy reach. The sun was very hot, but occasionally a gentle breeze helped matters a little. The current was now very gentle, and our progress was exceedingly slow.

As we were slowly drifting along the bank to get the benefit of the current, which was strongest there on account of a bend in the river, I discerned the dark outline of some large object lying upon an immense fallen tree-trunk. Approaching nearer, we found to our astonishment that it was an enormous boa-constrictor curled up fast asleep sunning himself. As our rifle was out of order I took deliberate aim with the shot-gun, and at a distance of some ten metres let fly at him. The hideous monster jumped up and, after lashing his tail wildly about two or three times, plunged with a splash into the water but a few metres from our canoe and was lost to sight. From our short view of him we perceived that he was of a dark-brown colour, except his belly, which was white and about ten inches in diameter; his length being, as near as we could judge, some twenty or twenty-five feet. These reptiles are fairly numerous on the Putumayo.

Along here we noticed that the river followed a regular system of long windings. First one bank would be eaten into by the strong current that swept past it, while the opposite shore would be protected by an extensive sand or gravel playa, often a kilometre or so in width. Then the current would in the course of a couple of kilometres reach the other bank and begin its scouring operations there, while the first would commence to accumulate a playa.

This system of long curves or windings extends along the whole course of the Putumayo, and it is to be observed in most of the large rivers of the Amazon basin. It is this that makes the Putumayo so wide and shallow and accounts for the numerous sand islands thrown up in mid-stream. In low water the channel cut out by these everchanging currents must be strictly followed by all steamers and launches in order to prevent grounding.

At eleven o’clock we stopped and had lunch, which I had cooked previously while Perkins was performing the rôle of boga, on a nice shady playa on the right bank. Here I managed to kill a good-sized turkey, and, after continuing about two hours, I got another, so that for dinner we had an excellent meal, the chief pièce de résistance being roast turkey. This operation concluded, we tied up the canoe securely, and instead of building a rancho both went to sleep in the canoe under the pamacari. It was a little crowded, but we got along all right and passed the night quite comfortably.

At about six o’clock the next morning we resumed the trip, and a couple of hours later passed the mouth of the Quebrada San Miguel, a large tributary, almost as large as the Putumayo itself, on the right bank. It was here that we first made the acquaintance of a gigantic buzzing bee that followed us for hours, flying about Perkins’ head in such an irritating manner that he split our best paddle in a vain endeavour to kill it. This he finally succeeded in doing, but the deceased’s place was soon taken by others, who kept at poor Perkins until nightfall. They did not trouble me, probably on account of the smoke from the fire burning in the pot I got in San José.

At midday Perkins took an observation for latitude, and found that we had just passed the Equator, being then a few minutes south of the Line. In order to celebrate this occurrence we both got outside of a good dram of aguardiente; we had made a successful “dash” to the Equator, to employ the Polar term.

Soon we came to a place where the river divided into two arms, or brazos, a large and a small one. We chose the latter for the sake of the shade and the better chance of shooting game. As we slowly made our way through the narrow brazo, the branches in some places joining over our heads, the calm beauty of the luxuriant vegetation and the intense silence of the forest, broken only by the occasional shrill call of some brilliant bird or the howl of a distant tribe of monkeys, combined to make us think we were in some fairy land.

Emerging at last from the shady arcade of the brazo, we again entered the main river, and at one o’clock reached Montepa, the last village of the Cionis, situated upon a steep knoll on the left bank. It consisted of eight or ten little bamboo huts, very similar to the other Cioni villages already described. Here we stopped a couple of hours and had a long talk with the capitán, who seemed to think we were very brave in making the trip without bogas, and as a token of his admiration offered us each a drink of mazata. After collecting a few more souvenirs we were about to depart, when Perkins suddenly spied an enormous catfish, which, after the inevitable haggling, we purchased. This reminded us that we had plenty of fishing-tackle ourselves, so we resolved to test our angling abilities that very night.

Taking a most affectionate leave of the worthy capitán, whose extreme friendliness was doubtless inspired by our aguardiente, we resumed our descent, and continued for a couple of hours, when, reaching a convenient island, we stopped for the night. While I prepared dinner Perkins shot a few small birds, which seemed to belong to a species of dove, as bait, and, after our meal was over, we rigged up a couple of lines and began fishing. Soon I felt a nibble at my hook, and when I thought the fish had it well digested I pulled and had the satisfaction of landing a fine big catfish. Perkins soon caught another, and presently we had a good number of the handsome big fellows.

