articles of little intrinsic value, but of very attractive character to the Indian dwelling in so inaccessible a region. Had any form of administrative authority accompanied the early settlers or searchers for Indians, as they should rightly be termed, their relations with these wild inhabitants of the forest might have been controlled and directed to some mutually useful end. But the _caucheros_ came as filibusters, not as civilisers, and were unaccompanied by any executive officers representing a civilised control. The region was practically a no-man's land, lying remote from any restraining authority or civilising influence, and figuring on maps of South America as claimed by three separate republics. "Those who came in search of rubber had no intention of dwelling longer in the forest than the accumulation of the wealth they hoped to amass necessitated. They wanted to get rich quickly, not to stay and civilise the Indians or make their homes among them. The rubber-trees of themselves were of no value; it was Indians who could be made or induced to tap them and to bring in the rubber on the white man's terms that all the invading _conquistadores_ were in search of. Generally a leading man fitted out an expedition with a few companions, partners in effort and initial expenditure; and with a gang of hired _peons_, or, as they are called in that region, _racionales_ (half-breeds mostly who can read and write to distinguish them from the _Indios_, who are ignorant of all save forest lore), he journeyed to some part of the forest in search of tribes of wild Indians--_infieles_ or "infidels"--who could be easily subdued and reduced to work the wild rubber-trees in the territory they inhabited. An Indian would promise anything for a gun, or for some of the other tempting things offered as inducements to him to work rubber. Many Indians submitted to the alluring offer only to find that once in the _conquistadores_' books they had lost all liberty, and were reduced to unending demands for more rubber and more varied tasks. A cacique or _capitán_ might be bought over to dispose of the labour of all his clan, and as the cacique's influence was very great and the natural docility of the Indian a remarkable characteristic of the Upper Amazon tribes, the work of conquering a primitive people and reducing them to a continual strain of rubber-finding was less difficult than might at first be supposed. Their arms of defence were puerile weapons as opposed to the rifles of the _blancos_." The terrible floggings practised upon the Indians are lengthily described by Consul Casement, and it is said that 90 per cent, of them, men and women, bear scars therefrom. Further describing the outrages committed, Mr. Casement quotes from the Annual Report of the Minister of Justice, presented to the Peruvian Congress in 1907:--