a single slave among its ten millions of inhabitants.

The occupation of the captains of the woods was doomed, and at the
period we speak of the advantages obtainable from the capture of
fugitives were rapidly diminishing. While, however, the calling
continued sufficiently profitable, the captains of the woods formed
a peculiar class of adventurers, principally composed of freedmen and
deserters--of not very enviable reputation. The slave hunters in fact
belonged to the dregs of society, and we shall not be far wrong in
assuming that the man with the cryptogram was a fitting comrade for his
fellow _"capitaes do mato."_ Torres--for that was his name--unlike the
majority of his companions, was neither half-breed, Indian, nor negro.
He was a white of Brazilian origin, and had received a better education
than befitted his present condition. One of those unclassed men who are
found so frequently in the distant 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.
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