In the morning we enjoyed an excellent breakfast of fried fish, after which we again set out. The river now became enormously wider on account of its division into several brazos, some of which covered great distances before rejoining the main channel. Large islands, covered with the prevailing dense vegetation, commenced to appear with great frequency, while tributaries of all sizes continued mingling their contents with those of the main river. In fact, the whole country was becoming a complete network of brazos and quebradas, so intermingled and so numerous that it was often difficult to distinguish the one from the other. This continued all the way to the mouth of the river, and is common to nearly all the great streams that empty into the Amazon.

Here we began to observe the boto, dog-fish or pira-jaguar,[79] of the Indians, a huge fish often more than two metres in length, which plays about in schools in many parts of the river. They would flop awkwardly about, close to the boat, apparently quite at home with us. A rather peculiar custom of theirs is that of gasping and snorting violently, as though disgusted about something. Its flesh is not edible—at any rate, the Cionis will not eat it. This fish is also known as the dolphin of the Amazon.

During the whole day we suffered heavily from the suffocating heat, for the burning rays of the equatorial sun shot down upon our unprotected backs with a seemingly intentional fury, and not a breath of air stirred all day. Our thirst was astounding, but, luckily, Materón had insisted upon our taking along a quantity of limes, which now came in very handy to alleviate it.

The next day, Tuesday, the 10th, at about ten o’clock, we met a party of Indians, apparently returning to Montepa from a hunting expedition. We hailed them and asked what luck they had had, but they hurried off without replying, probably half-frightened to death at seeing two genuine, full-blooded white men.

In the afternoon we saw a ronsoco, or capivara,[80] a large amphibious animal somewhat resembling a hog, standing near the water on a small flat area at the foot of a very steep clay bank. As soon as we got within range I discharged the shot-gun at him, and then we both kept up a hot fire with our revolvers, wounding him in several places, as he made desperate efforts to clamber up the steep, slippery bank. Despairing of this, he suddenly plunged into the water, and we were just on the point of giving up pursuit of him when we saw his head as he came up to breathe. We emptied our six-shooters at him again, but again he dived, coming up in about two minutes, when at our once more taking a shot at him he disappeared for good and we saw him no more. I suspect that we killed him and his body sank.

This animal feeds on grasses and weeds on the banks of the river, and is generally about the size of a hog. His scanty coat, of a greyish colour, is hard and bristly, but his flesh is used as food by the Indians, although it is not very tasteful. The lard it furnishes is, however, very much esteemed in most parts. I believe that this is the largest rodent known.

This rather exciting conflict concluded, we kept on until six o’clock, when we tied up the canoe to a nice sand playa. After dinner we again went out on a nocturnal fishing expedition, and had fair luck, catching enough for breakfast, but not such big ones as on the preceding night. At about ten o’clock we retired to the canoe.

The next morning, at about half-past four, we were awakened by a sudden jar, so severe that we rolled all over each other. Climbing out from under the pamacari as quickly as possible, we found to our horror that the canoe was adrift. It had undoubtedly become released during the night from the stake to which it had been fastened and had drifted on downstream with the current. It was only by good luck or the hand of Providence that it had not capsized already.

As soon as we realised what had happened I immediately climbed out in the bow to ward off any other stumps that we might be about to strike, while Perkins hurried back to the poop and endeavoured to get the bow foremost, for the canoe was floating broadside. Complete darkness prevented us from seeing more than two feet ahead of us, but Perkins succeeded in getting the bow pointing more or less ahead and keeping it there, while I stood up in front trying to make out the best course to avoid the stumps. After what seemed like an eternity—as we expected to capsize every moment—although really about an hour, day began to dawn and we began to breathe again. Soon a good-sized playa appeared and we stopped for breakfast, feeling rather surprised that we were alive to partake of it.

