Here I informed the dentist Guy T. King, acting American Consul in this place, of the events already narrated to the reader; but this gentleman, considering solely and exclusively his own interests and forgetting the duties that his position as Consul incurred upon him, contented himself with congratulating me upon my narrow escape from death at the hands of the assassins of Arana and informing me that, owing to various circumstances, he could do absolutely nothing for us![99] Towards the end of April Perkins arrived without our baggage; for the miserable murderers of El Encanto, their cupidity aroused by the idea of getting something for nothing, had stolen it while Perkins was held prisoner at that place. Thus they became aware of the deception I had practised upon them in regard to the American syndicate, and so great was their anger that they were upon the point of murdering Perkins, but their fears getting the better of them, they contented themselves with keeping him a close prisoner and abusing him, as is their custom. Although the effects we had been robbed of were of considerable value and the hardships and perils through which we had passed while in the hands of the employees of this syndicate were distinctly unpleasant, nevertheless I consider that on the whole we were extremely fortunate in making our escape from the sanguinary _selvas_ of the River Putumayo and from the tender mercies of those human hyenas, the assassin-employees of Arana. From the horrors described in the following chapter the reader will be in a position to form a faint idea of the hellish and wholesale crimes committed upon these unfortunates; not a complete one, for in order to do that it would be necessary for him to come here and see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears what really takes place in these gruesome forests; but nevertheless he will, I repeat, be able to get some glimmering of the awful truth. In making these exposures I have obeyed only the dictates of my conscience and my own sense of outraged justice; and now that I have made them and the civilised world is aware of what occurs in the vast and tragic _selvas_ of the River Putumayo, I feel that, as an honest man, I have done my duty before God and before society and trust that others, who are in a position to do so, will take up the defence of these unfortunates and the prosecution and punishment of the human hyenas responsible for these crimes. [Illustration: NATIVE WOMEN AND HUT AT IQUITOS. [To face p. 196.]