As we were taking on a quantity of firewood, another launch, the Cosmopolita, appeared and came up alongside of us. Here Sánchez was overjoyed to meet once more with his companion exiles, who had left El Encanto about a month previously on this launch, bound for Iquitos. Instead of going there, however, the Cosmopolita had gone up to La Chorrera, stopped there all this time, and was now about to accompany the Liberal. Although we saw them only for a few moments, the meeting cheered up Sánchez immensely, while I took an instant liking to them.
La Chorrera, the headquarters of the Igaraparaná district, they described as being larger than El Encanto, and situated on the borders of a little lake at the head of navigation on the Igaraparaná. They furthermore informed me that La Chorrera was about twenty-four hours’ run above Santa Julia.
At Santa Julia, La Chorrera, and the other stations along the banks of the Lower and Central Igaraparaná, the victims are a tribe of aborigines known as the Boras, several of whom I saw in a practically naked condition at Santa Julia. These Indians are distinct from the Huitotos, and speak a dialect of their own called Bora. They are of a lighter colour and much more intelligent and fierce than the former; thus they do not submit so sheepishly to the persecutions and atrocities of the “civilising company,” and many of them have escaped to the left bank of the River Caquetá, out of reach of their verdugos.[98]
The other sections between the Igaraparaná and Caquetá have as victims several other tribes of aborigines, chief of which are the Andoques, the Yurias, the Ocainas, and the Yaguas. All these tribes speak a distinct dialect of their own, although closely resembling the Huitotos in habits, customs, &c. The Andoques are the largest tribe, but none are so numerous as the Huitotos.
The firewood at length on board and the gallant Zubiaur’s tale of the “victory” finally terminated, at about eight o’clock we set out down the Igaraparaná, accompanied by the Cosmopolita. After a not unpleasant journey of several hours, we again reached Arica at about 3 p.m., where we stopped for the rest of the day. Here we were again tortured by the gnats, which soon became so ferocious that I was obliged to don my veil and gloves; the heat, however, was so suffocating that I had to take them off again shortly.
After a tedious journey of several days, made in company with the celebrated criminal Bartolomé Guevara and Lieuts. Albarracín and Ghiorzo of the Peruvian Army, the jailers of Orjuela, Martínez, and their men, who were confined in the small and loathsome cage, previously mentioned, which was so diminutive that there was not sufficient space for them all to sit down at the same time, we at last arrived at Iquitos on February 1st.
Here I informed the dentist Guy T. King, acting American Consul in this place, of the events already narrated to the reader; but this gentleman, considering solely and exclusively his own interests and forgetting the duties that his position as Consul incurred upon him, contented himself with congratulating me upon my narrow escape from death at the hands of the assassins of Arana and informing me that, owing to various circumstances, he could do absolutely nothing for us![99]
Towards the end of April Perkins arrived without our baggage; for the miserable murderers of El Encanto, their cupidity aroused by the idea of getting something for nothing, had stolen it while Perkins was held prisoner at that place. Thus they became aware of the deception I had practised upon them in regard to the American syndicate, and so great was their anger that they were upon the point of murdering Perkins, but their fears getting the better of them, they contented themselves with keeping him a close prisoner and abusing him, as is their custom.
Although the effects we had been robbed of were of considerable value and the hardships and perils through which we had passed while in the hands of the employees of this syndicate were distinctly unpleasant, nevertheless I consider that on the whole we were extremely fortunate in making our escape from the sanguinary selvas of the River Putumayo and from the tender mercies of those human hyenas, the assassin-employees of Arana.
From the horrors described in the following chapter the reader will be in a position to form a faint idea of the hellish and wholesale crimes committed upon these unfortunates; not a complete one, for in order to do that it would be necessary for him to come here and see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears what really takes place in these gruesome forests; but nevertheless he will, I repeat, be able to get some glimmering of the awful truth.