After a short rest and a long pull of aguardiente we pushed on again. Soon a gentle breeze began to blow, which was very agreeable, for the heat was scorching; it gradually increased, however, until it got to be quite a nuisance, raising waves nearly two feet high and blowing against the pamacari with such force that we were once more in danger of capsizing. Finally, the situation became so ticklish—for we did not dare to approach the bank on account of the dangers from falling trees, &c.—that, much to our regret, we were obliged to remove the pamacari, leaving nothing but the bare framework. Things went better then, and in accordance with our usual luck, the wind soon after ceased and within an hour all was calm again.

In some seasons of the year fierce tempests take place on the rivers of the Amazon basin, called turbonadas. These are generally accompanied by lightning, torrential rains, &c., and the wind, often attaining a velocity of from twenty to thirty metres per second, blows down trees and causes such large waves and whirlpools that canoes are often overturned and lost unless great care is taken.

At two o’clock we unexpectedly reached Guepí, a scattered collection of three Colombian rubber-trading establishments, about a kilometre apart from each other. We stopped for an hour or so at the first house, belonging to one Señor Muñoz; this was a large split-palm bungalow, raised about six feet above the level of the ground in order to prevent flooding during the wet season, when the river overflows its banks. It appeared to be uncompleted, for there were no walls, although the roof and the elevated floor were finished, and the latter was covered with a miscellaneous collection of bultos, heaps of yuca and plantains, pots and kettles, peons in hammocks, pieces of rubber, and other things too numerous to mention. The inhabitants seemed to be taking life easily and not worrying about a rainy day, for they all knocked off as soon as we appeared and began simultaneously to talk and to fill themselves and us with aguardiente. They seemed to be a merry, jovial lot, and when we left insisted upon presenting us with a dozen eggs and a whole lot of papayas and plantains.

At about 3.30 we reached the settlement of Señor Fajardo, another bungalow, somewhat smaller than Muñoz’, but on much the same style. Here we were also cordially received by the proprietor, a small, dark-complexioned man of about fifty, and his buxom wife. As they both pressed us to stop all night with them we gladly assented, and, accompanying them to the house, we were introduced to Drs. Ortiz and Hernandez, two of the recently exiled political prisoners from Mocoa, who, it appears, had escaped from the escort at this place and were about to set out for Iquitos via the River Napo.

The two exiles seemed to be very decent fellows, and gave us a rather interesting account of their imprisonment and of their subsequent escape from the escort; their companions, however, had elected to continue their journey to the Caraparaná and take a launch from there to Iquitos, as was our intention; but these two gentlemen had thought it more interesting to ascend the River Guepí by canoe as far as possible, and then, crossing overland to the River Santa María, an affluent of the Napo, to descend that river and the Napo to their destination, the Peruvian town of Iquitos on the Amazon. As we were bound for the same place we promptly made an arrangement to the effect that the ones who reached there last were to regale the first-comers with a good dinner and half a dozen bottles of the best champagne. We then celebrated this compact with a drink of aguardiente each and retired for the night.

As the river had risen some two feet by morning the two exiles determined to take advantage of this fact to set out at once, for such small rivers as the Guepí can only be navigated conveniently for any distance when the water is high. In accordance with this resolution they immediately began to pack up and send for their bogas, and at eleven o’clock, everything being ready, the two voyagers, with a last adios, took their departure.

Returning to the house, we enjoyed an excellent lunch, during which we learned that our host had extensive rubber areas in the interior of the forest, several days’ journey from the riverside and that his peons were now at work there, extracting and preparing this produce for market; some of this rubber he sells at Mocoa, but his principal market is at Iquitos, which he described as the chief rubber centre of the Upper Amazon. In addition to his regular employees he had several Indians also at work collecting for him, whom he paid in merchandise.

Lunch over, we said goodbye and took our departure, loaded with a fresh supply of limes, yucas, &c. The river, muddy and swollen to a degree, took us along rapidly, and soon Guepí was left behind and we were again alone upon the river. At about five o’clock we began looking for a playa to stop for the night on, but none were to be seen—the river had covered them. We continued, however, in the hopes of finding some suitable place until it grew dark, when, fearing to go any farther, we tied up to a good, stout stump on the bank. Here we missed our pamacari, but, after some meditation, we hit upon the idea of hanging our ponchos over the framework, which, fortunately, we had left on. This scheme working satisfactorily, we had a couple of games of chess, and then retired.

