usion which I afterwards found to be correct.

Using the butts, and occasionally the points, of their spears freely in
order to force a passage through the steadily growing crowd, my escort
slowly made their way toward that part of the town which was enclosed by
the palisade; and, as they did so, I studied the faces of those who
thronged about me, with the object of forming some idea, if I could, of
the fate that I might expect at their hands.

I must confess that the results of my inspection were by no means
reassuring. The first fact to impress itself upon me was that these
people among whom I now found myself were of an entirely different race
from the negro, properly so-called--the woolly-pated, high cheek-boned,
ebony-skinned individual with snub nose and thick lips usually met with
aboard a slaver. To start with, their colour was much lighter, being a
clear brown of varying degrees of depth, from that of the mulatto to a
tint not many shades deeper than that of the average Spaniard. But this
difference, marked though it was, was not so great as that between their
cast of features and that of the negro; the features of these people
were, for the most part, clean cut, shapely, and in many cases actually
handsome, their noses especially being exceedingly well formed. Then
their head covering was hair, not wool, that of the men being worn
close-cropped, while the women allowed theirs to grow at will and wore
it flowing freely over the back and shoulders, the locks in many cases
reaching considerably below the waist. It was invariably curly, that of
the men growing in close, tiny ringlets clustering thickly all over the
head, while that of the women, because it was worn longer, I suppose,
took the form of long graceful curls. In colour it was a rich glossy
black. They were certainly an exceptionally fine race of people, the
men being lithe, clean-limbed, muscular fellows, every one of them
apparently in the pink of condition, while the faces and figures of the
women, especially the younger ones, would have excited the envy of many
an English belle. But there was a something, very difficult to define,
in the expression of these people that I did not at all like, a hardness
about the mouth, and a cruel glint in the eyes--especially of the men--
which looked at me in a manner that suggested all sorts of unpleasant
possibilities, and excited within me a distinct longing to be almost
anywhere rather than where I was