"Indians were frequently flogged to death. Cases were reported to me where men or women had died actually under the lash, but this seems to have been infrequent. Deaths due to flogging generally ensued some days afterwards, and not always in the station itself where the lash had been applied, but on the way home to the unfortunate's dwelling-place. In many cases where men or women had been so cruelly flogged that the wounds putrefied the victims were shot by one of the _racionales_ acting under the orders of the chief of the section, or even by this individual himself. Salt and water would be sometimes applied to these wounds, but in many cases a fatal flogging was not attended even by this poor effort at healing, and the victim, 'with maggots in the flesh,' was turned adrift to die in the forest or was shot and the corpse burned or buried--or often enough thrown into the 'bush' near the station-houses. At one station--that of Abisinia (which I did not visit)--I was informed by a British subject who had himself often flogged the Indians that he had seen mothers flogged, on account of shortage of rubber by their little sons. These boys were held to be too small to chastise, and so, while the little boy stood terrified and crying at the sight, his mother would be beaten 'just a few strokes' to make him into a better worker. "Men and women would be suspended by the arms, often twisted behind their backs and tied together at the wrists, and in this agonising posture, their feet hanging high above the ground, they were scourged on the nether limbs and lower back. The implement used for flogging was invariably a twisted strip, or several strips plaited together, of dried tapir-hide, a skin not so thick as the hippopotamus-hide I have seen used in Africa for flagellation, but still sufficiently stout to cut a human body to pieces. One flogger told me the weapon he used was 'as thick as your thumb.'