CHAPTER IV
THE CENTRAL PUTUMAYO

AT about seven o’clock the next morning I awoke, yawned, crawled out of our makeshift pamacari, and saw—a desert of wet, uneven sand. Perfectly stupefied, I awakened Perkins, and we stepped out to investigate. There stood—firm as a rock—the stump that had served as our sheet-anchor, and yonder—separated from us by a broad stretch of sandy beach—ran the river. At last we understood. The river had gone down some two feet during the night and had left us stranded on the enormous playa that was now revealed.

Awakening at last from the stupefaction that had overcome us, we endeavoured to push the canoe over the 150 metres of sand that lay between the river and us. We might as well have tried to move the river itself, for we could not shift it an inch. Still undismayed, we grasped our trusty machetes, cut down several selico-trees, peeled off the bark, and, after a severe struggle, got them under the canoe with the idea of sliding it over them. But it was useless, for they sank out of sight in the sand. The next attempt was still more laborious, for it was nothing less than building a track, composed of two parallel rows of logs and then inserting rollers between the track and the canoe. This, too, proved unavailing. In despair we took out all our effects and tried it again, but in vain. Roused to desperation, we made one more effort by trying to overturn the craft, but it was so waterlogged that we could not lift it three inches.

Panting, perspiring, and cursing bitterly, we saw that we were in for it, so, taking a long drink of aguardiente each, we carefully put everything back in the canoe, and I cooked the breakfast while Perkins fixed up the two mosquito-bars over the framework of our late pamacari. Breakfast over, we sat down to consider the matter, calmly and judicially. We had tried everything our ingenuity could suggest, but without the slightest success. Thus we should be compelled to stop here until some one came along and helped us or until the river rose again. Judging by the fact that up to this point we had not encountered a single traveller, the first possibility seemed very remote; and in regard to the second, we now remembered that Fajardo had informed us that this was probably the last rise of the river until the beginning of the wet season, which is about the end of January. As it was now Friday, December 13th, it looked as though we were bound to stay here some time.

After lunch we set out upon an exploring expedition along the deserted playa, which proved to be some three kilometres in length. Through its southern extremity ran a small quebrada, which issued from the dense, impenetrable jungle and finally emptied into the river. In some of the deep pools of this stream we observed several enormous alligators swimming about, the tips of their noses protruding from the water like the tops of logs.

Several species of Saurians are common in the Central and Lower Putumayo, such as the Alligator cynocephalus, which is frequently from eight to ten feet long; the Alligator palpebrosus, smaller but equally voracious; and the Crocodilus sclerops, or spectacled alligator, so called on account of his horrible red eyes, projecting outwardly like a pair of glasses on his snout. This brute, which attains a length of from twelve to fifteen feet, lays its eggs in the warm sand, where in due time they are hatched. These alligators, or caymanes, rarely attack man, and feed chiefly on fish and small animals, such as river-seals, capivaras, &c.

Returning to the canoe, we thought that it would be an excellent idea to remove our shoes and socks and go barefoot, for the sand was loose and soft and inconvenienced us by getting in the tops of the shoes. We had no sooner taken off these articles, however, than we discovered that the sand was burning hot from the blazing rays of the sun—so hot, in fact, that we hastened to put them on again at once.

While I busied myself preparing dinner Perkins went to work cleaning up our rifle, which we had neglected and allowed to become very rusty. By the time dinner was ready he had polished it up and it was as good as ever, which made us feel a little more at home, for we had heard most bloodcurdling tales of the ferocity of the jaguars and tigers so common in this region.

The jaguar, ounce, or American tiger,[81] is almost as large and ferocious as the tigers of Asia, often measuring over six feet in length, exclusive of the two-feet-long tail. It attacks nearly all animals, and sometimes man himself. Its sleek coat is of a bright tan colour on the back and white underneath, and on its flanks four rows of black rings, surrounding small black dots, are to be observed. This is the most common kind met with.

Other species are: the black jaguar,[82] known to the Indians as the jaguareté, which is very ferocious; the puma, cougar, or American lion,[83] whose coat is of a uniform tan, and which often measures four feet in length; the grey tiger,[84] which is only about two feet long; and the maracaja tiger,[85] which has a coat of different shades of black, white, and grey, and is still smaller than the preceding one.

