Often on holidays and _fiestas_, in order to see the weak, starving, and cadaverous Indians run, these people fire into a group of them, and generally manage to bring down several before their victims have got out of reach. When one of these agents sees a girl he wants he takes her, and her father or husband dare not protest, for he would be tortured to death at once. After he is satisfied, if he still likes the woman, he adds her to his harem; if not, he either lets her go or, as has happened, has her flogged to death. As I have before remarked, nearly all these agents possess a harem of two to twelve Indian girls, varying in age from eight to fifteen years. These defenceless children are violated without the least compassion, and when they tire of one she is either brutally kicked out of the house and sent back to her tribe or else murdered on the spot. Murders and assassinations are so common here that some of the chiefs of sections and their subordinates do not pass without killing in cold blood from one to five, or even more, of the helpless Huitotos. Any pretext serves, as when the Indian does not understand them or when he is not punctual to the minute; and, indeed, they often kill them for amusement, to fill the other Indians with a fear of the "whites," or to practise target-shooting. These murders, let it be understood, are not confined entirely to the slaughters of Indians, for many are the _civilizados_, Peruvians as well as Colombians, who have incurred the ill-will of these bandits. Extortions are practised continually in this part of Peru by the company and its employees. Apart from the robberies of the rubber extracted by the Indians, the lesser employees are robbed of a part or of all their salary balances. The profits from these thefts generally go to swell the pockets of the chiefs of sections and those of the higher employees. As I have before remarked, the unhappy Indians, far from getting paid for the rubber they deliver, are not even given food to eat while they work, and what appears more incredible is that they are given no opportunity to cultivate food of their own; for such is the criminal rapacity of this company that they not only compel the Indian women to cultivate the food for their men and themselves, but also for their oppressors, who help themselves to all they want and waste and destroy as much as they please, the little that is left constituting, with a few forest products, the food of the unfortunate and starving Indians. The dress of the Huitotos has already been described, and, after thirteen years of close contact with the company, we find these people still stark naked.