In this state, and seeing that death was certain unless I got something to eat, I started to crawl painfully about in search of herbs to eat, and found a tree called _huava_. I picked some of its fruit and ate it, but shortly afterwards had terrible pains in the stomach, and vomited up all the fruit that I had eaten.
After acute sufferings I managed to reach Abisinia, without having eaten anything during the two days and a half of the journey.
In Abisinia I saw the eight concubines of Agüero. Some of these were of the Boras tribe, and others were Huitotos, all of different ages--for this group of unfortunates was composed of girls from nine to sixteen years. Agüero kept his eight women separated from each other, the Boras on one side and the Huitotos on the other, so that they would not quarrel, on account of the antagonisms that exist between the different tribes.
One day I witnessed an excessively atrocious scene, the barbarous flogging of three unfortunate Indians, who, for the mere fact of not having brought in all the rubber that Agüero had required, were scourged with such fury that their backs and hips were completely cut to pieces, the blood rushing from their wounds. Upon seeing this barbarity, I withdrew, for I could not endure it nor the diabolical jokes and laughter of those fiends upon seeing the desperate agony of their victims.
I also saw the two unfortunates, Paz Cutierrez and one Cabrera, who were prisoners, shut up in a small, dirty room under sentinels; to these unhappy wretches they gave almost no food at all, and abused and insulted them vilely and cowardly. One of them at last succeeded in escaping, but the other still remained in the hands of his jailers at my departure from Abisinia.
In May of the same year I went to Morelia. I arrived there also after a very tedious journey, and had hardly reached this section when I witnessed the cruel flogging of seven Indians for the usual crime--that of not delivering enough rubber to satisfy the ambitions of the company's agents. Two of these victims were mere boys, and I heard their cries of agony and saw the lash cutting into their flesh. All this I saw, but could not defend them from their murderers, as I knew that if I tried to do so they would kill me in an instant.