Embarking again, we continued for an hour or so, and then, not finding any convenient _playa_, Orjuela, Sánchez, and myself stretched out in the bottom of the boat, while the men slept in the brush on the bank. The _monteria_ was small, and we were three; consequently there was not much room, and we passed a veritable night of torture, cramped and rolling over each other in a manner hardly conducive to a night's rest. The next morning the trip was resumed, and, after a tedious descent of several hours, we reached El Dorado at 4.30 p.m. Here we were cordially received by Don Tobias Calderón, the man in charge, who informed us that Señor Gonzalez, tired to death of the continual raids, robberies, and other abuses of the Peruvians, had gone over on the right bank of the Putumayo to look for some other suitable place to establish himself, where he might be left in peace. Immediately upon our arrival Orjuela dispatched a note to Loayza by an Indian, who would reach El Encanto within a few hours, travelling by an overland trail. This operation concluded, we took a look at the estate, which was situated on a gently sloping knoll on the left bank. The house was of good size and of the usual elevated construction. The space around it had once been cleared, but was now grown over with bushes and shrubs. I was informed that there were about thirty Indian families attached to the estate; one or two of these were employed at the house, while the rest lived out at their village in the heart of the forest. The next morning we were surprised to see a number of canoes coming up the river; as they approached nearer Orjuela recognised several of the occupants as Colombian employees of the El Encanto branch of the "civilising company." Arriving at the house, they informed us that they had all resigned their positions on account of the ill-feeling exhibited towards them by the Peruvians and that they were going to Guepí. Another interesting piece of news was that sixty Peruvian soldiers had just arrived from Iquitos on the _Liberal_, one of the Peruvian Amazon Company's launches. These ex-employees, although naturally kept in the dark as much as possible by their Peruvian employers, suspected some attack was about to be made on La Unión or La Reserva before long, as a Peruvian gunboat had also recently arrived. They had seen Martínez, the unfortunate _Corregidor_, whom they reported as being kept in close confinement at El Encanto.