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." [Illustration: THE PERUVIAN AMAZON. FREE INDIANS OF THE UCAYALI RIVER. (Observe their robust appearance when not enslaved.) To face p. 24.]