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. The party who had brought me to this remote spot were of an entirely different race from those among whom I now found myself, and the fact that we were making our way toward what was obviously the aristocratic part of the town, coupled with the expressive conversation carried on by the leader of my custodians with three or four individuals who had joined us, led me to surmise--although of course I did not understand a word of what was said--that I had been brought up the river as a peace- offering or something of that sort, which conclusion was again the reverse of reassuring.