"For two days--that is to say, from Matanzas to Entre Rios--I marched along with this caravan of very unhappy individuals, men with huge loads of rubber weighing, I believe, sometimes up to 70 kilos each, accompanied by their wives, also loaded with rubber, and their sons and daughters, down to quite tiny things that could do no more than carry a little cassava-bread (prepared by the mothers before leaving their forest home), to serve as food for parents and children on this trying march. Armed _muchachos_, with Winchesters, were scattered through the long column, and at the rear one of the _racionales_ of Matanzas, a man named Adan Negrete, beat up the stragglers. Behind all, following a day later, came Señor Normand himself, with more armed _racionales_, to see that none fell out or slipped home, having shed their burdens of rubber on the way. On the second day I reached Entre Rios in the early afternoon, the bulk of the Indians having that morning started at 5.15 from the place where we had slept together in the forest. At 5.15 that evening they arrived with Negrete and the armed _muchachos_ at Entre Rios, where I had determined to stay for some days. Instead of allowing these half-starved and weary people, after twelve hours' march, staggering under crushing loads, to rest in this comparatively comfortable station of the company, where a large rest-house and even food were available, Negrete drove them on into the forest beyond, where they were ordered to spend the night under guard of the _muchachos_. This was done in order that a member of the company's commission (Mr. Walter Fox), who was at Entre Rios at the time along with myself, should not have an opportunity of seeing too closely the condition of these people--particularly, I believe, that we should not be able to weigh the loads of rubber they were carrying. I had, however, seen enough on the road during the two days I accompanied the party alone to convince me of the cruelty they were subjected to, and I had even taken several photographs of those among them who were more deeply scarred with the lash.