The next morning we again went out hunting and exploring, and found numerous danta, or tapir tracks, from the forest to the river. They were very large, and we followed them until they disappeared into the inaccessible forest. Reaching the southern end of the beach, we observed several turtle tracks, but did not notice them closely, for just then we stumbled upon what looked like a jaguar trail, which we followed until it, too, disappeared in the depths of the forest. Somewhat discomfited at these repeated disappointments, we returned to the alligator pools and amused ourselves at taking pot-shots at the alligators until they discovered our game and promptly got away. A little later we shot a small bird, resembling a seagull, which we saved as bait for a fishing expedition we had planned for that evening.

Returning to the canoe, we had lunch; and, then, as it was too hot to go out on another expedition, devoted the rest of the afternoon to chess: but I lost every game, although when we were on the Cauca Railway I used to beat Perkins easily. Whether my mind was distracted by our shipwreck, or whether Perkins had done some studying up, I cannot say; the fact remains that during all the time we were shipwrecked I only won a single game, and we must have played over fifty.

At about seven o’clock in the evening we went down to the edge of the river and commenced fishing. At first we did not get a single bite, and we were just about giving it up in despair, when a school of enormous catfish appeared upon the scene, and in less than an hour and a half we had enough to last for a couple of days. Here we observed several more monstrous alligators, and soon so many appeared that we began to get a little nervous. They did not molest us, however, and we kept on fishing until nine o’clock, when we retired to our humble abode—the canoe.

Shortly after breakfast the next morning I went out on another expedition, taking my machete with me. After exploring the playa, without seeing anything more than tracks, I succeeded in penetrating a short distance into the forest, where I was lucky enough to kill a fine, large bird, known as the paujil. Returning to the canoe, I stumbled upon a large turtle track; following it some distance, I observed that it had dug up the sand, probably to deposit some eggs, so, excavating a little with my machete, I discovered the nest, which contained over eighty eggs. As these eggs are excellent eating, I took off my shirt, tied them up in it and carried them to camp, along with the paujil. At any rate, we were in no danger of starving.

There are two kinds of turtle common on the Putumayo, a large and a small species, known respectively as the charapa and the charapilla. The former is often two or three feet in diameter, and lays eggs almost as large as those of a hen and sometimes as many as a hundred in a nest. The latter is only about a foot or eighteen inches across, its eggs are only about half the size of the former’s, and there are only from twenty to thirty of them in a nest. The flesh of both these Chelonians is succulent and nourishing; the shell, which, however, is not so valuable as that of a seaturtle, is used in some places for different purposes. The eggs are very agreeable, and are eaten either fresh or smoked; in Brazil they extract from them an oil, which is employed for illuminating, like kerosene.

After lunch, which was composed of rice, turtle-eggs, fish, and yuca, we again took up chess, which we played steadily until about three o’clock, when, happening to glance up towards the river, I was overjoyed to perceive several canoes coming upstream. Rushing down to the water’s edge, we saw that there were five canoes, each one containing about ten Indians. As soon as they came up to us, I told them of our misfortune and asked them to help us out, promising to reward them generously. The wretches merely smiled and passed on, which so enraged us that, had I not observed that they were all well-armed, I should certainly have fired a couple of rifle-shots across their bows. As it was, we could do nothing but stand there and execrate them, which naturally was useless. When they finally disappeared, we returned with bitter thoughts to our chess, which we kept at until after dinner.

During this meal we were so upset over the malicious action of the Indians that we determined to have blood of some sort, so, after some deliberation, we decided that it should be the danta’s whose track I had observed in the morning. Accordingly, at about nine o’clock, we set out on the warpath; Perkins carried the shot-gun and I the rifle, while we both had a revolver and a naked machete. Arriving at the spot where the trail disappeared into the forest, we selected a couple of well-concealed but comfortable seats and waited.

