As we were allowed to walk around the houses without being molested--although an eye was always kept on us by some one--we had the opportunity to witness the lamentable condition of the unfortunate _Corregidor_ Gabriel Martínez and his men, who were confined, as though they were desperate criminals, in a small, dirty, eight-by-ten-foot room under the main house and guarded night and day by two soldiers. These poor wretches, in a starving condition, were insulted, taunted, and abused daily by word and deed in a most cowardly manner. Orjuela, all this time, was kept in close confinement on the _Liberal_. Another edifying spectacle that we witnessed was the condition of the poor Indians who loaded and unloaded the vessels that stopped at the port. There were from fifty to sixty of these unfortunates, so weak, debilitated, and scarred that many of them could hardly walk. It was a pitiful sight to see these poor Indians, practically naked, their bones almost protruding through their skins, and all branded with the infamous _marca de Arana_,[96] staggering up the steep hill, carrying upon their doubled backs enormous weights of merchandise for the consumption of their miserable oppressors. Occasionally one of these unfortunate victims of Peruvian "civilisation" would fall under his load, only to be kicked up on his feet and forced to continue his stern labours by the brutal "boss." I noticed the food they received, which was given to them once a day, at noon; it consisted of a handful of _fariña_ and a tin of sardines--when there were any--for each group of four Indians, nothing more. And this was to sustain them for twenty-four hours, sixteen of which were spent at the hardest kind of labour! But what was still more pitiful was to see the sick and dying lie about the house and out in the adjacent woods, unable to move and without any one to aid them in their agony. These poor wretches, without remedies, without food, were exposed to the burning rays of the vertical sun and the cold rains and heavy dews of early morning until death released them from their sufferings. Then their companions carried their cold corpses--many of them in an almost complete state of putrefaction--to the river, and the yellow, turbid waters of the Caraparaná closed silently over them. Another sad sight was the large number of involuntary concubines who pined--in melancholy musings over their lost liberty and their present sufferings--in the interior of the house. This band of unfortunates was composed of some thirteen young girls, who varied in age from nine to sixteen years, and these poor innocents--too young to be called women--were the helpless victims of Loayza and the other chief officials of the Peruvian Amazon Company's El Encanto branch, who violated these tender children without the slightest compunction, and when they tired of them either murdered them or flogged them and sent them back to their tribes.