Note 1 — Chapter I

The good Church of England, in caring for her sons in Spanish America, is perforce obliged to have regard to the vast distances she must cover here. Thus the Bishop of the Falkland Islands' flock—his diocese—extends over the not inconsiderable territory covering the west coast of South America, including Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and so forth—a strip some five or six thousand miles long. As I formed one of a committee with the good bishop to endeavour to raise funds among English business men to carry on his work (and incidentally to lecture on the subject), I had the matter brought specially to my notice. Again, the Bishop of Honduras, in a recent letter to The Times, appealed for funds for a vessel, by means of which he might visit his flock over the vast diocese that included Honduras and British Honduras, Costa Rica, Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama.

And again, in giving evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the Putumayo rubber scandals, which I was called upon as a witness to do, concerning the Indians of Peru, it was necessary to inform the gentlemen of the Commission that the easiest way of reaching Eastern from Western Peru was to take steamer up the Pacific coast, cross the Isthmus of Panama, go home across the Atlantic to Liverpool, and come back again to the Amazon and go up that river!