This made me think of breakfast, so awakening Sánchez, we sat down at the table, where the pirate-captain and most of the passengers were already beginning. The meal was execrable, being composed only of watery tea, a quantity of extremely stale bread, and some evil-smelling butter. We all munched this unpalatable fare in silence until we had eaten all we could of it, when we left the table. During the rest of the forenoon Sánchez and I got acquainted with the other passengers. One of the officers, Lieutenant Ghiorzo, an extremely stout, dark-complexioned man, turned out to be under arrest for refusing to take part in the raid on La Unión, and was in charge of the other one, a tall, blonde, cadaverous-looking man, named Lieutenant Albarracin, who proved to be none other than the brother of the Peruvian whom we had met in Pasto, and who had given us a letter of introduction to his brother, whom he thought to be in Iquitos. Although the letter had been left in our trunks with the rest of our effects, I told the Lieutenant about it, and he was very cordial towards me during the whole trip. Ghiorzo also seemed very affable. Another passenger was a young, copper-coloured Colombian merchant named Patrocinio Cuellar, who it appears had brought some merchandise down from Colombia for the "civilising company," which had been lost or destroyed about the time of the raid on La Unión. He was going to the headquarters of the company at Iquitos to see if they would reimburse him. Cuellar associated, as a rule, with an individual named Bartolomé Guevara, a short, _carate_-covered man, to whom I took an instinctive dislike. He was a chief of section who had recently resigned his position at El Encanto, and was now _en route_ to Spain to spend some of the money he had extracted from the tears, the bitter agony, the very life-blood of the unfortunate Indians under his control. I afterwards ascertained that he was one of the most noted of the Putumayo "missionaries." Another person whom I regarded with almost equal abhorrence was a copper-complexioned rascal named César Lúrquin, the Peruvian _Comisario_ of the Putumayo. This miserable wretch was openly taking with him to Iquitos a little Huitoto girl of some seven years, presumably to sell her as a "servant," for it is a well-known fact that this repugnant traffic in human beings is carried on, almost openly, there. His position was a sinecure, for, instead of stopping on the Putumayo, travelling about there and really making efforts to suppress crime by punishing the criminals, he contented himself with visiting the region four or five times a year--always on the company's launches--stopping a week or so, collecting some children to sell, and then returning and making his "report."