countries of the New World, at a time when the Brazilian law still
excluded mulattoes and others of mixed blood from certain
employments, it was evident that if such exclusion had affected him,
it had done so on account of his worthless character, and not because
of his birth.
Torres at the present moment was not, however, in Brazil. He had just
passed the frontier, and was wandering in the forests of Peru, from
which issue the waters of the Upper Amazon.
He was a man of about thirty years of age, on whom the fatigues of a
precarious existence seemed, thanks to an exceptional temperament and
an iron constitution, to have had no effect. Of middle height, broad
shoulders, regular features, and decided gait, his face was tanned
with the scorching air of the tropics. He had a thick black beard,
and eyes lost under contracting eyebrows, giving that swift but hard
glance so characteristic of insolent natures. Clothed as backwoodsmen
are generally clothed, not over elaborately, his garments bore
witness to long and roughish wear. On his head, stuck jauntily on one
side, was a leather hat with a large brim. Trousers he had of coarse
wool, which were tucked into the tops of the thick, heavy boots which
formed the most substantial part of his attire, and over all, and
hiding all, was a faded yellowish poncho.
But if Torres was a captain of the woods it was evident that he was
not now employed in that capacity, his means of attack and defense
being obviously insufficient for any one engaged in the pursuit of
the blacks. No firearms--neither gun nor revolver. In his belt only
one of those weapons, more sword than hunting-knife, called a
_"manchetta,"_ and in addition he had an _"enchada,"_ which is a sort
of hoe, specially employed in the pursuit of the tatous and agoutis
which abound in the forests of the Upper Amazon, where there is
generally little to fear from wild beasts.
On the 4th of May, 1852, it happened, then, that our adventurer was
deeply absorbed in the reading of the document on which his eyes were
fixed, and, accustomed as he was to live in the forests of South
America, he was perfectly indifferent to their splendors. Nothing
could distract his attention; neither the constant cry of the howling
monkeys, which St. Hillaire has graphically compared to the ax of the
woodman as he strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle
of the rings of the rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is
true, but one of the most venomous); neither the bawling voice of the
horned toad, the most hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and
sonorous croak of the bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal
the bull in size, can surpass him in noise.
Torres heard nothing of all these sounds, which form, as it were, the
complex voice of the forests of the New World. Reclining at the foot
of a magnificent tree, he did not even admire the lofty boughs of
