ancs, and Torres would have been
somewhat embarrassed had he been asked how or where he had got them. One
thing was certain, that for some months, after having suddenly abandoned
the trade of the slave hunter, which he carried on in the province of
Para, Torres had ascended the basin of the Amazon, crossed the
Brazilian frontier, and come into Peruvian territory. To such a man the
necessaries of life were but few; expenses he had none--nothing for his
lodging, nothing for his clothes. The forest provided his food, which in
the backwoods cost him naught. A few reis were enough for his tobacco,
which he bought at the mission stations or in the villages, and for a
trifle more he filled his flask with liquor. With little he could go
far.

When he had pushed the paper into the metal box, of which the lid shut
tightly with a snap, Torres, instead of putting it into the pocket of
his under-vest, thought to be extra careful, and placed it near him in
a hollow of a root of the tree beneath which he was sitting. This
proceeding, as it turned out, might have cost him dear.

It was very warm; the air was oppressive. If the church of the nearest
village had possessed a clock, the clock would have struck two, and,
coming with the wind, Torres would have heard it, for it was not more
than a couple of miles off. But he cared not as to time. Accustomed to
regulate his proceedings by the height of the sun, calculated with more
or less accuracy, he could scarcely be supposed to conduct himself with
military precision. He breakfasted or dined when he pleased or when he
could; he slept when and where sleep overtook him. If his table was not
always spread, his bed was always ready at the foot of some tree in the
open forest. And in other respects Torres was not difficult to please.
He had traveled during most of the morning, and having already eaten a
little, he began to feel the want of a snooze. Two or three hours' rest
would, he thought, put him in a state to continue his road, and so he
laid himself down on the grass as comfortably as he could, and waited
for sleep beneath the ironwood-tree.

Torres was not one of those people who drop off to sleep without certain
preliminaries. HE was in the habit of drinking a drop or two of strong
liquor, and of then smoking a pipe; the spirits, he said, overexcited
the brain, and the tobacco smoke agreeably mingled with the general
haziness of his reverie.

Torres commenced, then, by applying to