After spending several hours sitting there in absolute silence, our patience was finally rewarded by hearing the sound of snapping underbrush, and the next moment a large, awkward form waddled past us and out upon the moonlit sands. We fired almost simultaneously, and had the satisfaction of seeing the animal fall with a thud; the next instant, however, it was again upon its feet and dashing wildly and violently about. Meanwhile, we discharged our revolvers again and again, but without much effect; at last the gallant Perkins rushed up and with a few powerful blows of his machete ended the mêlée, receiving, however, a slight gash in the calf of his leg from a projecting tusk.

We dragged the heavy body of the vanquished danta to our canoe, and, after duly celebrating our victory, found him to be nearly six feet in length and close to three feet in height. We then proceeded to skin him and cut him up in small pieces for smoking, for this is the most common method of preserving meat in this region. This operation concluded, we immediately built a large fire, erected over it a barbacoa,[86] and then, salting the pieces one by one, we put them over the roaring fire until they were cooked through. This task was not finished until daylight, when, not troubling to get breakfast, for we had eaten an enormous quantity of the roasting tapir, we immediately retired, quite exhausted but happy.

The tapir, danta, or gran bestia is the largest mammal of the Amazon Valley, and somewhat resembles the hog. Its snout is, however, prolonged to a small, flexible proboscis and its brown skin is covered, not with bristles but with a few silky hairs. During the daytime the tapir generally remains hidden in the cool, swampy marshes, coming out only at night to feed on roots, nuts, &c. When startled, he rushes along at great speed, his head down and perfectly regardless of trees and underbrush, through which he passes like a whirlwind. The only sounds this animal makes are low grunts and short, shrill whistles, quite out of proportion to his large frame. The tapir—the most valuable of all the pachyderms—ought to be domesticated, for its flesh is excellent and its skin makes first-rate leather; in addition to this, it has been suggested that it would also serve as a beast of burden.

We did not awake until about 11 a.m., when we had breakfast or lunch—whichever it was—after which we set out on our usual stroll. Perkins elected to take the shot-gun and penetrate the forest a short distance, while I went down to the alligator-pool. I saw several turtle tracks on the way, but decided not to dig any eggs, as we had an ample supply of provisions. Arriving at the pool, I sat down in the sand awaiting for some of the Saurians to put in an appearance; I sat there for some time, and was just thinking of returning to camp, when the water swirled up and the head of a river-cow or lamantin showed up for an instant. I jumped to my feet and the Cetacean promptly disappeared; although I hung around the pool for an hour or more, I saw nothing more of the river-cow, and, quite disappointed, returned to our abode.

The manatee, dugong, vaca-marina, or lamantin is none other than the classical siren, and sometimes reaches a length of from twelve to fifteen feet. Its pisciform body terminates in a fan-shaped tail, while the two fins in front, although flat and membranous, consist of five claw-like projections, somewhat resembling human fingers. The females have breasts, similar in shape to those of a woman. Their flesh is excellent, and they generally yield large quantities of fat, which is often used as an illuminant. As the manatee has a very delicate sense of hearing, its capture is rather difficult, and the Indians generally conceal themselves in the thick rushes that surround the bank of a pool and wait there for the victim to come up. As it feeds on certain plants that grow on the edge of the bank, it approaches the shore with some frequency. The Indians then watch their chance and, at a favourable moment, spring out and stab it before it can escape. This animal is becoming rarer every year, owing to the persecution it suffers.

In about half an hour Perkins arrived with three victims—a small dove, a little green lizard, known as the iguana, and a parrot. After making a brief examination of these trophies, of which he seemed very proud, I prepared dinner, after which we had a quiet smoke and then retired.

The next morning we were overjoyed to perceive that the river had risen nearly a foot during the night, but our hopes began to abate when it slowly commenced to go down again, and by eleven o’clock completely vanished, for the water was even lower than before. It certainly began to look as though we were to be detained here several weeks, possibly months.

