"By Rodríguez' direction a special _cepo_, or stocks, for the confinement, or torture rather, of the recalcitrant india-rubber workers was made. Not satisfied with the ordinary stocks to detain an individual by the legs alone, Rodríguez had designed a double _cepo_ in two parts, so formed as to hold the neck and arms at one end and to confine the ankles at the other. These stocks were so constructed that the leg end could be moved up or down, so that they might fit any individual of any size. For a full-grown man they could be extended to the length of his figure, or contracted to fit the stature of quite a child. Small boys were often inserted into this receptacle face downwards, and they, as well as grown-up people, women equally with men, were flogged while extended in this posture. Crichlow, quite an intelligent carpenter for an ordinary labouring man, had faithfully carried out the design of his master, and this implement of torture remained in use at the station at Santa Catalina until the early part of 1909. In May, 1908, Crichlow had a dispute with one of the other employees, named Pedro Torres. The quarrel was of no importance, but Torres was a white man and Crichlow was a black man. The former appealed to his chief, and Rodríguez at once took the part of his Peruvian fellow-countryman. He struck Crichlow over the head with a loaded revolver, and called other white employees to seize him. Crichlow tried to defend himself with a stick, but was overpowered, and his hands were tied behind his back. He was then beaten by many of them and put in the _cepo_, or stocks, to spend the night. When released next day for a few moments for an obvious reason he was chained round the neck, one end of the chain being held in the hand of a guard. The same day, with his hands tied and this chain padlocked round his neck, he was dispatched under guard to the neighbouring station of La Sabana, a full day's march. A certain Velarde was at the time the chief of this section, and at the date of my visit I found him chief of the section Occidente. Velarde put Crichlow in the stocks at his station with his legs five holes apart--an almost insupportable distance--in which posture he remained all night. Next day a Señor Alcorta, employed at a neighbouring section, who was on a visit to La Sabana, interceded for him and he was released from the stocks, but was sent down to La Chorrera as a prisoner. Here he was again confined in the stocks by the sub-agent, Señor Delgado, and was finally only released through the friendly intervention of the captain of the port of Iquitos, who happened to be on a visit to the Putumayo at the time. No compensation of any kind was ever offered to these injured men. On the contrary, they had been forced to buy at their own expense medicines, in addition to many other things required (when ill from this bad treatment), that, by the terms of the original contract, should have been supplied free by their employers.