In the afternoon we went out hunting, in spite of the suffocating heat. Coming to Perkins’s trail in the forest, we followed it to the end, took out our machetes, and, cutting out some of the underbrush, proceeded for about a kilometre farther. Resting here for some time without seeing anything worth shooting, we were about to return when the crackling of twigs indicated that some large animal was prowling around in our vicinity. Approaching cautiously, we peered through the rank vegetation and perceived a herd of about fifteen peccaries, busily engaged in devouring the fallen fruits of a group of palm-trees. As we had plenty of meat, we did not kill any of them, but, after observing them for a few minutes, started back to camp.[87]

The flesh of these pachyderms is excellent; if the animal killed is a male, it is necessary, however, to remove certain glands immediately, otherwise the meat will have a strong, disagreeable flavour. In some parts the natives take advantage of the natural pugnacity of this animal to encompass its destruction. The modus operandi is as follows: The hunter sneaks to them as they are feeding and excites them by imitating the barking of a dog; as soon as they perceive him they all make a rush in his direction; the hunter climbs a convenient tree and the enraged peccaries dash themselves against it in an endeavour to overturn it; the hunter then descends within reach of them, and, with his stout machete frequently kills numbers of the infuriated animals before they abandon their attack.

In the evening we again went fishing, but with indifferent success. The fish did not seem hungry, and it was not until after ten o’clock that we caught enough for breakfast. These were, as on the other occasions, all catfish. Other fish, however, abound in the Central and Lower Putumayo, most of which are already mentioned. One small fish, known as the candirú, is much feared in some parts on account of its fondness for entering the lower orifices of people in bathing.

On the following day Perkins did not feel very well, so I went out alone with the object of securing some more turtle eggs. Reaching the vicinity of the alligator-pool, I found a small trail which led along the bank for some distance. Following it with my eyes on the ground, I suddenly stumbled over something and almost lost my balance. Looking around, I perceived that I had run up against an enormous spectacled alligator that had been sunning himself on the sands, and I assure the gentle reader that I lost no time in making my get-away. The hideous monster lost no time in pursuing me, and my blood ran cold when I looked around and saw his wide-open jaws not more than two metres behind me. Fortunately, the forest was close, and in less time than it takes to tell it I was up a tree and pouring down a hot revolver fire upon my disgruntled antagonist, who soon walked off in disgust. After some time I cautiously descended; needless to say, I did not follow up any more turtle trails in the vicinity of the pool, for I had no desire to enter those pearly gates that I had just escaped from so narrowly.

Perkins, better in the afternoon, went out, while I remained with the canoe; in about an hour and a half he returned with about twenty small eggs, having found a charapilla’s nest and a large, beautifully plumaged bird, known as the piurí; this bird has a magnificent, black curled topknot and a yellow bill, tipped with black, and is about the size of a turkey. I believe this fine bird is rather rare.

The next morning Perkins and I set out on a forest expedition; following our previous trail to the end, we took out our machetes and hacked our way on a couple of kilometres farther. On the way we saw a tribe of the monkeys known as the Barrigudos; they are hairy and pot-bellied, with large, bullet-shaped heads and well-formed limbs. As soon as they saw us they scampered off, and we did not take a shot at them. Finally, perspiring from every pore as a result of our exertions, we were about to sit down to rest a little while, when Perkins heard in the distance the hoarse, piercing call of the toucan.[88] Wishing to secure a specimen of this strange, queer-looking bird, he set out in the direction from whence the call seemed to come, while I remained at the end of our trocha, enjoying a smoke. After waiting there an hour or so I began to get alarmed for him, and hallooed repeatedly at the top of my voice, but the deep silence of the forest was broken by no answering yell. Then I bethought myself to discharge my rifle, but nothing was to be heard in reply except the long-drawn-out echoes.

What could I do? I dare not set out in search of him, lest I, too, be lost, for in these dense solitudes people have perished from starvation and exposure, unaware that they were within a kilometre of a house. I sat there for hours, shouting and firing my rifle at short intervals and was just becoming desperate, when, faint in the distance, I thought I heard the dull report of a shot-gun. When the echoes of my answering discharge died away, I listened anxiously and, after a short interval, once more heard the muffled boom of the shot-gun, but a little louder than before. Keeping up a steady fire, in about three-quarters of an hour I was overjoyed to see Perkins, with the toucan in his arms, appear in quite a different direction than he had set out from.

After he had recovered himself somewhat by means of the small flask of aguardiente that I had with me, he informed me that the possibility of getting lost had never occurred to him until having shot the bird. After about an hour’s pursuit, he started to return; then he had realised that he was lost, for he had not the slightest idea of which way to return, and wandered about for hours until he finally got within range of the report of my rifle. After that, the rest was easy, and in less than an hour he had found his way back.